Keep Track - Prep

Introduction | Prep | Presentation | Activity | Further Resources

Reflect on your note taking style (10 minutes)

Why do you need notes?

Think about why you take notes and what you get out of them.

Choose all that apply.

Keep track of what I’ve read or analyzed
Keep track of how I found my sources
Keep an exact record of my steps so someone else can reproduce them
Keep an exact record so that I can retrace/rework my steps later
Record someone else’s exact words
Keep my mind focused while I’m reading/analyzing
Record the main points of things so that I don’t need to re-read sources
Record my own ideas, thoughts, and reflections
Record possible connections between sources
Outline my writing
Task management: outline manageable tasks and keep myself progressing through them

How does your mind do its best work?

What kinds of materials and formats work best to jog your memory and help you remember things?

What will most likely inspire new insights and ideas for you? Which of the following help you remember? Which of the following help you create?

Orderly lists
Doodling/drawing
Searchable text
Tags or labels
Hierarchy of folders and files
Spreadsheets
Maps or visualizations
Images and photographs
Sticky notes
Physical objects I can move around
Citations (author, publication info)
Brief summaries
Long summaries with lots of quotes
Reference material (encyclopedia entries, book reviews, etc.)
Annotating my own or others’ writing

What do you do when you can't remember?

What was the title or author of that source? What was that idea I had last night? Where did I write that down?

When you’re in this kind of situation, what steps do you usually take to try to jog your memory? Which of those steps works best for you?

What methods or formats will become less useful?

Are any of the practices that you use that are only needed for this moment in your life? Are there practices that you can’t imagine ever giving up?

Reflect on your strengths, needs, and priorities (10 minutes)

Take a moment to consider the following questions about how you do your best work. The sample answers are suggestions to guide your thinking.

Where, when, how?

Where, when, and how do you do your work? What makes you the most productive?

Workstations
E.g. my own laptop, my phone, my tablet, public computers, printouts, paper notebooks, loose paper or notecards
Places
E.g. in the field, in a lab, at home, on campus, on the go
Ambiance
E.g. reliable and/or fast internet access, unreliable or slow internet, loud, quiet, crowded, solitary, cool, warm, curling up, sitting straight, standing, with food, without food, dim, well-lit
Time of day
E.g. Morning, midday, evening, night

Material formats

What material formats do you usually work with?

These can be materials that you learn from or materials that you create. What do you like about them, and what do you wish they did better?

E.g. PDFs, digital media (video, images, audio), data tables, html, links and browser tabs, print books & articles, physical media (photographs, DVDs, etc.)