Understanding and solving intractable resource governance problems.
In 2015, I believe, I first described the process I use to read and highlight. But that has been evolving through time. This blog post, like the one I did on an updated version of the Drafts Review Matrix, is intended to show how I read, highlight, and scribble on the margins of book chapters […]
– March 18, 2018
Since I usually write blog posts by request, unless there’s a pressing thought that I really want to get out and get off my chest, I normally make a list of what I’m supposed to be blogging about. A topic that I saw people insisting upon was the question of how to write an outline […]
– March 17, 2018
This 2018 I promised myself I would do things better and take time to reflect on how my processes have evolved and therefore, I wanted to share a couple of improvements I made to the Drafts Review Matrix I discussed in previous years. This time, I’ll share also a couple of things I do with […]
– February 3, 2018
Writing book reviews, to me, feels as the service we all ought to provide other scholars. I don’t post actual reviews on my website (instead, I post my reading notes because I don’t know if my notes are detailed enough to be an actual review, and whether I’ll do justice to the author), but I […]
– December 26, 2017
While I’m pretty organised and systematic in the way I do things, I always run the risk of thinking “wow, that’s a neat project and one I should pursue” without much regard for whether I have the bandwidth to actually work on something and function normally. This has been happening to me this semester (Fall […]
– November 14, 2017
Friday (yesterday) was the last day of a conference and pre/post doctoral I co-organized with colleagues from INECOL, University of Helsinki, Universite du Luxembourg and obviously my own institution, CIDE. Being an on-site host for a conference is a logistical nightmare I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, but I have an amazing team and […]
– November 4, 2017
When I was in graduate school, right about after my comprehensives, people told me that they were working 100 hours a week. Heck, I was told I needed to work 100 hours a week! There is no way in hell I can put in that much work, to be perfectly honest. While I know many […]
– August 10, 2017
Earlier today I was asked about whether my memorandums play a role in how I approach my research, and what my overall strategy is. you seem to have a pretty precise strategy, but is it summarised somewhere? what role does memos play in the overall etc? — Nicolai B. Hansen (@nbhansen) July 25, 2017 I […]
– July 25, 2017
I know I’m privileged in that my own institution and my colleagues are very respectful of my time. They’re also extraordinarily considerate of my schedules. I am very vocal about my routines, so anybody who either follows me on Twitter or interacts with me on a regular basis know a few things about my schedule. […]
– June 16, 2017
With the generous funding of CONACYT, Mexico’s research agency, I recently launched a project on water conflicts in Mexico. I hired a number of research assistants to my lab a couple of months ago. I am a lead PI with my co-PI being an expert in social network analysis from CentroGEO, Dr. Adriana Aguilar. One […]
– May 10, 2017
Earlier this week I shared Dr. Katrina Firth’s modified version of the Cornell Method’s Notes Pages. I used the Cornell Notes method in 2013 and really didn’t click with me, so I simply moved on. Had I discovered Katrina’s modified version earlier I probably would have “clicked” with the methodology much faster. Though her modification […]
– May 3, 2017
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 […]
– May 2, 2017
Like many political scientists, I will be descending on Chicago this week to present two papers at the Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA). I was invited by Dr. Kelly LeRoux (University of Chicago at Illinois) to give a talk to her PhD students, and we decided to make it a public lecture. I have titled […]
– April 3, 2017
I just came back from a week in Paris attending a meeting of field experiments’ scholars, and I took the opportunity to do some fieldwork. There are perfectly good reasons why I study French water governance, specifically in Paris, but that discussion is reserved for another post. When I do fieldwork or when I am […]
– March 8, 2017
I’ve written before about reading strategies: how to extract relevant information from a journal article or a book chapter (the AIC method); I’ve also discussed how I engage when I can only skim a paper, and a meso-level type of engagement when I have *some* time to read (or I’m doing a preliminary survey of […]
– February 21, 2017
In my most recent Twitter poll, I asked what I could write about that would be most helpful to my readers (many of which are undergraduate and graduate students). I was asked to continue writing about reading strategies. The previous post I wrote on was what I think is the fastest technique you can use […]
– January 31, 2017
While I took a course in speed reading when I was very, very young (probably 8 or 9 years old, at the most), and I can speed read, there are times when I, too, find myself overwhelmed by the sheer amount of reading I need to do. While I’ve written before on how you can […]
– January 19, 2017
If there’s a downside to being a polymath is that everything looks interesting. If I don’t control myself (and I have to be quite strict about this), I can easily spend hours down the rabbit hole of Twitter and Facebook, or the depths of the internet. Distractions come easy to me, sad as this may […]
– January 9, 2017
I originally wrote this blog post as an email response to a request by Dr. Brian Leech from Augustana College on how I do my document processing and filing. This problem happens to all of us: we have a number of things that need processing (committee materials, student files, printouts, etc.) Often times, we are […]
– December 26, 2016
When people visit my campus office, they often admire the fact that I have a systematically organized library where my books and printed articles/book chapters/reports are all available (and ordered alphabetically, in the case of printouts, and by topic, in the case of books). For me, “processing” articles and books/book chapters is a systematic process […]
– December 5, 2016
A few months back, Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom (assistant professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University, and someone I consider a dear friend) tweeted she was looking forward to organizing her academic life using the methods I’ve posted on my blog on the topic of Organization and Time Management. She called them “Get Your Life […]
– November 16, 2016
One of the things I’m an expert on is overwhelming myself with the sheer amount of work I have to do. In the past decade, I have slowly become better at simply reducing the size of my To-Do list and breaking down my workload into manageable tasks, at focusing on just one thing at a […]
– October 19, 2016
Even though I wake up every morning at 4am to start writing, launching into work sometimes takes me anywhere from 10 minutes to a solid hour. This is not uncommon. There are plenty of articles on the internet on why you should have a morning ritual, how to start your day off right, and the […]
– October 14, 2016
This past week, I had anxiety attacks 3 nights in a row. .@caparsons yes, I wallow just the same – this week I had actual, real anxiety attacks. pic.twitter.com/NyBEqtUVZ7 — Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) September 24, 2016 This is an extraordinarily rare occurrence, but one that I thought was worth bringing up as the semester […]
– October 1, 2016
Recent Comments