People think. People forget. People think again. People forget again. If people cannot forget, there is so much
sadness in the world and we can not stand by that.
However, it should not be like that in your research! This time, I am talking about organizing your
thoughts!
Research papers are simply an organized bundle of
thoughts. You put unique interpretations or important characterization of your
materials on paper. The key is to combine all in a logical fashion and to
organize them well. Thoughts are tricky because, if you don’t write them down,
they sometimes fly away (just like a sad memory has gone away). Your thoughts
and thought-processes matter, and, in order to keep them handy, again the
organization skill is the key.
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| My folder of a project. Some of the "thought" folders were not finished or wrong. But it is important to remember you decided not to finish, or you clearly write your thought process so that you can find where was wrong later. |
You want to create each folder for each topic.
If you put numbers in the beginning, it will be self-organized.
Highly recommended!
You may want to put relevant papers into the same folder. You
may want to make all contents in the folder self-sufficient.
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| You wanna write your thought process so that you can be back where you were. I guarantee that this will save your time a lot by eliminating time to recall what you thought or to find your mistakes. |
Then, you create easy questions, e.g., “How large is it?” “What
is the crystal structure?” or difficult questions, e.g., “What would be a
possible mechanism of MA-FA exchange?” “Why FA product was not stable?”
You want to leave your thought process. Your thought
process could include a reviewer’s question.
Good luck on your unforgettable analysis!
