PhD Note-Taking in Roam Research

Ph.D. Note-taking Course Resources

Hello Betas! You know drives me mad? Is it Notetaking, Note-taking, or Note Taking. It seems the hyphenated version is the most widely used, but I think I hate it.

As promised, here is a list of all of the tools, courses, books and articles that are directly referenced during the course. However, this list does not represent the totality of my influences. There are so many brilliant thinkers and doers out there right now sharing an abundance of valuable information. It would be impossible to list everything I have consumed here. I will be adding to this list as the course develops. I am still learning and adjusting my own process every day, as I expect you will do once we start digging in to the good stuff. Just click on the headers to take you right to the tools (none of the links are affiliate links - these are the tools I use daily). This list will also be made available in the Roam Research beta forum.

Software Tools

Roam Research

Roam Research is the core note-taking software tool this course is based on. If you haven't yet signed up for an account you can do so here. There are student/academic pricing options available. You’'ll find the link to apply on the sign-up page. If you would like to take the course first to judge whether you’d like to invest in Roam Research it is possible. But, Roam Research is very personal, and I expect that this course will launch a ton of ideas of your own. If you don't have an account, you will miss out on experimenting as you go.

Pomodoro

I use a pomodoro timer daily. There are hundreds of apps on the market to choose from, or you could use the internal Roam tool which will review in the course.

Focus

This is my pomodoro timer that also blocks me from hopping over to distracting apps. Again, there are quite a few choices in this category, but this one works for me.

Mendeley (or other bibliography management tool)

Use a bibliography tool, any bibliography tool. I guarantee it will make your life easier. You will need one for this course. Your University probably has an approved or preferred tool so check there first.

Text Expander

A time saver extraordinaire. Within Roam we use a lot of meta templates. Until Roam comes up with templating availability (which I believe is coming in the future), this tool will save you.

Otter.ai

I killed my Dragon when I discovered this tool. Super handy speech to text. So many uses in research.

Hypothes.is

An essential chrome plug-in that I use daily and for my many different lives. Highlight, annotate, take smart notes and easily carry over to Roam with the below...

Hypothesis to Roam

Take your hypothes.is notes into Roam in a flash. You need this chrome plug-in.

Readwise.io

I learned about this tool from Nat Eliason's course. I use it primarily for Kindle notes transfer. I also used the manual features when carting over my truckload of notes from my original Airtable database into Roam. Others find a ton of additional uses for this tool - I find myself using Hypothesis instead. I'm sure some of you could fully convert me.

Scanmarker Air

This pen scans from text (print books) directly into Roam. It works like a dream and has saved me when I was hunting down all of my notes and highlights to bring into Roam.

Anystyle.io

This handy tool strips the bibliography from any journal article so you can easily import into Roam. This reduces a ton of work when you are in curation mode, or trying to hunt down and schedule further research.

Online Course References

Effortless Output

An end-to-end course on how to use the basics of Roam. I bought this course early on and consumed it with gusto within a day or two. It costs $99 but is well worth the price. Free option below for others.

From Beginner to Super User: A Complete Roam Research Course

A brilliant free course on Youtube. Honestly, if you can't afford Nat's course you will learn just as much binging this one.

Cite to Write

This is an academic focused course by Cortex Futura. It's $99. Lukas digs deep into how we read, how we think and how we should be writing, and he does it all in Roam.

Book/Article References

How to Take Smart Notes

A must-read!! The majority of this course is based on the guidance and principles found within this book. I seriously couldn't put it down.

How to Read a Book

An oldie but a goodie and another must read. This is the basis of the Curation Process we cover in the Organizational Block.

Progressive Summarization

We use a version of this in the course and is definitely worth a read. In general I differ with the P.A.R.A. method in how I organize my personal database because I find that P.A.R.A. requires too much manual intervention, and the “areas” part of P.A.R.A. make Roam databases a bit swampy. For a quick read on how I organize my database to build a bouncy net instead of a swamp, visit this thread. If you are interested in this I can put some more of this in the course. Let me know.