How I Keep Track of my Research

When I started my career, I had a lot of interesting ideas and several projects in different stages of development (ideas only, data collection, drafting the manuscript…). It was not that hard to keep track of things that were already initiated, but harder to remember the stroke of genius (haha) that I had at a national meeting about an interesting unanswered question that I might want to study. So I started 2 lists. 

One list was all my current projects in which I included a one-liner regarding the current stage of development and what needed to be done next. I found this very useful, especially after a long day at work when I might have 5 minutes to do something to move a project forward but for the life of me couldn’t get both of my braincells to speak to each other and remember what that might be. Once I started the list, I carried it everywhere (and eventually it went virtual) so that I could take advantage of 5 minute windows of time here and there to move a project along with an email or to schedule time to edit something. 

The second list detailed all those ideas I had when I was asked a great question by a colleague or trainee or I had my own aha moment in clinic. And a lot of those ideas did come up as I listened to my colleagues at regional and national meetings. This was especially useful when trainees or junior colleagues came to me inquiring about possible research projects on which we could collaborate. I often would go over the list and give a few ideas that I found most interesting or seemed easiest to answer. 

And as time went along, the list grew longer and I expanded the categories to include grants, publications in submission, manuscripts in editing stages, those in data collection… And I would run through the list every week at a set time in order to determine which tasks I needed to finish, and ofter to email others to get status updates or remind them of items and deadlines for common projects. I did this Monday morning for years since I know that my brain is firing the fastest in the morning and it set the stage for my week. 

This format has carried me through over 210 peer-reviewed publications and multiple grants and continues to serve me well.

If you have great ways to keep track of research or other academic projects, please feel free to share!

If you are interested in help setting up your own system, defining your niche, focusing your academic productivity, working with mentors/coaches in order to more quickly get promoted or move into leadership roles without feeling overworked or stressed out, we would love to have you schedule a time to talk!