An MSN Discussion About Jim Davies' Lit Search Process

Had this conversation the other day, thought it was worth sharing:

Daniel S says:
How do you attack a lit search on a totally new area?
Do you start a new notebook?
JimDavies says:
I don't use paper. I start a new lit review file in my lit review directory
lit-reviews/face-to-face-human.txt
Daniel S says:
What goes in there?
JimDavies says:
SaundersDaviesHaighMaitee2006: Shows that 20% of discussion is talking about girls
referencing the pdf in my articles directory and the paper in my files
Daniel S says:
So a blurb about each paper you "process"
JimDavies says:
yes, and perhaps the sentence you'd cite it in
put the paper in multiple lit review files to handle crossreferencing
Daniel S says:
Nice. So what constitutes an individual review? Like on some question or subject area?
JimDavies says:
you mean a text file?
Daniel S says:
Yes
JimDavies says:
a subject area. I don' thave a systematic way to decide the granularity.
Daniel S says:
Do you organize under subheadings within a file?
JimDavies says:
no. visual.txt, visual-analogy.txt, analogy.txt
flat file system, not subdivisions within a file
I have too many refs to keep track of indentation and subdivision within a file
The articles do not even have an order in a file
Daniel S says:
Ok, so you use it as a bin and go for smaller order insertion time versus extraction time (which is still very fast I'm sure)
JimDavies says:
I follow the stub with an R if read, and S if summarized on my website
Daniel S says:
Oh ok so you don't have separate lists for "to read" vs "have read" or "not sure if I want to read"
JimDavies says:
no. it's just so if I want all papers relevant, I know where to go
Daniel S says:
So if you look into something and it isn't relevant you might take it out. It's just a big heap of papers etc. related to the topic, some read, some not etc
JimDavies says:
yes but if the paper is in my articles computer directory or in paper form in my file,it must be in at least one review document, so it's not lost. They are the index to the paper file system. I can grep on the directory to find papers. grep -i saunders *
Daniel S says:
So the heap has threads leading out of it to the real active papers
Daniel S says:
What about books? How do you read books in a big lit review?
JimDavies says:
Saunders2007: RS proved a theory of everything
if it's just a chapter, I note it as such
but I will put books in there without having read them if I'm pretty sure they're relevant

Time to Break Out the Big Checklist

This is the Big Checklist I made to help me get to the end of draft 1 of my thesis, with all the things that remained to be done. It's about 1.5 metres long, mounted on a easel that was on rollers. Somehow making it big seemed to help. I know putting a big felt pen check mark felt good.

Something I've done better in this project, the writing of my thesis, than I ever have before is setting aside time to look ahead and try to define all the work that needs to be done, as distinct from doing the work. So I would read a printout of my draft and fix everything that was easy to fix right away, but keep a list of the other pieces of work that would take more thought. I would make myself not start worrying about them right then, but come back to them. Besides giving me a slightly less vague idea of how much time things were going to take, and helping to conceptualize my progress in small, concrete steps, keeping checklists like this helped me with perfectionism, since I would become aware that even though I had a tricky decision, or a tough paragraph, before me, there were more to come afterwards - it was just one of the jobs I had to get through.

Thesis progress indicator

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2006 20:14:48 -0400 (EDT)
From: xxx@xxxxx
To: Daniel Saunders <xxxx@qlink.queensu.ca>
Subject: Thesis progress indicator

This seemed like the sort of thing you write about in your how to work Web
log - I've set up a cron job to measure the size of my thesis draft and
post it on my Web comic's front page. I don't know if that'll help me
stay motivated, but I found similar tactics helpful when I was doing
NaNoWriMo. The official announcement for comic readers will go up in
tomorrow's news posting, but the stats are already visible at
http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/bonobo-conspiracy/ .
--
Matthew Skala
http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/

----

Absolutely Matthew, this sounds like a neat idea. 37 pages,
nice work! Is this just writing things down for a first draft, or are
these pages that you've signed off on?

How Do You Write A Book On A Deadline?

From the blog of Toronto author Emily Pohl-Weary:

http://emily.openflows.org/index.php/?p=93#more-93

Guess what, from her and from what her commenters say it's much the same
idea as the advice I got from Linda Williams: set yourself a realistic
weekly target for the work you want to get done (in the blog commenters' case word
count), break it down into daily targets, and work out how to schedule
blocks of time for each day of the week to make sure that happens. And
when that target is reached, you're done for the day - very motivating for
getting started earlier, and working steadily.

Especially impressive is the discussion of how this approach let someone
write a thick nonfiction book, while having a fulltime job and a toddler!
This just goes to support my belief that productive people even in highly
creative areas like painting and novel writing have very structured
working habits.