Okay, but what the heck do I do with all these research notes?!?!

- me, for months.

I've tried a wiki, which, though it doesn't quite work for the note taking/collecting stage that I'm currently struggling with, I do generally like and will still probably be using further down my workflow pipeline (that is, unless I find a Heurist database more helpful than a straight up wiki for that stage, as this week I've been experimenting with that).

After realizing that it wasn't quite the thing for this stage of the research, I shifted over to Scrivener, where I first basically copied the format of a wiki page with each section getting it's own text (page/note), but allowing for more unstructured info and quotes, etc. But that still wasn't quite what I needed (duh, I say retrospectively.)

Then I found the idea of conceptual matrices (yes I spelled it wrong in Scrivener) that seem to work so well for things that aren't biographical research... I tried those, continuously having to break them down so each page wasn't getting so unwieldy, and so here I am now, with this total mess:

 

#REGRET

So, I've spent waaaay too much time the last couple of days trying to figure out what to do, looking into various possibilities (I do NOT understand how people use Evernote for this, I would simply DIE of overwhelm) (and TiddlyWiki sounded promising, but was super confusing and I gave up on that, too.)

Sooooo, what did I end up with after all this searching?

Why, the very system I was trying so hard to find a digital alternative for, of course!

Index Cards.

Credit goes to Ryan Holiday's Thought Catalog article The Notecard System: The Key For Remembering, Organizing And Using Everything You Read, in which he explains that index cards were:

"... responsible for helping me publish three books in three years, (along with other books I’ve had the privilege of contributing to), write countless articles published in newspapers and websites, send out my reading recommendations every month, and make all sorts of other work and personal successes possible."

Uh, yes please. I would like to have anything approaching that level of productivity!
Okay, okay. I should use the notecard system. But of course I then spent half a day trying to find an explicitly digital-index-card system (Scrivener's not counting bc I need a bazillion cards) because, trees! Hand cramping! Supply costs! Travel! Etc!

NoodleTools, though aimed at k-12 students, seemed pretty close, but then I just gave up. I don't want all my notes in such a closed system, anyway. I should just use the actual, physical cards.

So, I can't afford a printer to just print & paste things onto the cards, and my hand is already aching at the thought of what's to come, but I  know darn well that this is the best possible system that currently exists that works best for my brain.

My brain is weird, you see (I have severe ADHD..) and I really do work better with physical copies of things, though my millennial self generally prefers that which is digital and techie. But, ADHD brains in particular really do need things, especially information, to be "externalized" and physically manipulatable (our working memory is crap).

In fact, I thought to write this post after reading this article by fellow ADHDer Aimée Morrison at Hook & Eye this morning, in which she describes why she uses paper for research notes, which is the same reason physical copies work best for me, too:

For me, paper is visible in very important ways: scale, scope, the gist. How much progress I’m making, how much I have left. Where the holes are, sometimes literally. Paper is a massive memory aid, an externalization of my working memory, all the more crucial the larger or more complex a task becomes. Colour coded sticky notes and pens and paper clips and highlighting–I scan it from above and easily zoom down to what I need.

For me, electronic text is inscrutable and frustrating, like trying to watch a movie in the front row of the cinema with a pinhole camera: I can’t get any sense of scale or make sense of anything, and I get dizzy, to boot. There’s no way I could follow any kind of narrative and it’s a challenge not to barf. All the blue light, not enough screen, too many tabs and open windows and nothing findable. Stress nap!

I found this article to be super validating for me, especially since a few days ago I had already gone ahead and ordered some supplies! Thanks, Aimée! :)


Woops this post turned out way longer than intended, but I realized I should make a record of all the things I looked into first, so I don't forget and do this whole thing over again next year!