Understanding and solving intractable resource governance problems.
The other day, on Twitter I wrote a thread trying to think through my own ideas about a potential classification or typology of work. Like I normally do with anything that is scholarly, I write about it because I’m trying to clarify my thoughts in my own head. This typology of work should be generalizable […]
– May 17, 2020
Thanks to a relatively extended bout of health, I have been writing a lot. Even more exciting than that, I’ve been FINISHING UP a lot of papers. This afternoon, I managed to finish a journal article that I had long overdue. I consider this achievement a major victory. Most of the stuff I’ve been writing […]
– April 29, 2020
Writing about academic writing, planning and scheduling, organizing and time management has led me to ponder the best ways in which information can be organized and retrieved. I am, after all, someone who wanted to be a librarian since he was a child, someone who organized his parents’ personal library using the Dewey system and […]
– February 2, 2020
I am always honored when fellow scholars mention my name as someone worthy of being followed for advice on planning. When it comes to questions of how to organize processes, I think @raulpacheco is always a good (the best?) person to ask — Ingo Rohlfing (@ingorohlfing) December 19, 2019 Sharing this one with grad students […]
– December 19, 2019
One of my main concerns when I see students seek advice online, as I’ve made explicit in earlier blog posts of mine, is that many folks recommend that they should ALWAYS SKIM EVERYTHING and later (at some undetermined point in time) they should choose which readings they must come back to and read in more […]
– November 13, 2019
One of the most under-appreciated instruments of academic life is working space. I specifically think that desk spaces are fundamental to our scholarly work. Whenever I travel, what I appreciate the most is a hotel whose rooms have roomy, ample desks for me to write. The room size is somewhat irrelevant as long as I […]
– September 2, 2019
While I do not study nor research academic writing (there are people who do!), there’s something that has kept popping in my head: the notion of Overview Devices. I define Overview Devices as artifacts (diagrams, techniques, strategies) that help us sustain a “bird’s eye”, a panoramic view of what we are doing. While writing a […]
– August 6, 2019
This fall, I’m going to be teaching my Public Policy Analysis class (as per usual), but I promised the 4 cohorts of our Bachelors in Public Policy that I would give them a few tips on how to read better/faster/absorb the material more easily/in-depth. I had noticed that my blog had fewer resources for undergraduate […]
– July 12, 2019
Two of my quasi-doctoral students (Cesar Alvarez from University of California Los Angeles and Mariana Miguelez from The Ohio State University), have asked me a few times whether I could write a blog post about how to plan a summer. As doctoral students in the United States, their summer is approximately 4 months (from May […]
– April 14, 2019
One of the best books I’ve ever read about academic writing was Joli Jensen‘s “Write No Matter What“. Ever since I read it, I pondered, “what does ‘constant, low-stakes contact with a writing project‘ mean, in practice?” This notion of regularly contributing to a piece of writing, even if it’s not daily writing, was one […]
– March 7, 2019
This morning, as I was reflecting on a topic I’ve been mulling over (what does Joli Jensen mean by “constant contact with a writing project entail”?), I reviewed potential blog posts I could pre-schedule, and realized that there’s one that I give very little play, even though it’s a really good one: my reverse-planning technique […]
– March 7, 2019
I have written several Twitter threads about how do what many people call “active reading“: I read, highlight, scribble on the margins, take notes and then store these in digital and analog media. I use highlighting and writing marginalia to engage more deeply with the reading materials I am working with. I’ve also posted here […]
– February 28, 2019
Lately, I’ve seen a lot of online commentary against the “write every day” mantra. Helen Sword, in a 2016 article, released results from surveys, interviews and focus groups she conducted with academic writers, challenging the results of Robert Boice’s research. For ME, writing every day (even if just a tiny bit, as I’ve explained in […]
– January 21, 2019
One of the things I have begun to appreciate with time is the value of drafts. I am pretty good at cranking out a first draft of a paper, and then I hate editing and revising it. The editorial process for me is way more painful than the writing process itself. But as I said […]
– January 7, 2019
My students often ask me for advice on how to take good notes. This is a hard task to comply with because, well, it’s been a very long while since I’ve taken a class/course. BUT I do take notes of stuff I read, so this compilation of blog posts should be useful. A proposed heuristics […]
– December 9, 2018
When I was in graduate school, I discovered Endnote. Not only did I discover it, I actually bought a copy at the student price and became absolutely dependent on it. I taught courses to my fellow graduate students on how to use Endnote. I wrote my PhD dissertation using Endnote, as well as many, many […]
– December 8, 2018
As I noted on Twitter, it’s been a VERY long time since I have taken a class, so while I have my old notebooks from courses I have taken, ranging from Comparative Public Policy to Chemical Engineering Plant Design, I am not sure I could teach anyone how I take notes. I’ve written a blog […]
– December 8, 2018
One of the most challenging topics of conversation I’ve had in the past few years is the eternal question of “why don’t you go all digital? Why keep paper planners, write in project whiteboards, and have an Everything Notebook?”. The answer is: I like the idea of having redundancies. For me, making sure that things […]
– December 8, 2018
I’m an old school kind of guy, and I think everyone who follows me on Twitter and reads my blog (and knows me as a person) knows this. I like highlighting, scribbling (by hand, on paper). I write handwritten notes. I keep just one notebook, my Everything Notebook. I carry index cards, highlighters, fineliners, pens […]
– November 28, 2018
One of the main questions that my doctoral students have asked me most frequently is “how do you structure your daily work routine, professor?“. While I am a scholar of neoinstitutional theory and I know the importance of routines, I have to confess that I don’t think about my own daily work routine often enough […]
– November 17, 2018
As most of those who read my blog and follow me on Twitter know, I’m very systematic about what I do and how I plan. My annual programme (which I create using printed monthly calendars and my Everything Notebook has the major milestones, but as time goes by, and things get post-poned, plans get derailed, […]
– October 29, 2018
The first book in a series of volumes I have been interested in reading is Joan Bolker’s “Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day: A Guide to Starting, Revising, and Finishing Your Doctoral Thesis“. First on my list of books is Joan Bolker's Writing your Dissertation in 15 Minutes a Day. Wishing had read […]
– May 16, 2018
I’m definitely not someone who reads “pop psych” or “psycho babble” (short monikers for popular psychology, the easily digestible version of scholarly psychological findings), which is how some books on habits, speed reading, speed writing, etc. are categorized. I don’t read self-help books because I think I need them, but because they’re fun reading material, […]
– May 5, 2018
Slowly but surely I’ve been amassing a small library of academic writing books. Not because I love dispensing advice, but because a lot of people ask me to recommend books, and others suggest the ones that have worked for them. But first, a disclosure statement: I buy absolutely each and every single one of my […]
– March 24, 2018
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