Hannah Millington
Dublin City University
On the surface of it, stationery can seem like a bit of a trivial part of the postgraduate picture. By the time people get to a PhD many will already have their favourite notebooks, preferred pens and page markers. So, what I want to address here might feel basic. However, these two items have really impacted the way I’ve worked over the last few months, and I wish that I’d had them during my undergraduate and MA degrees. In what follows, I’ll share my thoughts on each in the hope that others might benefit.
Leuchtturm1917 Notebook
A notebook is a notebook is a notebook, right? Wrong. The Leuchtturm1917 Notebook is a useful research tool for a number of reasons. Firstly, the paper is ink pen friendly, which is essential if you like writing with a fountain pen or rollerball. In addition, the pages are all numbered, which brings me to the most useful feature: the contents page.
I use my Leuchtturm for taking notes from books, many of which live in the stacks at TCD. Thanks to the wonderful ALCID scheme I have a reader’s ticket to access Trinity’s libraries. However, I don’t have borrowing rights, meaning that I have to transcribe quotes to use later. This is where the contents page comes in handy. Rather than flipping through my notebook trying to find the notes from ‘that book’ with ‘that quote’, I can just check the contents page. While frantic flipping is fine, it does make life easier to just have the info to hand, and I know that as my PhD progresses I’ll end up with many more notes to which I’ll need to refer.
While many may prefer to photograph book pages or transcribe using a computer, that’s not how I roll. If you also like to do things by hand this may help to keep you organised. I also make a habit of writing out the full book reference details so that I don’t have to come back and check it later. Remember to include the chapter page span if you’re using an edited volume!
Week-To-View Diary
In an age of digital calendars, many of us have probably dispensed with the physical diary. After all, it’s more convenient, everything stays in sync., and you’re doing the planet a favour. However, I’ve been using my diary more like an elaborate to-do list. Often we end up with to-do lists scribbled on a post-it note or a scrap of paper, and these are thrown away once we’re done. Although there’s nothing wrong with that method, bits of paper can get lost and — most importantly — the record of what you’ve achieved disappears.
I have found that there are many advantages to using a diary in this way. For a start, it helps you to structure your week, which can be quite free and structureless at the beginning of a PhD. You can assign specific tasks to certain days and tick them off as you go. In addition to being fairly satisfying, this means that you can also look back on the week and see what you have achieved. This can be reassuring on those weeks where you feel like you’ve worked hard but have little to show for it; the to-do list becomes a have-done list. You can also clearly see what still needs attention and you can transfer it over to the following week.
When it comes to writing, I’ve found that it also helps to keep a log of how many words I’ve written in a day. I might write ‘work on chapter’ each day, which I can tick off at the end of the day. I then write my final word count and then add a bracketed ‘(+521)’ to underscore the increase. This can help you see patterns in your productivity. Do you write more words at the start of the week than at the end? Do you benefit from a mid-week break from writing where you focus on other tasks?
This system can include whatever tasks you wish. I add the exercise I’m going to do next to the day because it gives me a push to do it. You might include teaching commitments, meetings, rent reminders, birthdays. And if you buy a week-to-view layout with the week on one page and a notes page opposite, you can really spread out and get creative!
These seemingly inconsequential pieces of stationery have had a significant impact on both my organisation and productivity. If you’d like to inject a little more structure and order into your PhD, these may be of use.