Although I am a terminally online millennial, I am not one for the newest or most complex software or hardware. I just gave up my iPhone SE (RIP home button).
That said, there are a few platforms and softwares I’ve come across in recent years that have made my work processes much more organized and productive. This letter will not be a place that gives you the best take on how to use these programs most effectively— I am not a bells-and-whistles girl; most of my work still happens in Google Drive. But hopefully, this introduction to my processes will kick off an exploration for you.
Notion
My Type A heart literally swells when I think about Notion. I use it every day to track my weekly to-do lists and project progress. I have also used the platform to organize and archive data. I usually write a first draft of this newsletter in Notion.
I have always kept notebooks: commonplace books for class, ideas, to-do lists, journals—what have you—in a literal notebook at the bottom of my bookbag. When I was writing my dissertation, I started keeping my To-Do list in Todoist— the to-do list app. I eventually got kind of bored with it. At the time, it was handy for lists but not great for visualizing entire projects. I find a visualization component really necessary when working on long-term projects. Seeing all the pieces (like chapters or steps) really helps me maintain momentum.
When I started my postdoc, I was introduced to Notion, particularly as a database to organize project data. But the lab also kept calendars, project overviews, and running memos in Notion. So I decided to try it for my personal life and other projects since I was going to be using it for work so much already.
Two years later, I track all kinds of things on Notion— goals, updates, and writing projects. It is also a fantastic collaborative space and helps keep projects on track, step by step. It is a very visually satisfying platform and can be as complex or as simple as you desire.
Notion itself is not a data storage platform, you’ll need to link to Google Drive or One Drive, to store data. But for tracking and organizing projects, etc., I haven’t found anything better (lol not that I’ve looked).
Here is a view of my Notion dashboard.
My absolute favorite feature of Notion is the Board view, which helps visualize project progress. Here, for example, is a board view of my 2023 writing projects in progress. I can move the individual cards through to track them through the submission, review, editing, and final submission processes.
Scrivener
Scrivener is another deeply visually satisfying platform for organizing writing projects. This is a shot of the chapters in my book project. Fundamentally, Scrivener is a word processor, but it also does a great job of helping piece together all the parts of a large-scale project. Scrivener is not great for citations, however, so you’ll have to do those by hand or download your writing from Scrivener and into Word to work with Zotero.
Scrivener also lets you set project targets— say 90,000 words for a book and 500 words per writing session goal— and shows your progress on those targets.
That said, it’s time for me to start writing today. What are the softwares you use for writing and productivity? Let me know in the comments.
my type A heart sees yours and swells! I love love love Notion, so much so I even have a YouTube video outlining how I project manage my PhD with Notion. I also have a whole PDF annotation workflow with my annotation software + Notion + a plug-in called Notero that allows me to have a flexible literature matrix, IN NOTION. Obsessed. I have been thinking about going back to Scrivener and this post my be the nudge I needed..
I haven’t used Scrivener as much as I should but use Notion a lot more than I’d like to admit. Great post.