{"id":431,"date":"2018-01-01T08:30:00","date_gmt":"2018-01-01T13:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/?p=431"},"modified":"2018-01-02T08:48:06","modified_gmt":"2018-01-02T13:48:06","slug":"getting-organized-in-2018-introducing-a-blog-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/blog\/2018\/01\/01\/getting-organized-in-2018-introducing-a-blog-series\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting organized in 2018 – Introducing a blog series"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to 2018! This post is different from others you\u2019ve seen if you\u2019ve been here before. Instead of comments on a recent piece of research, on science policy or science communication issues, or on issues concerning conservation, biodiversity, or the environment, this post begins a series that will share how I organize my work. Why? Off and on through my career I\u2019ve had people ask me about how I get things done. Especially since I became Vice Provost for Graduate Education and Dean of The Graduate School<\/a> at UConn nearly 6 years ago,1<\/a><\/sup> quite a few people have asked me how I can do that and<\/strong><\/em> continue to advise graduate students, teach (a little), and make research contributions. By writing down what I do, I\u2019ll now have a link I can send anyone who\u2019s interested.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s post merely announces the series. The first real<\/em> post will appear on Monday, January 8th<\/sup> and there should be another one every Monday morning after that for several weeks.2<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

Important disclaimer<\/em><\/strong>: I am not a productivity expert, and nothing you\u2019ll read in this post or the posts that follow has been validated by empirical research.3<\/a><\/sup> What I\u2019m doing to organize myself may not work for you, and what I\u2019m doing right now may not even be the best way I could organize myself. What you\u2019ll read here is what I\u2019m doing now. Adopt and modify anything that seems like it might be useful. Ignore anything that seems pointless. If you have suggestions for how I could organize myself better, please leave a comment. Not only will you help me, you\u2019ll help other people who read this.<\/p>\n

A note on software<\/em><\/strong> I\u2019ve been a Mac user since 2009 or 2010. I also use an iPhone and an iPad. I know that some of the software I\u2019ll mention, e.g., Evernote<\/a> and Scrivener<\/a>, is available on Windoze and Android. I\u2019m pretty sure that some of it isn\u2019t, e.g., Ulysses<\/a> and OmniFocus<\/a>. There are probably Windoze and Android equivalents of anything I mention, but I don\u2019t know what they are so I can\u2019t comment on them. When I am aware of alternatives to software I use, I\u2019ll mention them, but I probably haven\u2019t tried them. That doesn\u2019t mean what I\u2019ve chosen is best. It just means that I\u2019ve found what I use works well for me.<\/p>\n

I should also mention that I have no connection with any of the software products I\u2019ll mention other than as a satisfied user. If you decide to purchase any of them, none of the companies will send me a royalty. Just as you should adopt and modify any advice you think might be useful and ignore what isn\u2019t, you should use your own judgment about whether or not to purchase any of the products I use.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Technically, I was Interim<\/em> Vice Provost and Dean from January, 2012 through April, 2013. I\u2019ve been Vice Provost and Dean (without the Interim in my title) since April, 2013. ↩<\/a><\/li>\n
  2. Right now I have ideas for 7 more posts. There may be more or fewer when this is all done. ↩<\/a><\/li>\n
  3. A good friend of mine who is a social scientist pointed out to me that natural scientists, like me, tend to forget that there is a science<\/em> to understanding human behavior. We\u2019d never accept intuition as evidence in our own research, but we do it all the time when we think about human behavior. A proper understanding of how to improve individual productivity and performance would require controlled experiments or careful causal analysis of observational data. There may be something I do as a result of reading an article or book that has some empirical evidence supporting the behavior, but what you\u2019ll read here is a series of anecdotes, not the experience of an expert or the result of evidence-based research. Remember, \u201cThe plural of anecdote is not data.\u201d https:\/\/quoteinvestigator.com\/2017\/12\/27\/plural\/<\/a> ↩<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Welcome to 2018! This post is different from others you\u2019ve seen if you\u2019ve been here before. Instead of comments on a recent piece of research, on science policy or science… Read more ><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-productivity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darwin.eeb.uconn.edu\/uncommon-ground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}