Zotero Review

On its website, Zotero is described "is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources." Even though it’s been out for a while, I somehow didn’t run into it until a few months ago. I’ve used it for a while and have switched over from using Endnote because I like it that much, below is my review.

Here is my two sentence review of Zotero: If Evernote and Endnote had sex and made a baby, Zotero would be that baby. It would then outdo its parents in so many ways.

If that is all you need to know, go ahead and try it out, it's free for crying out loud. Otherwise, here is my longer review organized in list form of my opinions of its features. The part about Evernote in my two sentence review is about how Zotero can do more than just manage research articles, but I can’t write about everything (that’s what it’s website is for) so this review will just be about using Zotero to manage research papers.

1. Autofind - This is perhaps the coolest thing about Zotero. Zotero recognizes when you're looking at a summary, abstract, citation, and/or list of articles and puts a little icon next to the url. When you click on the icon, it automatically stores the citation information for that article in the database. My experiences with this feature have been pretty damn good. I'm in the natural sciences, so results in other fields may vary, but in the databases that I use, and most surprisingly at the vast majority of individual journals' websites, Zotero knows when I'm looking at an article. It isn't perfect though, and it can be annoying when you're cruising along and just want to store a citation and move on and Zotero doesn't recognize it. I've had this problem when checking who cited a given paper in Web of Science. But overall, this is a positive feature and a hell of a lot faster than exporting to Endnote. Which leads me to...

2. It Lives in Firefox - An absolute plus. Firefox is where I find articles, often look at the pdf of articles I've found, find other articles related to a given article I'm reading, so it only makes sense that my database of papers also live in Firefox. When you click on the icon in the address bar, the whole world doesn’t stop for Endnote to startup and you don’t have to click 5 other screens to allow Firefox to download the file, pick the library, etc. It just pulls up a little “Saving item…” tab in the bottom corner of the Firefox window, does its business, and removes the tab. The whole process, when working properly (which is the vast majority of the time) takes maybe 10 seconds. You do have to be careful about which folder you left highlighted in Zotero, because it will automatically save citations into that folder. I find this more of a plus than a minus though, because often I’m searching for a bunch of articles about one research subject, so I can just keep clicking the icon in the address bar and Zotero will keep saving citations right where I want them.

3. Folders – Does Endnote have folders inside a given library? I don’t think so, but maybe. Is it useful and fast enough for me to have known about? Evidently not. The folders and subfolders list is extremely useful and a breath of fresh air. Research papers aren’t emails. Throwing them all in one folder and searching for them is often not the best way to find what you’re looking for. You also seem to be able to place a given entry into more than one folder, which rocks. Drag, drop, drag, drop. Ooooh, it’s easy.

4. Tags – If folders aren’t enough for finding the articles you want, you can also add tags to papers, which work exactly like Gmail labels. Personally, I find that since I can place an entry into multiple folders already, tags aren’t particularly useful. But I use this occasionally. For example, when I’m doing a search on a given subject, it’s often convenient to keep adding entries to the list, but mark the especially pertinent ones as “to read” via a tag and go back and make sure I read all of them later. I wish I had learned this trick earlier because it’s one hell of a time saver. I’ll write more about this and other opinions about doing literature searches later.

5. Search as you type – Awesome. The search function of Zotero is so convenient. It’s fast, and it’s built, unobtrusively, right into the little screen. Endnote’s search worked well for me too, but it brought up a second screen and results didn’t show up as I typed; minor details, I know, but I’m just listing what I like here.

6. Notes – Oooh this is convenient. I’ve started to keep all of my notes and summaries of papers in Zotero in the notes option. It’s right there with the paper always. Besides actually taking notes on the paper though, the fact that the notes are included in searches means that I can type a list of “keywords” or random ways that I remember a paper into the notes to increase my chances of finding it later. Why not use tags or folders for this? Because often the ways I, and many others, remember a paper is through odd characteristics like: “that one paper by those British guys”, “the one with the blah blah technique in it”, “the one with that blah blah figure in it”, etc. I don’t want those random thoughts about every paper to have their own folder or tag, that’s ridiculous.

7. Importing from Endnote – So, if you’ve been using another reference software, how easy is it to switch? Good question. I used Endnote, so that’s all I can talk about. I went through their method of importing my references from Endnote and it worked with one weird quirk: it turned all kinds of Endnote keywords of some sort into tags, which is really annoying. So now I have all these tags that I don’t want and I don’t know how to delete all tags at one time, so I’m just not using tags much, eh, oh well. Otherwise the papers seem to enter just fine.

8. Citing as you type – I haven’t written a paper using Zotero for citations and don’t plan on it because my colleagues, and most importantly, my adviser, don’t use Zotero, so collaborating on a paper requires that I still use Endnote for that. I don’t forsee that being a problem though because the papers we write have maybe 20 or so citations max, and I can export them as RIS and make a little Endnote library for that particular paper. Maybe I’ll use Zotero for citations in a paper when I have to write the dissertation. I’ll let you know.

9. Free – Endnote costs money, this doesn’t. How do you beat that?

10. Open Source – Zotero is actively being worked on, which means bugs and kinks, and compatibility issues are constantly being fixed. This is a huge plus. Think Google; it responds to users’ requests by constantly improving its products, that’s so useful.

Overall, I’m quite happy with Zotero, and I find myself saving more papers than before and doing literature searches a lot faster and a lot more efficiently than before, which is a plus. Recommended.

What do you think of Zotero? Share your thoughts!

How to Act Productive Tip #2 - Talk About How Much You Haven't Slept

Photo by: Al-Fassam [Online! :D]

Here at Grad Hacker, we feel that simply being productive is not enough. What good is your inner, clandestine, productivity, if your bosses, colleagues, and you yourself don't really know the extent of just how unbelievably productive, busy, stressed, in a rush, and important you really are? For these, reasons, each weekend we will provide you with a tip on how to act productive.

If you think you can be productive and sleep well, you've got another thing coming. Busy people don't sleep. How could they? They're too busy. If you want to be a productive, important person you need to start losing sleep. More important than just your sleeping patterns, however, is your reputation around the office. You don't want people to think you're a lazy, 8-hours a night sleeper. You want them to know just how much you haven't slept in the past week or year. So you need to tell them. Often, it can be awkward simply inserting a sentence about your lack of sleep mid-conversation. So you must learn to be adept at more subtle tricks: "Yeah, that really was a good game last night, so what did you do afterwards?" "Went to bed" "Oh, that must have been nice. I was up till 4 working on the TPS reports." "Really? Wow..." You see, your lack of sleep impresses and inspires people. Maybe your friend will think twice the next time she plans on simply going to bed after the game.

A more advanced trick is to cite multiple-day averages instead of just a single night. Why? Because many people lose sleep every once in a while, but really important people don't sleep on a consistent basis. You need have these numbers on hand for when someone else tries to seem harder-working than you. Often, inserting a little sympathy in your phrasing can really make you sound like a winner: "Man, on Tuesday, I was up till 4 working on the TPS reports." "Oh, I hear you, that must have been rough. I've slept maybe 20 hours in the past week." "Total?!" "Yeah, total." "Woah..."

So this week, try to work more and sleep less. But if that's hard, don't worry about it, just make sure you tell people how little you've slept.

How to Act Productive Tip #1 - Walk Fast

Photo by: Hamed Saber

Here at Grad Hacker, we feel that simply being productive is not enough. What good is your inner, clandestine productivity, if your bosses, colleagues, and you yourself don't really know the extent of just how unbelievably productive, busy, stressed, in a rush, and important you really are? For these, reasons, each weekend we will provide you with a tip on how to act productive.

Walking fast is slowly becoming a lost art form (except maybe in certain parts of New England). As our level of affluence grows to a point where we can spend time at work reading about how to work more efficiently on the internet from other people that are writing about it instead of actually working, we find that simple things like walking from point A to point B have really lost their sense of urgency. Today you observe people leisurely taking strolls at work instead of really going somewhere with a sense of purpose. Document printed? Okay, I'll stroll over to the printer, maybe grab some coffee on the way, chat with Jon about the game, take a nap, who knows. So with their hands in their pockets thumbing through loose change, their heads down watching their feet drag, and a soft tune whistling from their lips, they walk around, listlessly, from printer to coffee machine, from Jon to Jan, from unproductive to really unproductive.

This is most people, but not all people. In every organization you have a few, the really productive ones, that walk fast. These people are getting things done. Period. How could they not be? Look at how fast they're walking. These people are at the printer before the document has finished printing. They're heads are up. They're going somewhere. Often a slight frown or scowl is on their face as they walk that reminds everyone they're in deep thought, troubled by the enormous quantity of problems they solve every day.

They have no patience for waiting. If the microwave is full at noon, they can often be seen looking around to see what slow feet-dragger is using it and intends on wasting their time by showing up a minute after their food is done. Often they will return at 12:30 when the lunch crowd has subsided. Or, if they are really hungry, or more likely have a meeting in 10 minutes, they will keep their hand on the door-open button for the last 3 to 5 seconds and immediately open the door, take out slow-person food, and start heating theirs.

God forbid there be slow-walkers in front of them when they're in a tight hallway or corridor. Fast-walkers don't have time for "excuse me". Maybe, just maybe, they have time for a grunt, heavy breath, or other humanly sound that let's the other people know there is a fast walker around...but not for long. Before the feet-draggers know what happened, they are gone. That is fast-walking. That is productivity.

So this coming week, try to keep your head up, put a slight scowl on your face, and walk fast. Don't hide your inner productivity. Display it. Your boss will love you for it.

Simply GTD: Do You Really Need Contexts?

Photo by: Nathan Borror

Guess what my answer is to the title question. Guess, I dare you.

You got it:

@No.

Is it a sin in the GTD community to speak ill of contexts? Maybe. Will I ask for forgiveness? No. Below are my reasons.

First, a caveat: if you are a businesswoman or man that on any given day is at a desk, your computer without internet, your computer with internet, a plane, running errands, on the phone, or in Denver, Colorado looking for that one restaurant you liked the last time you were in Denver, Colorado; if you actually have 14 people you need to call right now; if you really have 107 projects on your plate that all have their associated next actions; if you have a bunch of pressing agenda items you need to bring up immediately upon seeing each of 7 different people, then, read no further, this post and basically anything else I will ever write on this blog is and will be of no use to you. Go get things done. And add "Buy Maalox" to @errands.

Now for grad students and the like that are still reading. Here are my reasons:

Reason #1: You're not even close to the person described in the caveat. If you're a student that's not simultaneously running 3 businesses, and raising 2 kids, and constantly on the road, forget it. Let's go context by context through some classics. I promise I will admit when there are potentially useful contexts:

• @computer: When are you not at your computer nowadays? Or how many times have you been in a context where you're really pressed to get things done but don't have your computer, and really can't stand looking through all those tasks that involve a computer? I seriously can think of zero situations like this. If you can, and I'm not being facetious, let me know. But I think it's safe to say that when grad students (or anyone reading this blog) are working they have a computer next to them or are in a very clear context where it's obvious what they need to do (e.g. lab doing a measurement, library doing homework, etc.)
• @computer-internet/nointernet: Are you really on a plane this much? Please. Anywhere other than a plane and you have internet. If you don't, and you need it, you may want to switch schools/jobs.
• @phone: Don't even start. I haven't met one student that needs this list.
• @agenda-Dr. Phil: Compared to the three above, this has slightly more use, but I still don't think it's necessary nor practical. I used to keep this list in my "central" location for all my lists for my when I saw my adviser next and I never used it. Chances are, there are fewer than 2 or 3 people in your life whose time is so valuable that you need to make a list like this for when you're with them. But more importantly, important things to bring up with people, like research collaborators in a meeting can be made impromptu in preparation for a meeting, stored as general questions in a lab notebook, or listed in a questions slide at the end of a summery-of-current-progress PowerPoint. I found research related questions for my adviser were most conveniently written into the PowerPoint slides I was showing him, or my lab notebook for that project, but not in some list management software or device. Next to my grocery list and personal next actions.
  
• @home: This is a potentially useful context, but I think it's a disguised way of just separating your lists into work and personal. If you do that already you have no use for this context.
• @email: This is useful under one and only one circumstance: if you've become so disciplined as to check your email only a few scheduled times a day, then by all means make a list of the email you need to make when it's scheduled email time. But if you have Gmail open all the time and you're still writing @email in front of tasks, an alarm should be going off inside.
  
• @errands: This is by far the most useful context, but, let's be honest, this list has nothing to do with GTD or David Allen, it's a shopping list for crying out loud! It's been around for so long, everyone uses it, and if it makes you feel more productive to put an @ in front, so be it. I'll admit it, I still call this list @errands out of habit.

Do I advocate keeping all next actions on a single list? No. I think it makes total intuitive sense to list things by project. But if you have only a few tasks anyways, by all means, put them on a single list. I probably could but don't choose to because I think in terms of projects and sit down to work on one project at a time. And if I recall correctly, David Allen even mentions in the book that if you have 20-30 next actions total, you can feel free to keep them on one list.

So what do we have left? A list of important tasks for each project, perhaps separated into work and personal, and a shopping list.

End of list of reasons.

I want to close by saying that I'm not just trying to start a fight. I have sincerely found that these contexts are simply unrealistically complicated for grad students, and to tell you frankly, for most people whose main jobs and main sources of stress involve work done in an office or any other single setting.

GTD's most important principle is keeping your mind clear. If I forget to tell Nate that he still owes me 5 bucks the next time I see him, I don't stress and it doesn't stay on my mind. If I forget to buy butter when I'm at the grocery store, I don't stress and it doesn't stay on my mind. But the large project that involves simply sitting down, closing Gmail and Facebook, and getting it done, will stress me out and will stay on my mind if I spend the day ticking off all kinds of less important tasks on my list. That task should be on your list, and as I've said before, I advocate it being only one of very few other items on your list for a given day. Forget labeling tasks by context and focus on getting that big monster task done and you're on your way to real stress-free productivity.

Related posts:
Does your system work when you have the flu?
Priorities and Getting Things Done

Getting Up Early: Week 4 - One Month Reflections

First of all, let me comment (make excuses) for this week's performance:

1. I went to a rockin' NBA game in the middle of the week which kept me up late that night so that threw off the next day by a lot.

2. I didn't have as many days to average out that day because I lost Monday to the President's Day holiday.

So this week should be an anamoly, an outlier, if you will.

That said, let me note that before I even started this experiment, I used to average getting to my desk at around 9:30am. If that. I don't have an exact number because what crazy bastard keeps track of when he gets to work every day? But that's a well educated guess. So all in all, I've made some modest progress.

Also keep in mind that over the past month there have been many days when I've gotten to work right around 8:00am. But, like I said last week, an equal number of days getting into work past 9am serve to quickly push the average up. Finally, I should mention that on average I workout before getting to work 2 weekdays per week. It's hard for me to get to work by 8am on those days because I have to wake up ridiculously early, but I'm getting there.

So those are my excuses.

Here are my reflections for this month of my getting up early experiment.

1. It isn't easy. Getting your weekly average down significantly that is.

2. I definitely sleep a solid 8 hour average per night, which means to wake up earlier I have to go to bed earlier.

3. In light of reflection #2, my eventual, kind-of-secret goal of waking up at 7am is not realistic.

4. Getting an early start on work when few people are there is awesome.

Overall, this experience has validated my reason for doing this experiment: Work in the morning is more effective and feels like less suffering than work in the afternoon/evening. The second reason is the key reason I started the experiment. I realized that working for hours before lunch felt like no big deal; working in the morning doesn't feel hard for me. Whereas, working into the evening gives me a psychological feeling of suffering.

I will average getting to work by 8am. Oh I'm determined. Oh you just watch.

Getting Up Early: My Experiment
Getting Up Early: Week 1
Getting Up Early: Week 2 - A Pathetic Performance
Getting Up Early: Week 3 - I am a Tortoise

5 Ways to Avoid the Powerpoint Timesuck

Photo by: ToastyKen

Note: In light of the popularity and timing of Merlin Mann's recently posted MacWorld video, I should note that these tips were written with a technical presentation in mind, where data, figures, text and in general significant information on each slide is often necessary. In that vain, I'm also not sure how presentations are done in the humanities or even in many social sciences, so this may or may not apply to folks in those fields.

PowerPoint can be one of the greatest timesucks in a grad student's life. And by grad student, I really mean anyone who uses PowerPoint. The most dangerous part, however, is that often we have no idea the crimes it is committing in taking our precious time and energy from us. Its guise of productivity is its greatest weapon. We add our slides, pick layouts, tweak them, add titles, tweak them, add figures, tweak, text, tweak, tweak, revise, tweak, tweak, tweak. Hours go by like this. Hours. Isn't PowerPoint just supposed to be a tool to help us convey our ideas?

My questions to you my friends is this: Who is the tool, you, or PowerPoint? Join me in reclaiming our time lost to PowerPoint.

• Layout all slides first. Work from the outside in. In my experience, the single greatest timesuck is revision. Of course, only in a perfect world can you get things right the first time, but we want to avoid common situations like making the first slide, adding the figures, the text, the title, realizing space is scarce and moving things around just right, resizing all the figures to actually make them fit, spending a good 30 minutes on this one slide before deciding, "You know what, the third figure really belongs on its own slide, where I have more space and can add the fourth figure that would complement it just perfectly." I've found that thinking big picture and working into the details is the best method. I almost always outline first on a scratch piece of paper, deciding what the main points I want to get across are, basing those main points on key figures, and parsing those figures into slides. Only then do I start making slides. This has worked wonders.
  
• Use the simplest layout possible. Now it's time to make the slides. As I mentioned, each side should be based on 1 or 2 figures. Chuck the constraining ready-made layouts as they just cause frustration and you browsing through other layouts. Start with a blank slide or the title-only layout, pick a place for your figure(s) and text, put those two things in their place and move on.
  
• Avoid clicking "new slide" whenever possible. After you've made a couple of slides, you should not have to create many, if any, layouts. Unless you're in graphic design, presenting to graphic designers, the goal is to keep folks' attention on your work, not distracted by how flashy your presentation is. So simply copy and paste the previously created slide that has the best layout for the slide you are about to create, delete the content, and replace it with new stuff. Now we're flying along.
  
• Finalize all images and figures before putting them into PowerPoint. Oh no! You made almost the whole presentation and realized that a bunch figures had this-one-thing mislabeled. Or the units are wrong. Or the line color really doesn't show up well. That's a killer because now you have to go back into your image editing or graphing software, tweak tweak tweak, recreate the figure, and replace it in PowerPoint. There's not much I can say on this point other than be careful. And most importantly, once you figure out the details for a few figures, stick with what works! Again, let your content and work do the razzling and dazzling.
  
• Make non-essential presentations as simple as possible. Lastly, we come to a subtle killer within the already subtle time-killer known as PowerPoint. Many times, we have to make little mini-presentations to summarize the status of a project to colleagues. If it's not being shown to strangers, it's not that essential. That's my philosophy. You should go for sheer speed and content in these presentations. This is a time to discuss. If you are showing it to your professor or group, focus on figures only. Text should just be a reminder for things you want to bring up to them. They know the basics, and you can explain many detials to them very fast. Think about how colleagues discussed work before PowerPoint. They probably just printed figures and talked. Don't worry about pretty-ing up these presentations, just get them done so you can get feedback and getting back to things that are more worth your time.
  

Lastly, I should mention that these are time-saving tips for PowerPoint, general advice on quality of your presentations should still apply: Use large font sizes, keep text to a minimum, etc.

What time-saving PowerPoint tricks do you use?

Getting Up Early: Week 3 - I am a Tortoise

The tortoise won the race my friends, the tortoise won the race. I can take comfort in the fact that on any given week I am not drastically changing my schedule, which according to gurus and experts everywhere means my habit change is more likely to last...right?

I did cross the 8:30am mark, which is exciting.

What makes it hard to bring the weekly average down quickly is merely a day or two of slipping up. Here's what I mean: Say on Monday and Tuesday you get in at around 8:00am. Great, you're on schedule. Then, Tuesday night you have to stay at school wrapping up some experiment a bit later than you intended which pushes back your sleep time a tad (say 1 hour) and consequently you arrive to school on Wednesday at 8:30am. That's not so bad, you only need to show up on Thursday at 7:30am to keep your 8:00am average. You try to do that, can't quite pull it off, but put in a respectable 7:50am attempt. Your average getting into work time for Monday to Thursday is sitting at 8:05 am, right on the money. But, on Thursday your friends invite you over to dinner, tomorrow's a Friday, you have some wine, you're chatting, and before you know it you're only getting to bed at 1:00am. You get up at 8:30am the next day and aren't at school until 9:30am. Due to this one night, your average, which was sitting right around 8:00am all week long is now 8:22, right below the 8:30am mark.

That's why it ain't easy.

Nonetheless, improvement was made in a week where I went to bed at a later time, which means my morning routine is more efficient, that's good. Here are the full numbers:

To Bed: 10:40 pm
Out of Bed: 6:35 am
Hours of Sleep: 7.92 hrs.
At work: 8:26 am
Tired: 4.2 /10 (10 = very tired, 1 = very not)