Understanding and solving intractable resource governance problems.
Almost three years ago, Dr. Steve Shaw (McGill University), Dr. Mireya Marquez (Universidad Iberoamericana Santa Fe) and I founded the hashtag #GetYourManuscriptOut. I was frustrated that I had SEVERAL papers whose conversion-rate-from-conference-paper-to-journal-article had been basically ZERO. So, I decided to look at my dormant papers and JUST GET THE MANUSCRIPT OUT. Throughout the years, since […]
– April 13, 2017
Given my field of research (the governance of non-traditional common pool resources), it’s often easy to write about the negative effects of lack of access to water and sanitation can have on women. For previous International Women’s Days, I’ve written about the disproportionately negative impact that open defecation and lack of menstrual hygiene management strategies […]
– 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
The short answer: NO, you shouldn’t. Well, let me adjust that answer – no, you shouldn’t if you are planning on buying more books and adding weight to your backpack. I did, and it was PAINFUL. But I’ve also taken my Everything Notebook everywhere without any problems (I just need to control my desire to […]
– February 11, 2017
For many years, I have advocated the Move Every Paper Forward Every Day (MEPFED) model of working. The MEPFED model basically says “every day, insert something related to each one of your research projects/papers on your To-Do list, so that collectively, every week you’ve moved most/all of your work forward“. MEPFED has worked for me […]
– February 4, 2017
I am very analog in everything I do, and research activity and workflow planning isn’t the exception. I don’t carry around many planners, nor do I dump everything in a cloud-based service like Evernote: I have a trusty Everything Notebook, where I schedule tasks I have to carry out for my research and teaching and […]
– February 2, 2017
This set of blog posts is intended to help undergraduate students, graduate students, and academics of all stripes find the best approach for them to read the ever-growing heaps of material. I’ve also collated here a couple of posts on time management as they relate to reading. Finally, I also collated on this sub-page my […]
– February 1, 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
It occurred to me as I was writing my blog posts on reading strategies that some people may wonder how to find the most relevant information when reading. I had tweeted about it, but I hadn’t actually written about it. So, I thought I’d write about how I work to find the most relevant information […]
– January 28, 2017
I was recently asked by one of my current students to write about how to write a literature review. @raulpacheco You should write about Literature Review. It would be so helpful for us! — Manuel Cardona Arias (@ManiArias) January 25, 2017 I have finally written a sequential list of steps for how to do a […]
– January 27, 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
While I write about ways in which I have improved my academic writing, or become more systematic and organized in the way I develop my literature reviews, and my own workflow, I am keenly aware that the techniques I use, the hacks I implement and the suggestions I provide can’t be implemented by every single […]
– January 7, 2017
I promised myself I wouldn’t ever make New Year’s Resolutions. To me, they seem much more like dreams and wishful thinking than an actual plan to achieve something. HOWEVER, I have realized in the past few weeks that I didn’t really make any resolutions even though I do have a grand plan for the year […]
– January 4, 2017
Funny how some ideas have grounding on different disciplines and yet, we all end up learning more or less the same concept across several of them. I first heard of the concept of future studies (aka futurology) and its idea of backcasting during my Masters’ programme. In particular, the strategic planning literature uses the idea […]
– December 31, 2016
People have asked me if I could share my yearly planning process and how it relates to the use of the Everything Notebook. I have also been asked if I use other planners and whether they’ve worked for me. I’ll answer both questions in this post. There are many planning and organizational methods out there, […]
– December 28, 2016
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
One of the hardest things I have struggled with has been the ability to keep up with the sheer amount of reading I need to do, given the broad variety of topics I study. But I do consistently make time to read, particularly because I integrate reading into my academic writing, otherwise I would need […]
– December 22, 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
While I have pushed for reflection and slow scholarship in my blog, I have to admit that some of the less romantic and glamorous parts of academia don’t particularly excite me. I call that “the grunt work“. This is grunt work: Cleaning up THIRTEEN references I just imported into Mendeley pic.twitter.com/OT3BX4QQge — Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega […]
– November 6, 2016
An important component of writing is reading and summarizing the literature. This exercise helps the author situate his/her work within the broader set of related works. I maintain a systematic process of reading and writing article summaries, but I normally do so in the form of long-form memoranda. Earlier this year, I had a conversation […]
– October 24, 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
Recently, my good friend Dr. Amanda Bittner (Memorial University of Newfoundland) told me that she was suffering from focusing again a lot on teaching and as a result, her research was not progressing as much as she would have wanted to. @raulpacheco do you only lecture-prep Fridays? I'm 1 month back from sabbatical & losing […]
– October 9, 2016
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