My friend and colleague, David Long, Ph.D., shared some free advice with me to both use myself and pass along to others who might find it useful. I know that I need to work on a few of these points myself. What tricks and tips do you use that should be added to this list?
- Back it up! In three places — computer, campus network drive, network drive at home, portable drive, DropBox, Google Drive, etc. — BE SURE TO SYNCHRONIZE FILES AND KEEP AN ARCHIVE!
- Read Piled Higher and Deeper — A comic that often hits too close to home for graduate students and their professors.
- Books — Websites such as Big Words and others are your friend when looking for inexpensive texts that beat the price of your local campus book store.
- Personalize Your Searches — Use services such as Google Scholar and customize them for the topics that you care about.
- Get to Know Your Librarians — Leverage their knowledge to leverage your research. They can help you automate your bibliography with a whole host of software tools such as JabRef, Zotero, Mendeley, EndNote, etc.
- Annotate Everything You Read — Put everything you read into your master bibliography file. Make sure to apply keywords, write a quick three sentence summary, note if the the article is good or bad, flag interesting articles, etc.
- Write Something Everyday — Write at least a couple paragraphs everyday on your research. Never slack off on this and you will always be ahead in your writing.
- Share with Your Friends and Colleagues — Share what you are doing regularly with your friends and colleagues. Always be ready to share something interesting.