organizing one’s ideas
I’ve rarely been in an environment that has allowed for so much free, creative thinking as I am now at grad school. It’s wonderfully refreshing and it makes me feel like I’m a kid in a candy store, but it also poses some challenges in how to organize one’s ideas in such a way that they’re mostly available within arm’s reach for referencing, refactoring, or recording.
I have a few ideals in any such system:
- search, linking, and easy refactoring: This pretty much requires me to use a computer over the old school (and lovely) pen and paper journal approach.
- available anywhere, with or without my laptop: If I have to use a computer, I don’t want to be restricted to always needing my laptop with me.
- works offline, too: If I happen to be lugging my laptop with me, it would be nice if everything could be available to me sans ‘net connection.
My biggest current issue is how to organize my research notes. I’m reading and summarizing 10-15 research papers per week and I’m currently using Journler on my laptop. It does a pretty good job of organizing and comes with a pretty slick UI. I’m not crazy about it though because it doesn’t satisfy my second condition very well. I’ve been thinking of experimenting with a personal wiki instead, maybe TWiki because I’m most familiar with it from work. Satisfying both of the latter conditions with a wiki would require some customizations, though.
Does anyone want to chime in and share strategies and/or ideas on software that work well for you?
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