Writing over Infinite Scrolling | Journal like a Scientist

👋 Hey everyone, welcome back to the channel. Today, I will talk about some of the journaling techniques that I have been using for the last few years. Let me know if you have any prompts that you like to use when journaling. Hoping you have a great week, and keep on learning!


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🙋‍♀️ Hi, my name is Charlotte Fraza a third year PhD student in Computational Neuroscience at the Donders institute in the Netherlands. With this Channel I hope to teach the world about Computational Neuroscience and give current and prospective students the tools to enter this field. I hope you enjoy the videos ❤️.

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I try to answer all the comments, but if I don't respond I'm probably in my coding cave 👩‍💻

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[DebbieDavidson]

Educator and doctoral student here. Journaling is a huge part of my reflective practice.

[Glassed_in_Nature]

Fantastic ideas! I will say, I think the problem with journaling for a lot of people is visualizing what the words and information looks like on paper. Do you think you could make a video on how to actually organize data, thoughts, and ideas on paper? I hope this makes sense lol.

[betweenearthandsky]

Journal like a scientist by Charlotte Fraza

Experiment logging
Questions and answers that you seek
Note down what you learn
Learn from successes and failures
Hypothesis, methods, results, conclusions

Ex. You want to learn a new skill in 30 days
Write down your hypothesis of what you think you would learn
Write your method of how you will go about it
And then your method and conclusion

Also use a second brain notebook or app

Have a brain dump

Resource logging

Continuous logging

Have dedicated tiny notebooks for different themes

Have reflection moments and revisit ideas
Consolidate all your notes and work
Summarize key insights
Perfect ideas you had
Prepare your research for the next week
Cross out previous ideas you had that you don’t resonate with anymore
Share and reflect with another

[RachelLWolfe]

I think the problem most people have when it comes to journaling are all the videos telling people how to do it.

Actual journalling is writing down one's thoughts, feelings, insights and experiences throughout life.

The other problem is content creators making videos about their journalling supplies, and they haul out all these stickers, colorful pens and markers and they tell you, without actually telling you, that you need to have these things in order to journal properly. That's not journalling.

If you want to know how to journal, grab a notebook - any notebook. It doesn't need to be fancy, cute, expensive or have the "right" kind of paper between the covers. It can be a cheap spiral notebook, if that's all you have or can afford. Then grab a writing utensil - pen, pencil, whatever. Again, it doesn't need to be fancy, expensive, cute, or have the "right" kind of ink.

And then sit down and write what is on your mind or what you did that day.

Repeat this simple process as often as you like.

The end.

[enestaylan]

As a physician-scientist, I searched YouTube for scientific journaling tips for some time and couldn't find anything useful until I came across your channel. You have beautiful ideas Charlotte, and as a fellow scientist, I look forward to your next video!

[LeonesJournal]

This sparked ideas for my mental health and productivity journaling. I want to use the scientific method and experiment logging to implement habits and systems into my life. Thank you for this!

[VoxUrania]

Art journals are my equivalent to this process. It’s gratifying to hear how similar the experiment logging process can be to art making. A monthly goal could be to work with a new material to learn its properties or create certain forms. Even using a new paint colour or weight of paper can qualify as an experiment. Chatting with other artists can yield new ideas and collaboration. Notes in a sketchbook with swatches or thumbnail drawings help log the process as well. Again, this is a really gratifying perspective. Thank you.

[sohinidutta]

Also a PhD student! Experiment logging for work CHANGED MY LIFE. I was able to be so much more efficient and I could actually go back and check on what I did to get a particular result. Can’t live without doing it now.

[KrisRipper]

Non-scientist, non-student here! I write books, and I definitely look forward to implementing these ideas! Humans will learn regardless, but an intentional mindset makes things so much more interesting (and, I think, improves the learning process)!

[rbo]

As a former IT consultant, I've strangely gravitated to doing and assessing the copious amounts self-organisation methods that exist in the world. I became, over time, infatuated with the idea of incorporating many systems of organisation in a bespoke manner geared towards my own activities and needs. I then soon began to realise it can all get very overwhelming (from tools to use, to the way of doing things) and anything/everything can be over-thinked. Then I think back to a very wise lecturer who told us to trust our gut and to always use the KISS methodology when approaching anything in life. Keep It Simple Stupid.

In the end; simplicity rules, because it allows us to share ideas without restrictions or being part of a walled garden or an ecosystem that was not our own creation.

[profetik]

I call this "pre task notes". Because often you are trying to sort out something to finalize what to ACTUALLY do. In a similar vein.

experiments (pre task notes, or continuous logging) of what needs to be done....and once you lock it in (reproducible, or ready to take action) then you do it.

e.g. get a new car.

continous log / pretask note - jot down list of potential cars, deals, saftey ratings....additional links to research etc.

Once you are ready to make a decision....then your note converts to a TASK. And you are ready to take action.

[PAVLUWU]

Thank you so much for sharing this information with all of us! your content is great and it really helped me to figure out my own journalling process that I do every morning after waking up, followed by 10 minutes of meditation. For me as Post Grad student in sociology, journalling is more like questioning the arguments put forth by the authors and be sometimes being critical of them, but what I've found out from this video is to keep separate note books for each project as I was mixing my personal and academic info into one single journal.

[beitheleaf]

This has changed the way I see a wardrobe 😊 love the idea! It also gives folks the freedom to find their fav art pieces to inspire their outfits rather than simple trend/micro trends that don’t always flatter everybody

[Gigusx]

Reminds me of an article on NessLabs about personal experiments. Pretty much the same idea, to take a scientific/iterative approach to your goals. I've tried it for a while but was too inconsistent with logging things and eventually forgot all about it 👀

I'd also take another angle and consider using this for your "12 favorite problems", if you're familiar with Feynman's idea (lots of articles on that). If you have a list like that, continuously logging ideas and resources used to answer those questions would be a way of chipping away at those problems and keeping them fresh in your head. You could eventually solve some of them that way. I think I might try something like this for learning... i.e. problems centered about things I'm learning at a time (:

[ReadArtWrite]

Preach, dear sister!💖😄
Mind-flourishing advice, in soothing beautiful voice, something like ballet to the ear.
Perfect podcast for craftsmen and artists

[spoonsweet]

Thanks for a great video! I loved the title hook expressing the idea that we can all be mindful of our work/everyday life and actively substitute the time we spent scrolling, with taking and reflecting on our notes that record our "experiments".
The idea to always look for experiments and make notes using the scientific method of listing: a) hypothesis ["what will happen?"] b) methods ["how will I examine this?"] c) conclusion ["how do I identify the results?"], give a nice framework to shift my life's perspective towards more mindfully approaching everyday.
These are some sections I enjoyed:
1:35 (1) Scientific approach - Experimental Logging
2:48 (2) Brain Dump - Mind Map: suggesting the daily dumping of ideas during a dedicated time.
4:08 (3) Resource Logging: keeping track of all the resources (papers, articles, discussions, videos) that were used towards the current stage of your research/experimenting. +1 can be shared.
5:25 (4) Continuous logging: Just write down when ideas come up. "1000 tiny ideas -> 1 big idea". Incremental.
7:43 (5) Reflection moments: go back, collect, summarise and transfer ideas to a dedicated place and time. Don't delete old ideas or "bad" (they can help on the future)

PS: if you Charlotte or anyone that happens to read this is interested, my suggestion to you overcoming the issue with many notebooks and "dedicated" notebooks overlapping, is to have a look at the "Bullet Journaling" method. Since you have the habits in place, it will be an easy adaptation. Essentially you have just one notebook. You just write. An idea? BulletA. A feeling? BulletB. A task that needs to happen? BulletC.
This way you just brain dump + continuos logging at the same time, in one dedicated place. And during your reflection moments, or through Indexing, you quickly scan your pages for the dedicated bullet and piece together your thoughts.
Thanks again and good luck to your PhD!

[dreikycaprice]

I really found this information very helpful as a way to consider, catalog, and work with my myriad thoughts and ideas about my life as an artist and musician who thinks deeply about philosophy, humanity and our place in the natural world.

[elainepiper]

I absolutely love how you say idears ❤

[casidhehughes]

This was amazing and fun you’re so right about balancing poses making you be truly present, just what I needed! Thank you!

[yoursincerelypy]

I'm so glad I came across this video. It has altered my brain forever. I'm an aspiring Epidemiologist and love journaling as a hobby. I'm definitely going to start implementing these into my research planning process and journaling practice. Thank you for sharing this with us—!! ♡♡