Using Minimalism Principles When Organizing Research
I'm currently staring at a pile of research papers stacked next to me on my desk. These are articles I intended to read but never got to. Then, I open up my bookmarks and see all the articles I saved to read later in all the various spaces on the internet where I have accounts (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.). I have every intention of reading them when I get home, but all I want to do is cook some good food, eat it, and then put my feet up and think about anything else besides occupational therapy.
Does this sound like you? Tell me I'm not alone on this!
A while back I realized that I was just making myself frustrated by printing out these articles or saving them on my desktop; only to be paper/digital clutter for me to later sort through. When I wanted to find the right information I knew I had, I just couldn’t.
I knew there was probably some app or software (that I didn't have time to learn) that would help. Maybe if it I was more organized, this wouldn't happen.
Then I thought about it a little more.
Instead of gathering more, maybe I just need to pace myself on how much I can get through in a day, week, month, or year when it comes to reading research. Maybe I should slow down on the gathering and use what I already had. Maybe I could take it slow and prioritize what was most relevant to me. Or just delete everything and start fresh. Both sounded like a good deal at this point...
When I originally created an excel sheet to organize my research it had been during college. I started with labeling the name of the article, citation, and the link where to find it. I had totally forgotten about this tool until I unearthed it from the depths of my Google Drive account. Maybe this was the answer I was looking for.
Simultaneously, I was learning and applying a lot of principles that related to minimalism. Not just from a research standpoint, but from a treatment activities and personal stuff standpoint. It seemed to clear my head in a way that I had not felt in a while.
Putting these two ideas together, I decided on a few things:
I was only going to add articles to this excel document within this structure I set up already. No more saving across various accounts.
I was only going to make sure there were links to everything and not print out anything unless I was planning to read it that day.
Anything that was older than 5 years (with some exceptions) wasn't going to be included.
Now fast forward 8 years later and I have a strong database of articles that are very clinically relevant, up-to-date, and organized in a way that I can easily find them if I need to reference them. When I decided these things early on it really helped simplify how to stay up to date and how to be more efficient in doing that.
That being said, I have not read all of these articles yet, BUT, when a client case came up that had something related to a topic I already saved, it was really helpful to just pull a related article right up and not have to do a deep dive at that point.
When I did get a chance to review the article, I would add some key takeaways next to the reference so I could remind myself the important points of that article without having to go back in.
At the end of the day though, it is important to be realistic about how much information we can process and consume.
There is a lot of helpful information out there but if we do not have a simple way to organize it, it just becomes clutter getting in the way.