I'm probably similarly revealing much about myself, but I would argue that there is a difference in the 'disciplines' required to

- wake up early and go jogging, and
- focus one's mind on a specific topic while researching, especially in front of a screen.

The second may be particularly difficult depending on how one's brain is wired. In this context, the process that you mention becomes even more important. I would go as far as to say that such a process needs to become a habit in order to be successful.

I've spent many hours trying out tools and processes highlighted in this friendly forum and, though less than 2% have actually worked for me (or, to be honest, I had the patience and discipline to make less than 2% work for me), those which did work became habits which have helped me move forward inumerable times.

Most tools are indeed conceptualised around some kind of process, so I fully agree that finding and documenting the process that works for one is the prime issue--hence my suggestion to Dellu to check out the Kanban Method.

I also admit that another ideal tool attribute for me is an element of fun. Interestingly, I recently read on such a tool's blog that its development began from visual design, because "änything where we spend much of our lives should be beautiful".



Stephen Zeoli wrote:

I'm probably revealing more about myself than illuminating issues for
others, but... This is really all a matter of discipline. Any process
will work if you're disciplined in following it. No process will work if
you're not disciplined. I guess the key is finding a process/tool that
makes it easy to stay disciplined to following it. The problem with
CRIMP (at least for me) is that it becomes a built-in excuse for not
being disciplined.

I entirely agree with @Alexander that a beautiful, satisfying UI/UX is much more important than is generally acknowledged by the Greater Developer Community.

Look at the mind-blowing popularity of Craft – quite a lot of users have admitted they can’t decide exactly what to do with it, but love the interface!

Cheers,
Bill

You hit the nail on the head re Craft, Bill.

MadaboutDana wrote:

I entirely agree with @Alexander that a beautiful, satisfying UI/UX is
much more important than is generally acknowledged by the Greater
Developer Community.

Look at the mind-blowing popularity of Craft – quite a lot of
users have admitted they can’t decide exactly what to do with it,
but love the interface!

Cheers,
Bill

I guess we ought to find something to call that kind of software: CRIMP Trigger?

Suggestions welcome ;-)


Stephen Zeoli wrote:

You hit the nail on the head re Craft, Bill.

MadaboutDana wrote:
I entirely agree with @Alexander that a beautiful, satisfying UI/UX is
>much more important than is generally acknowledged by the Greater
>Developer Community.
>
>Look at the mind-blowing popularity of Craft – quite a lot
of
>users have admitted they can’t decide exactly what to do with it,
>but love the interface!
>
>Cheers,
>Bill

I was first attracted to Craft for the interface and thought it would make me to fall into the CRIMP trap. However, after using it seriously for several months now as my electronic (academic) research journal, Craft has filled a critical gap in my workflow. Craft's interface and features actually work well in translating the traditional paper version of a research journal into an electronic one. Just using Craft has helped me move on in my research projects more than any other tool to date. :)

MadaboutDana wrote:

I entirely agree with @Alexander that a beautiful, satisfying UI/UX is
much more important than is generally acknowledged by the Greater
Developer Community.

Look at the mind-blowing popularity of Craft – quite a lot of
users have admitted they can’t decide exactly what to do with it,
but love the interface!

Cheers,
Bill

Outstanding! I’m really pleased to hear that. It’s a fascinating app, and every time I play with it I feel I’ve somehow failed to use it to the full...

Darren McDonald wrote:

I was first attracted to Craft for the interface and thought it would
make me to fall into the CRIMP trap. However, after using it seriously
for several months now as my electronic (academic) research journal,
Craft has filled a critical gap in my workflow. Craft's interface and
features actually work well in translating the traditional paper version
of a research journal into an electronic one. Just using Craft has
helped me move on in my research projects more than any other tool to
date. :)

MadaboutDana wrote:
I entirely agree with @Alexander that a beautiful, satisfying UI/UX is
>much more important than is generally acknowledged by the Greater
>Developer Community.
>
>Look at the mind-blowing popularity of Craft – quite a lot
of
>users have admitted they can’t decide exactly what to do with it,
>but love the interface!
>
>Cheers,
>Bill

Fascinating; could elaborate further on this appoach? Are you referring to structuring a paper and referencing existing material, or more?

Darren McDonald wrote:

Craft's interface and
features actually work well in translating the traditional paper version
of a research journal into an electronic one. Just using Craft has
helped me move on in my research projects more than any other tool to
date. :)

That should have been:

Fascinating; could you elaborate further on this appoach? Are you referring to structuring a paper and referencing existing material, or more?

Sure @Alexander Deliyannis. I am using Craft as my research journal (or research diary, as it is sometimes referred).

In the past, I had a physical notebook which I used for my journal. In the notebook, I would title each entry with the date, and, after completing the entry, keywords that would summarize the gist of the entry. Things I would write about in the journal included, but not limited to; thoughts and TODOs from reading research papers, development of research method, contact information and e-mail correspondence with authors of research papers, keeping information and records of discussions people involved in research, thoughts about new concepts and development of existing ones, diagramming research findings and concepts, and so on. I started keeping research journals as a way to manage the huge amount of information in a research project. Later I found it useful as an audit used to "recover" the journey I took in the research project which is necessary for qualitative research. I even now often refer to older journals which I have scanned and put into a Dropbox folder.

In Craft, I am essentially recreating this process but including more with each entry as I am free to attach PDFs of research journals, copies of emails, diagrams, and so on. I use the highlighting and text coloring (Decorations: Block/Focus) in Craft to replace the multi-color pen system I used for the physical journal. (Red for TODOs, and so on). I use bold and other text formatting to make words and phrases stand out. For me, I like to use the WYSIWYG approach to display. I need to be able to color code and put words and phrases in bold and so on to make I to make sense of the what I am writing while I am writing. As such, markdown does not work for me at this stage. I also create links to related parts of the journal which I can first find through a search if I don't know where I wrote them.

I use the hierarchical folder system to break my projects down in a way that is manageable to me, so that I can jump right into a project. If the I decide to change the way I am structure projects, I can easily do this without upsetting the internal links between pages.

I have been toying with Craft to write up the drafts of research papers for publication. However, I think that for some reason that another tool is better for me to write the drafts. I have been using Scriviner for the hard grind but have been unhappy with the complexity of Scriviner getting in the way of just writing. I am trying out Highland 2 as it the software develops or OmniOutliner as it is to fill this gap. For writing drafts of research papers I need to break down pages into smaller sections that I can easily jump to and move around. I am even happy to use markdown in this stage of writing. But for analysing and writing about other peoples research papers I find Craft works extremely well for me. It would be even better if Craft had an easy way of showing where in the papers certain quotes are drawn from so I can read the quotations in context which would later potentially lead to further insight. At the moment I am writing annointment bibliographies of papers and books with the paper or book PDF file attached. I do a more in-depth and analysis, using the methods I have mentioned above, for papers and books that I can apply to my own study .

I find using Craft as a research journal helps me get a hold of the problems the original poster of this thread, @Dellu, wrote about. The research journal analogy is helpful to me to force me to focus and bring together my readings, findings and thoughts for published research. However, I am only using only the basic of features offered by Craft. I will probably use more features when I actually need them. As such, I am finding Craft can accommodate and grow with my needs, not forcing me into a way of dong things dictated by the software.

Hopes this helps you on your own journey. Thank you for your giving my the opportunity for sitting down and write about part of my workflow. This has helped me probably more than it has helped you. :)

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

That should have been:

Fascinating; could you elaborate further on this appoach? Are you
referring to structuring a paper and referencing existing material, or
more?

Sure @Alexander Deliyannis. I am using Craft as my research journal (or research diary, as it is sometimes referred).

In the past, I had a physical notebook which I used for my journal. In the notebook, I would title each entry with the date, and, after completing the entry, keywords that would summarize the gist of the entry. Things I would write about in the journal included, but not limited to; thoughts and TODOs from reading research papers, development of research method, contact information and e-mail correspondence with authors of research papers, keeping information and records of discussions people involved in research, thoughts about new concepts and development of existing ones, diagramming research findings and concepts, and so on. I started keeping research journals as a way to manage the huge amount of information in a research project. Later I found it useful as an audit used to "recover" the journey I took in the research project which is necessary for qualitative research. I even now often refer to older journals which I have scanned and put into a Dropbox folder.

In Craft, I am essentially recreating this process but including more with each entry as I am free to attach PDFs of research journals, copies of emails, diagrams, and so on. I use the highlighting and text coloring (Decorations: Block/Focus) in Craft to replace the multi-color pen system I used for the physical journal. (Red for TODOs, and so on). I use bold and other text formatting to make words and phrases stand out. For me, I like to use the WYSIWYG approach to display. I need to be able to color code and put words and phrases in bold and so on to make I to make sense of the what I am writing while I am writing. As such, markdown does not work for me at this stage. I also create links to related parts of the journal which I can first find through a search if I don't know where I wrote them.

I use the hierarchical folder system to break my projects down in a way that is manageable to me, so that I can jump right into a project. If the I decide to change the way I am structure projects, I can easily do this without upsetting the internal links between pages.

I have been toying with Craft to write up the drafts of research papers for publication. However, I think that for some reason that another tool is better for me to write the drafts. I have been using Scriviner for the hard grind but have been unhappy with the complexity of Scriviner getting in the way of just writing. I am trying out Highland 2 as it the software develops or OmniOutliner as it is to fill this gap. For writing drafts of research papers I need to break down pages into smaller sections that I can easily jump to and move around. I am even happy to use markdown in this stage of writing. But for analysing and writing about other peoples research papers I find Craft works extremely well for me. It would be even better if Craft had an easy way of showing where in the papers certain quotes are drawn from so I can read the quotations in context which would later potentially lead to further insight. At the moment I am writing annointment bibliographies of papers and books with the paper or book PDF file attached. I do a more in-depth and analysis, using the methods I have mentioned above, for papers and books that I can apply to my own study .

I find using Craft as a research journal helps me get a hold of the problems the original poster of this thread, @Dellu, wrote about. The research journal analogy is helpful to me to force me to focus and bring together my readings, findings and thoughts for published research. However, I am only using only the basic of features offered by Craft. I will probably use more features when I actually need them. As such, I am finding Craft can accommodate and grow with my needs, not forcing me into a way of dong things dictated by the software.

Hopes this helps you on your own journey. Thank you for your giving my the opportunity for sitting down and write about part of my workflow. This has helped me probably more than it has helped you. :)

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

That should have been:

Fascinating; could you elaborate further on this appoach? Are you
referring to structuring a paper and referencing existing material, or
more?

Apologies for the same post appearing twice. The content is exactly the same as I only clicked the "post" button once. Not sure what went wrong here.

Thanks so much for this detailed and thought-provoking description!


Darren McDonald wrote:

Hopes this helps you on your own journey. Thank you for your giving my
the opportunity for sitting down and write about part of my workflow.