At a recent business networking event, I met no fewer than three people who’d quit their PhD. Although they believed it was the right decision, they still felt a sense of failure or defeat. Estimates vary, but it’s likely that around 40% of PhD students leave. The figures are much higher for part-time students and …
In 1861, Charles Darwin wrote in a letter: “But I am very poorly today and very stupid and hate everybody and everything.” Ever had a Darwin Day? Yep, me too. It’s frustrating when we’ve put aside some time for deep work, then our brain refuses to cooperate. There are a few options to consider, though: …
Proofreading is perhaps the one activity I dislike even more than housework. This stage is unbelievably tedious, but absolutely crucial. Typos creep in all the time, especially when you’re stressed and frantically editing the text. The only way to approach proofreading is calmly and systematically. And you need to do this right at the end, …
Does this sound familiar? The long-awaited email lands in your inbox — it’s the feedback on that piece of writing. Your stomach ends up in your slippers and you feel slightly clammy. You open the document and start reading. Disaster! Your supervisor clearly hates this piece of work. It’s a sea of red comments and …
It’s fun doing interviews, but who actually likes transcribing them afterwards? The novelty wears off after about 5 minutes. Unless you’re a fast and accurate typist, this activity is also incredibly time-consuming. Fortunately, it’s now possible to get near-perfect transcripts at a very low cost. In my previous post, I explained how you could use …
My love for Zotero is great, but even I have to admit that it’s not perfect. Thankfully, a third-party plugin called Zotfile makes up for its minor limitations with PDF management. Here are the two features I’ve found particularly beneficial. 1) Extraction of highlights and annotations from PDFs I warn you, this feature is exciting. …
If you’ve been rummaging in the archives, you probably have a lot of digital images. They can be quite tricky to manage, especially when you’ve got more than a few dozen. Although tools like Zotero are great for bibliographic data, they’re not really suited to archival material. Fortunately, the Zotero developers have also created Tropy. …
In my previous post, I showed you a simple method of getting Scrivener and Zotero to work together. The method I’ll show you now is a lot more complicated, but it’s much better suited to documents with a lot of citations, e.g. a thesis or book. You’re going to need patience and perseverance. This won’t …
I love showing people how to use Zotero and Scrivener. Their faces light up when they realise how much easier life is going to be. But then there’s always a question … do Zotero and Scrivener work together? Those same faces fall when I answer, “no, not really”. We all like to imagine a perfect …
Laptops get stolen, memory sticks seldom survive an accidental boil wash (I’m on my third), and Word can be relied upon to corrupt your most important document. Unfortunately, most of us don’t realise the importance of backing up until it’s too late. If you’ve spent many years working on a research project, then your data …
