Hi. Ive just finished my PhD and I wish I had known about this forum back when I started. I have ADHD and my desktop (physical and digital) is always scattered with files. Before I slowed down with exercise and lifestyle changes, I bought a whole bunch of software on impulse thinking it would be a quick fix to help me organise. (Scrivener, Tinderbox 10, Devonthink Pro, OmniFocus). Having finished my PhD, I now have to tackle my surgical board exam. I have a year so I thought I’d start with one software for my notes. My use case is as follows:
Read from sources and consolidate annotations in one place.
Make one page summaries of research articles relevant to the exam.
Import images/flow charts into notes
Hyperlinks that can connect relevant notes together to make revision easier
Pull data from the notes repository with search when I have to write a research paper.
I have just bought a new laptop as the old one died so happy to start fresh with one software that covers all of the above. What would you guys suggest?
As you note just finishing a PhD, what Reference Manager app do use. The most mentioned here are Bookends and Zotero. I’m rthinknig of that because you note…
This ‘one sortware to do everything’ is a common and, I’d propose, false assumption partly because so many apps sell on a speed/productivity. Nor, with a considered workflow, is an apparent switch between apps a distraction.
The more discrete tasks an app is called on to do, the more there is tradeoff on the depth/efficiency of the solution. For instance, you can do task management in Tinderbox, building the process yourself. Or you can use your task-centric Omnifocus to do the same. Which is more efficient is more subtle than time taken to do a task.
Tinderbox can do all five of the tasks above. But some observations on that:
Opinions vary on the usefulness of # as it makes for file bloat. The split boils down to those who absolutely must see text and pictures in the same screen rectangle vs. those who are open to the fact this is merely what they are used to. There is no zero-sum right here.
even if you chose not to inert images directly into notes, Tinderbox offers a host of other ways to keep those assets ‘connected’ to the note text in question.
Reference Manager apps are the best place to keep your ‘master’ catalogue of references, because rather as above, they are designed fully for that task. But it is easy to pull info from your RM to Tinderbox and Tinderbox also has a built-in prototype for 'reference notes.
DEVONthink is great as an everything bucket’ (i.e. fields of all types, bookmarks, etc.) as it probably the app mentioned most as bieing sued deliberately alongside Tinderbox.
Many of the tools here offer their own pseudo-protocols, e.g. devonthink://, bookends://, etc. allowing low-friction linkage of and access to data across multiple apps.
Unless to still clave to a single-app-only approach, your question at this juncture is to consider the aspects of your list that you find most difficult or troublesome and look for a solution that gives best support for that.
Remember, there is no one ‘right’ way. i’m sure others here will come up with some alternative takes on the challenge ahead.
Hi @mwra! Thanks a lot for your reply. I use Bookends for my reference management. I already have access to Bookends, Tinderbox and Devonthink so I can look to making a workflow involving these. The upgrades to the latest versions would be the way forward. Are there any good tutorials I should look at to learn how to design an efficient workflow? Im happy to experiment and learn but a nudge in the right direction would help immensely as I have a 1 year old hogging a lot of my time! Devonthink as a dump for all data and Tinderbox for thinking/creating notes with references in Bookends, does that sound like a good start?
The description of DEVONthink as an ‘everything bucket’ is not dismissive and it is a good place to put all sorts of things applicable to work and studies. Tinderbox was design for and arguably still works best with many small notes rather than ones with an essay length text in each. My approach to those seeming constraints is to lean in to them leverage them rather than fighting against them (as some design elements are fundamental run deep, so won’t be re-written just because we want or TikTok says different).
You don’t need to manage every (work) related thing in DEVONthink but you certainly may. An upside to the latter is DEVONthink has good search capabilities. You also want to look into to possibilities of DEVONthink watched folders in Tinderbox, see here and here form a basic description. As with any patter, don’t rush to over-use it. Better is to have DEVONthink group that acts as a conduit for things that need such an overview rather than watching 10s of discrete groups. Indeed, a top tip is to avoid premature formalisation—building structure’s whose real form and degree of note you don’t yet know†. Tinderbox is very forgiving of adding structure as you go, which may seem counter-intuitive as many apps make to do all the structure up front and cane you for every bad guess.
It might also know in what form you write your papers: LaTeX or Word(-like), as that may also feed into your work flow and how you handle things like reference lists.
Drawing on over 20 years use of Tinderbox and thinking of things I didn’t think through first time round (as well as premature formalisation, above) was that I tended to look for exact examples. The latter stopped me thinking about Tinderbox and how it worked. Once I treated examples as someone else’s similar-but-different solutions, I became more able to ‘borrow’ ideas/configurations from those into my work rather than trying to kludge-edit their solution to make it work for me. It’s a subtle difference there but the former pays off as long as the monkey on your back isn’t “I haven’y time to think”. Doing over the quick solution several times is normally more time than a solution that seems more time/effort but which actually works for you, your domain if study and your personal work style.
I found a series of videos on YouTube by Beck Tench particularly helpful. She demonstrates using Tinderbox for her PhD in a very organized way, dividing the process into short (~10 min) sections.
Search for her name (Beck Tench).
The two series that will help get you going are:
“Turning Reading Notes into a Tinderbox Map,” 4 part series
“Literature Review with Zettlekasten & Tinderbox,” 4 part series
Thank you so much for the detailed response! Based on this, I decided to just do some notes in tinderbox version that I currently have as well as use Devonthink as a catch all. I will do this exercise for a month with dedicated time each day to learn more and see what system naturally emerges. I will then decide which system (or both) to upgrade. The Bookends link is great as I was looking for something similar!