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
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.
Bullet Journal method is a pretty solid foundation. The book specifically outlines how to optimally set up your journal. For random note logging, I’ll just write the time date day and where I am when I’m writing. Once you start doing it, you’ll notice patterns appear where you can maybe dedicate certain sections of your journal to specific ideas or topics, or you can dump them all into Claude/ chatgpt for analysis and ask it to identify themes, trends or Suggestions for improvement based on your current entries.
As a physician-scientist, I searched UA-cam 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!
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.
What a unique video and approach to journaling! I’m not currently a student, but I am a strong advocate for logging, journaling, common placing, habit building, and productivity practices. People always ask me advice on how to get into this type of stuff and I have now got a new video to share with them! ❤
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)!
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!
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.
@schizhappens it happens to the best of us. It's easy to get caught up in that, and next thing you know, you have all of these supplies you never used before for journaling, and would be better suited for scrapbooking. I like to keep the two separate, because writing is therapeutic for me, and scrapbooking is an altogether different form of memory keeping. I think a lot of these "journaling influencers" are just that. Influencers. It drives consumerism, and causes others to think they have to have all these extra supplies in order to journal "properly". My biggest pet peave are the videos titled "how to journal", and all they do is out a bunch of stickers or pictures in a book and then they write two sentences because there's no room left on the page for more than two sentences.
so this is not a how to journal video, it's a journal like a scientist video, meaning that if you don't want to do that you can just not watch the video. I am not here because I want to know how to journal, everyone knows how to write, and if people want to look for ideas and prompts there is nothing wrong with that. I am here because I think this is an interesting way to approach journaling.
@unabruja624 any kind of journaling should come naturally to anyone who knows how to write or enjoys writing. Documenting isn't journaling. The words journal and journaling are in my opinion used too liberally to mean whatever anyone wants it to mean, so it really has lost its meaning. Those who do actual journaling don't need ideas or prompts. That's the point I'm making. I disagree with your assertion that this isn't a "how to journal" video when she's trying to tell you how to journal..... it either comes naturally or it doesn't. And since other people in this comment section are leaving comments that are completely unrelated to journaling like a scientist, I'm allowed to put my two cents in. You are free to continue scrolling if you don't agree with me, because I've no desire to debate this with you.
@@RachelLWolfe except it literally is... what do you think it means, just writing? Journaling is known as the beginning of the modern essay, it was created by people documenting their thoughts and ideas during war. what are you on about.
@@unabruja624 I second this, it’s always helpful to explore other methods of how can u articulate your thoughts. That’s the whole purpose of such youtube genre.
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!
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.
Amazing, and yes I recognize the mixing of notebooks, I keep going back and forward as I do like to have most of my notes in one place, but it also becomes messy quickly that way 👀
Hello Charlotte ! I'm currently starting my business and I had no clue how to organize all the things I learn every week or all the little things I'm trying. Your method truly unlocked a new level for me in my journey, thank you so much 🌷
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.
@@sashanealand8315 Nope. I do astrophysics and most of my work is just coding. Lab books aren't standard in our field. Quite a few people keep personal journals like I do but it is by no means a required thing. Not all fields are the same.
Aerospace engineering homework taught me how to throw down all the relevant equations and see how i can piece them together to solve problems, translates to using mind maps that flow from the beginning ideas of a problem to the possible solution elements i think would be necessary to solve it. Aerospace engineering design work helps me sketch out spaces and problems so that i can evaluate them. Want to reorganize a room? Draw it out, draw it to scale, think about how it would look in 3d, and determine from that if it would be useful to arrange it this way. So thats pretty useful. 🎉 Dissertation writing just taught me how to be completely overwhelmed and burnout. 🙃
This makes SO much sense and you articulated it so clearly and succinctly. This gives so much structure to a chaotic mind that runs on kairos time. I have stacks of notebooks / notion workspaces that are such a jumble and I think this is what can really help me track a long-term project properly. I think resource management is so important in the information age, we can really get paralyzed with the education part of the process, I love the point of being able to share and help people with a database. For my personal prompt - my goal is to fall in love with the process in a deeper level with my art so I reflect on my feelings and what I would want to feel in the next session and how to make it happen with environment and process. Thank you!!
You know, those of us who are conscientious have somehow been going about our life "logging stuff" in our heads! That has served its useful purpose but you have given me a paper-trail way of documenting and revisiting the process itself! So valuable for all learning ahead. Am now tackling decluttering which is a huge project coming at all angles. Very daunting. But if I can log the plans/hypothesis, the personal failures and the small successes, at least I know I am making progress even if it's just more self awareness. It's going to take every ounce of creativity and energy I've got 😅 Thanks so much for sharing!
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.
it sounds like a similar problem that ive been having the last 4 years... except i've never manage to successfully implement any type of system or elaborate ideas to add to my systems that ive overthought... instead ive been in an overthinking mess while watching everyone on youtube successfully develop and implement systems into their life that ive overcomplicated to the point of not finishing and restarting every few months... only to come up with a new idea to add to my system that is, in essence, not even created or has too many unfinished overcomplicated parts to even use yet... your lecturer was indeed very very wise... i just wish I could force myself to KISS, but my brain is incapable of accepting the simple way of doing things, despite having plenty of evidence that it would serve me better than the organizational rut ive been in for what seems like forever ;--;
@@rachelscott9805 just remember that even stagnation can be your baseline if you are comfortable in that space. I would also say that comparing yourself to others successes in how they utilise their systems or methods is vastly different to how you control your own life. You just have to set strict boundaries. Sometimes things change and we evolve, and that’s ok. But not at the detriment of your sanity. Enjoy the learning but really put a hard analysis on your return on investment and energy levels!
Preach, dear sister!💖😄 Mind-flourishing advice, in soothing beautiful voice, something like ballet to the ear. Perfect podcast for craftsmen and artists
Thank you. I've often started journalling only to get stuck just writing down my worries. Flipping it around to documenting experiments make the focus entirely different and so much more appealing. This is the method i prefer. Thanks for showing me.
I try to takes notes as often as possible about anything that interests me, just in case... it's kind of like when you have that one piece of junk in your house that you're keeping because you'll find a use for it someday, haha. The first step for me was to get into the habit of note-taking, and my next step is to find and/or develop a system to organize these notes and make them easier to locate and review. Great vid, thanks for sharing your thoughts and experiences!
Thank you for your interesting video In regards to learning subjects or skills and applying them to your life. I am a Poet, and at one point in my life, I thought, the more I learn about everything, the better poet I will be. I am particularly drawn to science, which intertwines with my poetry. I find poetry has been embedded every where. One simple idea for example is Potassium, as we know it is a highly toxic and unstable element, and so is chloride, at one point used as chemical warfare in ww1. But combined together we get table salt, a necessary element for life. In the same way it can be applied to life, two very toxic incidents in life that were so lethal they could have killed you, are used now by the hand of God to create something beautiful and very useful. ❤
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.
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
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-!! ♡♡
I’m a fashion designer and I didn’t notice I did this before lol I have a sewing journal where I write all my fails and ideas about how to correct my mistakes or other forms of construct my garments in a efficiently way. 🤭
appreciate how comprehensive and thought-provoking this is! I've been journaling similarly about a couple mundane things in my life, like hobbies I've been doing, and my sleep/energy levels, and I think its been very helpful to being conscious in my everyday thoughts and emotions :)
Commonplace books (thin blank, unlined children's notebooks) and adventure challenges (Beau Miles style) have changed my life. Most recent challenge: 30 maps in 30 days.
I think this will be really helpful as I go into the final year of university studying psychology as we have been told we need to keep a research diary and I have been looking for inspiration for how to do that.
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 (:
This is such a great idea. I'm a neuroscience student, still 8n undergrad and I haven't started doing experiments yet but this is definitely something I'll be doing soon.
This is so helpful. I'm going to try to apply it to a personal project to improve my health. I'm a writer, but haven't thought about using scientific techniques before. Makes a lot of sense.
I enjoyed listening to your video, as I love to dissect my thoughts and ideas. Mind mapping is so much fun for me as I am a very visually minded person
To find problem areas that get in the way, using a fishbone diagram is super helpful. Also Japanese planners guide you (habit tracking, mthly places to gather categories of topics like what worked etc). Thx excellent video
Thank you so much for these ideas! I think I've considered most of my efforts throughout life as experiments, but I just can't "journal" about them. I feel like this is the perfect approach to help me really journal and keep my thoughts about my life "experiments".
The stuff you said at the end about things translating to other areas of life reminds me of something from miyamoto musashi - "If you know the way broadly you will see it in everything" For context I'm a programmer that makes music and plays basketball in my free time And from time to time I have overlapping ideas like a coding problem I solved earlier helping me make sense of a play on the court or using a basketball analogy to explain/figure out a coding issue It's kind of a trip lol Anyways I'm trying to say I can relate Nice video btw 👍🏾
Ive just had an idea I've been really blocked with progressing at being a programmer The next step (at least in my head) is to make my own stuff But for some reason I can never seem to finish any of the projects I start (skill issues) and I end up beating myself up about not being able to finish or worse failing But What if I treat the projects as "experiments" That way failure is an option The more desired option even because as you put it we learn more from our failures than successes Could this fix me? I wonder This is my hypothesis anyway I should probably go ahead with the experiment to see if it holds up And that's what I'll do Thanks again
Thanks for the reaffirmation that what I am doing is worth it. Whilst out n about or not 'working' I'll note an idea in Tasks app. When back at my laptop with time I'll then transfer that idea either to my ongoing journal in a bullet point or to a new Doc. And get ready for the fun part...'tick it off as a Task'. But really this is just the start. Next I'll re visit the topic, perhaps doing some deep cognitive meditation beforehand. I'll journal it out into my day to day journal which gets a few entries a week and the bullet points turn into heading topics with a date. Sometimes the topics need their own doc. I'll add a link back to my journal. And I also have hand written journals with more higher level headlines that serve as a reminder of the different topics. Over the past year using this method has been mind-blowing and enlightening to say the least... thanks again...I feel like a scientist!
I am a PhD student in Music Theory. Really glad to have found your video. Logging my analytical experiments seem to be the ideal routine for my studies. It almost feels like an uncovered superpower :) Thank you!
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.
I love this! I've done something similar but nowhere near as structured for my own projects (I'm a multimedia artist and designer), which apparently makes me easier to work with in the professional field because I'm more likely to have a method behind why things need to look or feel or act a certain way. I think I'll be incorporating your advice into my journaling! 😁
Lately I have been using the AI notion to help me with my work(software developer).I used primarily to identify unknown parts of a specific topic,but I find myself repeating this process for topics,I will try to write in a physical notebook about the topics I have been studying. I'm trying to improve my english skill too. 🙂.I very appreciate with your content.
i love this idea and have wanted to do something similar, I just get overwhelmed when i start to think about implementing it and cant seem to decide or work out the details. Like what do i track/document? where do i draw the line of what not to document? what questions should i prompt myself with? When and how often should i review things? what daily things do i need to do to ensure im capturing my thoughts, ideas, and how my "life experiments" are going? I would be really love (and greatly appreciate) a video on your process or framework and how to actually implement this type of journalling into your life!
Very very intersting! Thak you very much for sharing it. It remembers me using Obsidian and Notion again, and even research more about that "second brain"
Just found your channel thanks to this video. I love this topic! Especially since you'd included UA-cam videos in your reported logging section; I actually have a full notebook dedicated to information I've learned from a number of content creators on this platform, and I found that I'd stuck with the same 5-6. This helped me a lot with annotating the topics/channels that the information came from. Great video!
I can confirm the effectiveness of these methods as a ML PhD student myself. But I haven't threaded them together and only use some of them sporadically. I watched this multiple times to fully recall my experience and contrast it with yours. Unfortunately, I find it difficult to just sit down and write. My code repos are 100x larger than my Obsidian vault.
Hey Charlotte, Thanks a lot for videos especially the books you recommended they are wonderful 👍 they help me understanding brain ans neuroscience in a great way
This is GENIUS. But as someone who doesnt have much time, im concerned about how im gonna inplement this. Hence waking up a bit early is the best soluion imo! Thanks for the vid Charlotte! Edit: so I did wakeup today early and did this kinda journalling. Gues what, my day was awesome today!!! Gonna keep this habit definitely
I have tried using this before. I think this is a really good method. There’s just a need for consistency and it has to be on my desk where it is visible or else, I’d forget it. 😂
Very interesting and insightful. I do have a question. On the weekly reflection, is this recorded somewhere in the dedicated experiment logging notebook? Thank you for your video and channel.
I went back to college a few years back and I really enjoyed it. I had a perfect GPA and all around high scores. I would love to be able to go to a University for a PhD, but its way too expensive. It really is a stimulating environment which helps you crave to learn. But, sadly scholarships arent offered for people like me no matter how well I do. Having top courses available on sites like youtube definitely helps, and online free libraries are also great. Nothing beats a physical teacher giving you 1 on 1 time though. You can ask any questions and get feedback in real-time. It's almost like a wired connection to learning while youtube video lectures would be like dial-up signal.
So true, I really wish that most universities were free, as I think education should be for everyone. Hopefully you can find some good courses online and maybe a learning community through youtube. Good luck with your studies!
I have had a similar approach in many ways but I like to get my notes in digital form into an app called obsidian. Then I can link notes to multiple projects rather than have different tiny notebooks.
I should have done that during my PhD. When the moment came to write my thesis, I couldn't remember a lot of methods, protocols and tools I had used, and I had to search for them in all my files and paper documents and notebooks, it took me an entire month (sigh)
I keep it simple: when I need to think about something, I focus on one task at a time. I jot down my thoughts on paper (or in Apple Notes), and once I'm done, those notes go straight into the trash. I only use notes as a crutch for the process of thinking, not as a vault for useful data. I trust my brain and my memory
Here’s a detailed summary of the key points and examples presented in the video about scientific journaling and note-taking methods: Key Methods for Journaling: Experiment Logging Concept: Record every experiment (successes and failures). Structure notes into Hypothesis, Methods, Results, and Conclusions. Example: Learning neuroscience in 30 days: Hypothesis: "I will gain a foundational understanding of the brain." Methods: Studying daily via videos, books, and discussions. Results: Insights gained and obstacles encountered. Conclusions: Assessing progress and adjusting approaches. Tool: Use physical notebooks or apps like Notion for documentation. Brain Dump Concept: Offload all experiment-related thoughts at the start or end of the day. Includes to-dos, doubts, and anticipated challenges. Example: Before an experiment, jot down possible failures (e.g., ineffective resources) and ideas to overcome them. Tip: Organize visually with maps or color-coding. Resource Logging Concept: Maintain a record of all resources used (videos, books, conversations). Example: Create a database for neuroscience with starred ratings (e.g., 5-star resources for effectiveness). Benefit: Share curated resources with others for collaboration and further learning. Continuous Logging Concept: Document insights in real time as they emerge. Example: Use voice notes while cycling or cooking to capture ideas instantly. Result: Incrementally build on small insights to arrive at broader concepts. Reflection and Consolidation Concept: Weekly reviews to consolidate ideas, identify patterns, and update logs. Example: Before a meeting, organize notes to present cohesive ideas and highlight unresolved challenges. Tip: Retain old ideas; they may gain relevance later. Collaboration and Sharing Concept: Discuss experiments with peers to gain new perspectives and solutions. Example: Sharing challenges with a friend or mentor for feedback. Practical Application: Life Experiments: Apply methods to everyday challenges like decluttering or learning new skills. Problem Solving: Dedicate notebooks to specific problems for clarity and organization. The video emphasizes integrating scientific note-taking techniques into daily life for structured learning and problem-solving. Reflecting and sharing enriches the process.
I missed your videos! So happy to see you on the screen again :) P.S. Can I ask you which software you use to edit your videos? :) I'm using iMovie but I think your editing style is so nice :)
Educator and doctoral student here. Journaling is a huge part of my reflective practice.
Hy bro how did you bring this "search symbol" here? click that searches atuomatically
Very very good validation
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
very helpful, thank you !
Thank you. However the point was 'not to cross out ideas that didn't resonate', since they might make sense later on.
Thanks 🙏🏻
@@hisaac3795 I changed it to archive and categorize previous ideas you had that you don’t resonate with anymore
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.
Yes this would be great!
Bullet Journal method is a pretty solid foundation. The book specifically outlines how to optimally set up your journal.
For random note logging, I’ll just write the time date day and where I am when I’m writing. Once you start doing it, you’ll notice patterns appear where you can maybe dedicate certain sections of your journal to specific ideas or topics, or you can dump them all into Claude/ chatgpt for analysis and ask it to identify themes, trends or Suggestions for improvement based on your current entries.
Definitely agree. My notes are very rarely usable 😂
we almost have the same channel, in my view this is one of the synchronicities that are hard to spot immediately.
Yes please
As a physician-scientist, I searched UA-cam 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!
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.
What a unique video and approach to journaling! I’m not currently a student, but I am a strong advocate for logging, journaling, common placing, habit building, and productivity practices. People always ask me advice on how to get into this type of stuff and I have now got a new video to share with them! ❤
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)!
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!
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.
@schizhappens it happens to the best of us. It's easy to get caught up in that, and next thing you know, you have all of these supplies you never used before for journaling, and would be better suited for scrapbooking. I like to keep the two separate, because writing is therapeutic for me, and scrapbooking is an altogether different form of memory keeping.
I think a lot of these "journaling influencers" are just that. Influencers. It drives consumerism, and causes others to think they have to have all these extra supplies in order to journal "properly". My biggest pet peave are the videos titled "how to journal", and all they do is out a bunch of stickers or pictures in a book and then they write two sentences because there's no room left on the page for more than two sentences.
so this is not a how to journal video, it's a journal like a scientist video, meaning that if you don't want to do that you can just not watch the video. I am not here because I want to know how to journal, everyone knows how to write, and if people want to look for ideas and prompts there is nothing wrong with that. I am here because I think this is an interesting way to approach journaling.
@unabruja624 any kind of journaling should come naturally to anyone who knows how to write or enjoys writing. Documenting isn't journaling. The words journal and journaling are in my opinion used too liberally to mean whatever anyone wants it to mean, so it really has lost its meaning. Those who do actual journaling don't need ideas or prompts. That's the point I'm making. I disagree with your assertion that this isn't a "how to journal" video when she's trying to tell you how to journal..... it either comes naturally or it doesn't. And since other people in this comment section are leaving comments that are completely unrelated to journaling like a scientist, I'm allowed to put my two cents in. You are free to continue scrolling if you don't agree with me, because I've no desire to debate this with you.
@@RachelLWolfe except it literally is... what do you think it means, just writing? Journaling is known as the beginning of the modern essay, it was created by people documenting their thoughts and ideas during war. what are you on about.
@@unabruja624 I second this, it’s always helpful to explore other methods of how can u articulate your thoughts. That’s the whole purpose of such youtube genre.
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!
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.
Amazing, and yes I recognize the mixing of notebooks, I keep going back and forward as I do like to have most of my notes in one place, but it also becomes messy quickly that way 👀
Hello Charlotte ! I'm currently starting my business and I had no clue how to organize all the things I learn every week or all the little things I'm trying. Your method truly unlocked a new level for me in my journey, thank you so much 🌷
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.
um its called a laboratory notebook, its kind of standard
@@sashanealand8315 Nope. I do astrophysics and most of my work is just coding. Lab books aren't standard in our field. Quite a few people keep personal journals like I do but it is by no means a required thing. Not all fields are the same.
Aerospace engineering homework taught me how to throw down all the relevant equations and see how i can piece them together to solve problems, translates to using mind maps that flow from the beginning ideas of a problem to the possible solution elements i think would be necessary to solve it.
Aerospace engineering design work helps me sketch out spaces and problems so that i can evaluate them. Want to reorganize a room? Draw it out, draw it to scale, think about how it would look in 3d, and determine from that if it would be useful to arrange it this way.
So thats pretty useful. 🎉
Dissertation writing just taught me how to be completely overwhelmed and burnout. 🙃
This makes SO much sense and you articulated it so clearly and succinctly. This gives so much structure to a chaotic mind that runs on kairos time. I have stacks of notebooks / notion workspaces that are such a jumble and I think this is what can really help me track a long-term project properly. I think resource management is so important in the information age, we can really get paralyzed with the education part of the process, I love the point of being able to share and help people with a database.
For my personal prompt - my goal is to fall in love with the process in a deeper level with my art so I reflect on my feelings and what I would want to feel in the next session and how to make it happen with environment and process.
Thank you!!
You know, those of us who are conscientious have somehow been going about our life "logging stuff" in our heads! That has served its useful purpose but you have given me a paper-trail way of documenting and revisiting the process itself! So valuable for all learning ahead. Am now tackling decluttering which is a huge project coming at all angles. Very daunting. But if I can log the plans/hypothesis, the personal failures and the small successes, at least I know I am making progress even if it's just more self awareness. It's going to take every ounce of creativity and energy I've got 😅 Thanks so much for sharing!
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.
KISS: Keep It Super Simple
it sounds like a similar problem that ive been having the last 4 years... except i've never manage to successfully implement any type of system or elaborate ideas to add to my systems that ive overthought... instead ive been in an overthinking mess while watching everyone on youtube successfully develop and implement systems into their life that ive overcomplicated to the point of not finishing and restarting every few months... only to come up with a new idea to add to my system that is, in essence, not even created or has too many unfinished overcomplicated parts to even use yet... your lecturer was indeed very very wise... i just wish I could force myself to KISS, but my brain is incapable of accepting the simple way of doing things, despite having plenty of evidence that it would serve me better than the organizational rut ive been in for what seems like forever ;--;
@@rachelscott9805 just remember that even stagnation can be your baseline if you are comfortable in that space. I would also say that comparing yourself to others successes in how they utilise their systems or methods is vastly different to how you control your own life. You just have to set strict boundaries. Sometimes things change and we evolve, and that’s ok. But not at the detriment of your sanity. Enjoy the learning but really put a hard analysis on your return on investment and energy levels!
Yes, I get overwhelmed by the idea of documenting things that I don’t even want to do the thing that I’m supposed to be documenting!!
Preach, dear sister!💖😄
Mind-flourishing advice, in soothing beautiful voice, something like ballet to the ear.
Perfect podcast for craftsmen and artists
Thank you. I've often started journalling only to get stuck just writing down my worries. Flipping it around to documenting experiments make the focus entirely different and so much more appealing. This is the method i prefer. Thanks for showing me.
I absolutely love how you say idears ❤
Haha yeah I never knew I say it strangely 🙈
I try to takes notes as often as possible about anything that interests me, just in case... it's kind of like when you have that one piece of junk in your house that you're keeping because you'll find a use for it someday, haha. The first step for me was to get into the habit of note-taking, and my next step is to find and/or develop a system to organize these notes and make them easier to locate and review.
Great vid, thanks for sharing your thoughts and experiences!
As someone who is methodical but yet, trying to build a creative hobby, this is such a great way for me to remember the skills I learn as I develop
Thank you for your interesting video
In regards to learning subjects or skills and applying them to your life. I am a Poet, and at one point in my life, I thought, the more I learn about everything, the better poet I will be. I am particularly drawn to science, which intertwines with my poetry. I find poetry has been embedded every where. One simple idea for example is Potassium, as we know it is a highly toxic and unstable element, and so is chloride, at one point used as chemical warfare in ww1. But combined together we get table salt, a necessary element for life. In the same way it can be applied to life, two very toxic incidents in life that were so lethal they could have killed you, are used now by the hand of God to create something beautiful and very useful. ❤
This was amazing and fun you’re so right about balancing poses making you be truly present, just what I needed! Thank you!
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.
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
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-!! ♡♡
This sounds so so so great, I so want to try and come back here to see how much it actually impacted my work.
I’m a fashion designer and I didn’t notice I did this before lol I have a sewing journal where I write all my fails and ideas about how to correct my mistakes or other forms of construct my garments in a efficiently way. 🤭
appreciate how comprehensive and thought-provoking this is! I've been journaling similarly about a couple mundane things in my life, like hobbies I've been doing, and my sleep/energy levels, and I think its been very helpful to being conscious in my everyday thoughts and emotions :)
Yes, I think it is such a good way to process ones emotions :)!
Whew, as an engineering student, I had to log every lab and project. I can see that being helpful in my every day life as well. Thanks for posting.
Commonplace books (thin blank, unlined children's notebooks) and adventure challenges (Beau Miles style) have changed my life.
Most recent challenge: 30 maps in 30 days.
I'M SO GLAD I FOUND THIS VIDEO AND YOUR CHANNEL!! ❤❤ THANK YOU SO MUCH!! 💗
I think this will be really helpful as I go into the final year of university studying psychology as we have been told we need to keep a research diary and I have been looking for inspiration for how to do that.
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 (:
This is such a great idea. I'm a neuroscience student, still 8n undergrad and I haven't started doing experiments yet but this is definitely something I'll be doing soon.
This is so helpful. I'm going to try to apply it to a personal project to improve my health. I'm a writer, but haven't thought about using scientific techniques before. Makes a lot of sense.
I enjoyed listening to your video, as I love to dissect my thoughts and ideas. Mind mapping is so much fun for me as I am a very visually minded person
To find problem areas that get in the way, using a fishbone diagram is super helpful. Also Japanese planners guide you (habit tracking, mthly places to gather categories of topics like what worked etc). Thx excellent video
You are so genuine its inspiring. Thank you for this video, will be working on my experiment logging now.
Thank you so much for these ideas! I think I've considered most of my efforts throughout life as experiments, but I just can't "journal" about them. I feel like this is the perfect approach to help me really journal and keep my thoughts about my life "experiments".
ahhh i just discovered your channel and i like how you articulate your thoughts and way of speaking, you deserve more views!
The stuff you said at the end about things translating to other areas of life reminds me of something from miyamoto musashi - "If you know the way broadly you will see it in everything"
For context I'm a programmer that makes music and plays basketball in my free time
And from time to time I have overlapping ideas like a coding problem I solved earlier helping me make sense of a play on the court or using a basketball analogy to explain/figure out a coding issue
It's kind of a trip lol
Anyways I'm trying to say I can relate
Nice video btw 👍🏾
Ive just had an idea
I've been really blocked with progressing at being a programmer
The next step (at least in my head) is to make my own stuff
But for some reason I can never seem to finish any of the projects I start (skill issues) and I end up beating myself up about not being able to finish or worse failing
But
What if I treat the projects as "experiments"
That way failure is an option
The more desired option even because as you put it we learn more from our failures than successes
Could this fix me? I wonder
This is my hypothesis anyway I should probably go ahead with the experiment to see if it holds up
And that's what I'll do
Thanks again
Thanks for the reaffirmation that what I am doing is worth it. Whilst out n about or not 'working' I'll note an idea in Tasks app. When back at my laptop with time I'll then transfer that idea either to my ongoing journal in a bullet point or to a new Doc. And get ready for the fun part...'tick it off as a Task'. But really this is just the start. Next I'll re visit the topic, perhaps doing some deep cognitive meditation beforehand. I'll journal it out into my day to day journal which gets a few entries a week and the bullet points turn into heading topics with a date. Sometimes the topics need their own doc. I'll add a link back to my journal. And I also have hand written journals with more higher level headlines that serve as a reminder of the different topics. Over the past year using this method has been mind-blowing and enlightening to say the least... thanks again...I feel like a scientist!
I am a PhD student in Music Theory. Really glad to have found your video. Logging my analytical experiments seem to be the ideal routine for my studies. It almost feels like an uncovered superpower :) Thank you!
0:07
Use the experiment logging,
Actually write out the hypothesis, the observations(methods) and the results, failed and successes.
2:57
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.
Super interesting! Thank you so much, excited to try this.
Thank you so much! This is great! I just discovered you and I live your voice and manner of speaking ❤️
Yay! You're back!
I love this! I've done something similar but nowhere near as structured for my own projects (I'm a multimedia artist and designer), which apparently makes me easier to work with in the professional field because I'm more likely to have a method behind why things need to look or feel or act a certain way. I think I'll be incorporating your advice into my journaling! 😁
Lately I have been using the AI notion to help me with my work(software developer).I used primarily to identify unknown parts of a specific topic,but I find myself repeating this process for topics,I will try to write in a physical notebook about the topics I have been studying. I'm trying to improve my english skill too. 🙂.I very appreciate with your content.
i love this idea and have wanted to do something similar, I just get overwhelmed when i start to think about implementing it and cant seem to decide or work out the details. Like what do i track/document? where do i draw the line of what not to document? what questions should i prompt myself with? When and how often should i review things? what daily things do i need to do to ensure im capturing my thoughts, ideas, and how my "life experiments" are going? I would be really love (and greatly appreciate) a video on your process or framework and how to actually implement this type of journalling into your life!
Very very intersting! Thak you very much for sharing it. It remembers me using Obsidian and Notion again, and even research more about that "second brain"
Love the idea of making experiments out of life pursuits…really great perspective shift ! ✨
Thank you for sharing your insights.
Glad it was helpful!
🎉 We're ecstatic to have you back, Charlotte!! 🤩🥳
These steps are so helpful for tracking experimental strategies! I appreciate you.🙏🏼
Yay! Thank you!
This is the video that I needed!!!
Brilliant 👍
As a developer with pet project Astrodiary - I have got many ideas how to make it great
🙏 💕
Thank you! Fantastic video. I am not a scientist, but I do experiments all of the time where n=1!
I love this! Count me innnn
Your videos are great! Loved them!
Just found your channel thanks to this video. I love this topic! Especially since you'd included UA-cam videos in your reported logging section; I actually have a full notebook dedicated to information I've learned from a number of content creators on this platform, and I found that I'd stuck with the same 5-6. This helped me a lot with annotating the topics/channels that the information came from. Great video!
I LOVE THIS THANK YOU FOR SHARING THIS AMAZING IDEA 🤍🤍🤍🥲✨✨
Wow! Thank you for helping ❤
feel like open my mind. thank you so much for the contents!
Great video. Can’t wait to try. Thank you.
I can confirm the effectiveness of these methods as a ML PhD student myself. But I haven't threaded them together and only use some of them sporadically. I watched this multiple times to fully recall my experience and contrast it with yours. Unfortunately, I find it difficult to just sit down and write. My code repos are 100x larger than my Obsidian vault.
Hey Charlotte,
Thanks a lot for videos especially the books you recommended they are wonderful 👍 they help me understanding brain ans neuroscience in a great way
This is amazing advice! Super helpful.
Glad it was helpful!
This is GENIUS. But as someone who doesnt have much time, im concerned about how im gonna inplement this. Hence waking up a bit early is the best soluion imo! Thanks for the vid Charlotte!
Edit: so I did wakeup today early and did this kinda journalling. Gues what, my day was awesome today!!! Gonna keep this habit definitely
I also just came across your channel and enjoyed this video. Thank you for sharing this.
very helpful video, thank you!
The timing is so good
I have tried using this before. I think this is a really good method. There’s just a need for consistency and it has to be on my desk where it is visible or else, I’d forget it. 😂
Awesome thank you!!
Thank you 🙏🏻 ❤
Glad to see you again ❤
Very interesting and insightful. I do have a question. On the weekly reflection, is this recorded somewhere in the dedicated experiment logging notebook? Thank you for your video and channel.
I usually do the weekly reflection both by hand and on my laptop :)
Beautiful
I found it interesting how close this idea is to morning “devotions” as encourage by some faiths.
Fantastic video❤
I went back to college a few years back and I really enjoyed it. I had a perfect GPA and all around high scores.
I would love to be able to go to a University for a PhD, but its way too expensive. It really is a stimulating environment which helps you crave to learn.
But, sadly scholarships arent offered for people like me no matter how well I do. Having top courses available on sites like youtube definitely helps, and online free libraries are also great.
Nothing beats a physical teacher giving you 1 on 1 time though. You can ask any questions and get feedback in real-time. It's almost like a wired connection to learning while youtube video lectures would be like dial-up signal.
So true, I really wish that most universities were free, as I think education should be for everyone. Hopefully you can find some good courses online and maybe a learning community through youtube. Good luck with your studies!
My latest version of IJ already has 2 filled notebooks and 8 sets of sticky notes 😁 I am around page 450
super helpful
I'm not a scientist but this video has been helpful regardless.
Really inspiring ❤️🤩
Love this video, thank you for taking the time. Have you said somewhere what subject you are studying your phd in?
I have had a similar approach in many ways but I like to get my notes in digital form into an app called obsidian. Then I can link notes to multiple projects rather than have different tiny notebooks.
Great channel! Any advice for teachering myself computational neuroscience?
I should have done that during my PhD. When the moment came to write my thesis, I couldn't remember a lot of methods, protocols and tools I had used, and I had to search for them in all my files and paper documents and notebooks, it took me an entire month (sigh)
I keep it simple: when I need to think about something, I focus on one task at a time. I jot down my thoughts on paper (or in Apple Notes), and once I'm done, those notes go straight into the trash. I only use notes as a crutch for the process of thinking, not as a vault for useful data. I trust my brain and my memory
As a beginner l have some similar experiences ❤❤❤
What is the name for the music playing between 00:59 and 01:25? Great video btw.
Here’s a detailed summary of the key points and examples presented in the video about scientific journaling and note-taking methods:
Key Methods for Journaling:
Experiment Logging
Concept: Record every experiment (successes and failures). Structure notes into Hypothesis, Methods, Results, and Conclusions.
Example: Learning neuroscience in 30 days:
Hypothesis: "I will gain a foundational understanding of the brain."
Methods: Studying daily via videos, books, and discussions.
Results: Insights gained and obstacles encountered.
Conclusions: Assessing progress and adjusting approaches.
Tool: Use physical notebooks or apps like Notion for documentation.
Brain Dump
Concept: Offload all experiment-related thoughts at the start or end of the day. Includes to-dos, doubts, and anticipated challenges.
Example: Before an experiment, jot down possible failures (e.g., ineffective resources) and ideas to overcome them.
Tip: Organize visually with maps or color-coding.
Resource Logging
Concept: Maintain a record of all resources used (videos, books, conversations).
Example: Create a database for neuroscience with starred ratings (e.g., 5-star resources for effectiveness).
Benefit: Share curated resources with others for collaboration and further learning.
Continuous Logging
Concept: Document insights in real time as they emerge.
Example: Use voice notes while cycling or cooking to capture ideas instantly.
Result: Incrementally build on small insights to arrive at broader concepts.
Reflection and Consolidation
Concept: Weekly reviews to consolidate ideas, identify patterns, and update logs.
Example: Before a meeting, organize notes to present cohesive ideas and highlight unresolved challenges.
Tip: Retain old ideas; they may gain relevance later.
Collaboration and Sharing
Concept: Discuss experiments with peers to gain new perspectives and solutions.
Example: Sharing challenges with a friend or mentor for feedback.
Practical Application:
Life Experiments: Apply methods to everyday challenges like decluttering or learning new skills.
Problem Solving: Dedicate notebooks to specific problems for clarity and organization.
The video emphasizes integrating scientific note-taking techniques into daily life for structured learning and problem-solving. Reflecting and sharing enriches the process.
3:55 What is the source of this picture? It is so cool!
interesting topics
I missed your videos! So happy to see you on the screen again :) P.S. Can I ask you which software you use to edit your videos? :) I'm using iMovie but I think your editing style is so nice :)
Ah thank you! I just use finalcutpro :)
Great iDear
❤
As a Ph.d, do you think it's better to write down ideas with pen/pencil and paper instead of computing on a app or laptop?
Maybe both? I like thinking about more difficult topics with pen and paper, but sometimes you just need to note down something quickly 🧠