Planning Methods and Approaches

I decided to collate all my planning and processing approaches (e.g. the sequences of steps I follow to do something) in hopes that having them on a separate page will help people find an easier way to plan their days, weeks, and to process their materials.

Planning a semester (summer or winter or fall or spring)

In this blog post I outline a method to plan for an extended period of time. While originally targeted at doctoral students, it can also be used by faculty members, postdoctoral fellows and/or other academy-adjacent folks to plan their own activities.

From idea to paper Protocol

People often ask me “how do I write my first paper?”. I usually start by reading something interesting about a specific topic, then do a literature review, and then collect data, analyze it and assemble it. This protocol explains the sequence of steps.

From PDF to memorandum Protocol

This protocol describes the series of steps I take when I process a PDF. It describes the intermediate steps (e.g. printing out, sorting, classifying, organizing, etc.) as well as the final ones.

From set of articles to literature review

This post, while not described as a protocol, explains the 6 steps I take to create a literature review.

Backcasting a project: How to plan intermediate and final outputs

This post, again while not described as a protocol, explains the steps I take to plan a project backwards from the outputs I committed to creating from the grant proposal.

Planning your entire academic year using the Everything Notebook

This post explains the set of steps I take to plan my full year of activities and how I work with my Everything Notebook to ensure my weeks are planned properly. It can be done as an academic year or as a calendar year.

Planning a doctoral (or Masters or undergraduate) thesis

This post explains the process I follow to teach my students how to plan their progress, based on their development of a Gantt Chart for their entire project, and then backcasting their thesis into monthly plans.

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