My Planning and Organization System for Grad School | PhD & Productivity

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Y’all grad school is crazy. Pursuing a PhD is tough. Am I organized 100% of the time? Absolutely not! But having a plan in place for how you are going to organize all of your class assignments, teaching plans, and research projects is crucial for not only for my productivity but also my sanity 😜. I’ve received quite a few questions about how I organize my workflow and to-dos and I am so so excited to share with you the system that I use below. I love hearing from all of you so please keep sending your questions if you have them! Grad school can be very competitive and overwhelming but it always makes me feel so happy to share what makes life easier for me in the hopes that it'll make your life easier as well :) So, without further rambling - read on below for my full planning and organization system!

First off, I want to start out this topic by encouraging you to embrace flexibility. Your responsibilities in grad school (and frankly in life!) are constantly in flux. Your systems have to shift to accommodate those fluctuations and you shouldn’t feel any shame for ditching an old system that no longer works for you. In the past, I’ve struggled with committing to a specific planner for a whole academic year. Over time, I’ve realized that this is because my planning needs shift depending on the month, semester, my mood, how overwhelmed I am [insert literally anything here]. And there’s nothing wrong with this - because as human beings we are constantly shifting, changing, growing - and we need systems that change with us. So, long story short - don’t beat yourself up if your planning system doesn’t work right away and you need to tweak things, and definitely don’t beat yourself up if the system I use isn’t exactly what works for you - figure out what works best for you!

To organize my grad school life, I separate out my planning system into 3 distinct categories and tackle them each separately.

(1) Appointments - The category where I organize events in which I need to actually be in either a physical or Zoom seat for a meeting, a social gathering, a class, a lecture etc. Basically, the place where I track all of the appointments I have.

(2) Workflow - The category where I track the things I need to do (school, work, personal, all the things) and plan my workflow to make sure I get everything done before their respective deadlines.

(3) Projects - The category where I organize all the projects I have going on, track their progress, and where I nest project-specific tasks (because having all of my project-specific tasks in one place can be quite overwhelming!)

APPOINTMENTS

I track all of my appointments in the same calendar and affectionately call this my “butt in the seat calendar” because it’s where I actually have to physically be at a certain time or place. For this, I use my trusty friend Google Calendar.

Since schedules are a constantly shifting, I find it so helpful for my calendar to be easily accessible and easy to edit. Paper planners and calendars are too difficult to edit and I find that having things crossed out on paper actually stresses me out. It's also extremely useful to be able to access the calendar on any device I have (Google Calendar has phone apps, macbook apps, and iPad apps that make my calendar available on any device I'm using) so that I can easily reference my own availability if a meeting needs to be scheduled.

I am also an avid user of the color coding and multiple view functions in Google Calendar. I like to be able to see what I have going on at a glance and be able to gather what types of activities those are visually so I color code things based on whether they are social, work, or super important meetings (e.g., a dissertation meeting with my advisor). Depending on how busy the week is, I also like to be able to view my calendar in a monthly, weekly, or three day view - which Google Calendar easily allows me to toggle between.

WORKFLOW

My approach to managing my work and deadlines is by far the most complex and chaotic system - and truthfully, I think that's just the nature of academic work. Sometimes, you feel like you have all of your crap together, and sometimes, it's a massive chaotic mess and you're just scribblings things down as fast as you can. This part of my organization is by nature also the one that shifts the most and that's why I try to be as flexible with this system as possible depending on the day. Generally, however, I attempt to manage my workflow via (1) short term planning (2) long term planning and (3) an inbox dump.

Short Term Planning

In the mornings, I make a detailed list of my plans for the day - personal tasks, work tasks, as well as events for the day and workouts I plan to do that day. I usually choose to do this on either my iPad via Goodnotes (Learn more about my iPad setup for grad school here!) or on a paper daily planner sheet but this category is also where I am most flexible and the way in which I plan my day changes from week-to-week and from day-to-day.

• Digital/Paper Day Planning Pages: My favorite daily planner sheets are from The Daily Page, Day Designer, and Simplified Planner. I have both digital and paper versions of these planner pages so that if I'm feeling more productive on paper, I'll go for a paper sheet, and if I'd rather use my iPad, I can also use a digital PDF version of the same sheet. I find my self using paper sheets the most when I have a whole dedicated day at home to get work done and do not need to leave my home office for any reason.

• Notes App List: On super super busy days where I'm running around to meetings or other engagements, I will usually plan my days in an iCloud Note on my phone. On these days, I usually find that a daily planning sheet is too much work and I don't find myself referencing it at all. Instead, I will list all of the places I have to be and the tasks I need to get done using the list feature in iCloud Note so that I can check them off as I go - usually while I'm walking to the next event and can quickly whip out my phone and check things off.

Long Term Planning

Long-term planning is essential in grad school because most of our deadlines are months if not years in the future!

• Digital Planner: For weekly and monthly planning I use digital pages on my iPad and create my own "planner." For years and years I tried to stick to one paper planner per year but always found that I'd switch to another one before the end of the year. This is because my needs change depending on the season and the semester I'm in! During the semester, I find myself using my weekly spreads way more than my monthly spreads but in the summer months, the opposite is usually true because there are fewer reoccurring events. One thing I recommend for grad students is to choose a layout (there are tons of free ones online or you can create your own!) that has both a weekly spread but also has space for you to write down your goals/tasks for the week. I find that with grad school, only having boxes for the days of the week is limiting because there are just SO many tasks to accomplish that they don't all fit neatly into a day of the week box - so it's easier for me to make a list that supplements that week and transfer things to specific days as I go!

• Notes App Goal Setting: Finally, I also like to set goals on a monthly and annual basis that give me a bird's eye view of what I hope to accomplish. Since this is more of an overview, I like to have it in my Notes app on my phone because so that I can move things around if I don't get around to finishing a goal one month and need to shift it to the next month. I also love using emojis to label each goal and visually show whether I've accomplished a goal or not! Plus, once the goal is accomplished? I move it over to a note called "Accomplished!" where I have ever monthly and annual goal I've accomplished so that I can remember to celebrate all that I've done! PhD programs don't often allow you to celebrate what you have accomplished so you gotta create those opportunities for yourself 🙂

Inbox Dump

This one is probably the easiest system to implement but it's become absolutely ESSENTIAL for me. I am the queen of having random shower thoughts and needing to write them down ASAP so I don't forget them. As a super forgetful person that remembers to do things at the most random times of the day I always have a running note on my phone called "Inbox" that allows me to jot things down. Ideally, I'll schedule a 10-15 minute chunk each week to go over the things I've jotted down in my inbox and figure out when to actually get around to those tasks (though I don't always get to this and sometimes my inbox note gets cluttered - oops!).

PROJECTS

As a grad student, the two types of projects I track primarily consisted of research and classes/teaching. In your PhD, projects are super long, multi-faceted and extremely complex so every project I have usually has it's own little dashboard with it's own list of tasks that need to get done. For example, for a paper I'm working on, I need to not only collect the data but pay participants, clean the data, analyze the data, create graphs, etc - you get the idea!

• OneNote: To manage my projects, I use OneNote because I've found that it's most reliable and has the most flexibility in terms of being able to insert audio, photos, embed links, type down notes as well as write hand drawn notes via my apple pencil. Again, OneNote has apps for all of my devices so I can access and use OneNote on any device. I also track personal projects on here like my own vision board for my life and hobbies I want to pick up in the future!

• Notion: A secondary way I track my projects is via Notion! I use this to visually see where all of my projects are timeline-wise and which ones are on my plate vs. which ones are in someone else's hands for the time being. Though I'd love to track this in OneNote, I like the look of a kanban board style and have found that Notion is a good spot to track progress on ALL of my research projects at once.

Whew! That was a LONG one yeesh - planning and organizing is such a process sometimes isn't it? I hope this was helpful and that it will help to make your lives a little easier! 🙂 If you have any questions - drop me a message or comment below and I'd love to chat more or do a deep dive on how I plan on each of these platforms! Happy planning!

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Notability vs. Goodnotes for Grad Students | What's the Best Notetaking App for Grad School?

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you click or purchase a product through these links I may earn a small commission. Thank you for your support of my blog!

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I'm now into my 3rd year of graduate school and honestly think to myself every day - what the heck would I do without my iPad?! BUT my iPad would be nothing without the slew of notetaking apps that have been my daily companions throughout my PhD program.

Here is my current iPad set-up:

My iPad Set-up

• 12.9 inch iPad Pro, 256 GB

• Apple Pencil 2

• Apple Pencil case

• Thin case from Amazon

• Matte screen protector

I've talked about How I use my iPad and what kinds of apps I use as a PhD student, but today I thought I'd do a deep dive on the two most popular note-taking apps, Notability and Goodnotes, and what you can expect out of each of them! I use both Notability and Goodnotes daily, so I think a case can be made for each of them!

Notability ($8.99)

Notability is a note-taking app that, for me, primarily functions as a PDF reader with a crazy sophisticated note-taking component attached to it. You can write, draw, highlight, insert a post-it note, type text, add an image, or even insert audio as you are taking notes. Although you can certainly use it without the PDF reading component and just use it as a blank page to take notes, I think notability is most powerful when you're using it with lecture slides or an article that you need to read for class.

Of all the apps on my iPad, for my PhD, I use notability the most by a landslide. I started using it at the beginning of my grad school career to download all of my readings so I could highlight, write, annotate etc all over the PDFs and not have to print out a mountain of paper every single week. Even though I'm no longer taking classes as a dissertator, I'm still reading tons of papers for my own research so notability is an app I use daily!

Organization: One of the key differences between notability and goodnotes is the way notes are organized. Notability is organized in more of a traditional "computer-y" style. You can organize your notes by subject, then group those subjects into dividers, and color code them to your heart's content! I have to admit that this isn't my favorite organization style. I don't find it very intuitive and it feels less like taking notes in a notebook and more like a collection of computer files. This is why I treat notability more as a PDF reader where it houses my library of annotated articles and books.

Use Cases:

• Reading and annotating articles: This is the most obvious use case, but it should not be underestimated! I've been in grad school seminars where other students have printed out all of the readings and highlighted and written on paper. While there's nothing wrong with this, it's time-consuming, isn't great for the planet, and isn't easily accessible if you want to search for a certain note from your readings. For me, buying an iPad just to take notes on academic readings has been one of the best decisions I've ever made.

• Taking notes and recording audio during classes: I think this is truly where I fell in love with Notability. You can also download lecture slides and take notes on them in real-time during lecture. On top of that, you can also record audio and take notes at the same time. Notability's audio feature has allowed me to record entire lectures via audio and it syncs with my written notes to show me at what point in the audio I took which notes.

• Document scanning and taking notes on books: Depending on your field of study, you might be reading entire books for your classes rather than journal articles. I read a mix of both for my research and notability has been a game-changer in this area because I can check out books from the library, use the document scanning feature on Notability to scan important pages, and then annotate them without destroying a precious library book :)

Where Notability Wins: Notability definitely wins when it comes to being able to annotate. There's truly no comparison. The one thing that is common to nearly all grad school experiences is that you are constantly reading A LOT - and when you're reading hundreds upon hundreds of pages of research content each week, being able to highlight and write all over your readings is truly a godsend. Plus, I feel like the longer I've had it, the more uses I seem to find for it!

Goodnotes ($7.99)

Goodnotes is the most common note-taking app pitted against Notability - and while they have many similar functions, Goodnotes' organization system is slightly different than Notability's which means it may be better for you if you are someone who prefers to have things organized by notebook rather than by file. With Goonotes, you can also upload files, annotate files, insert images, etc. In essence, Goodnotes can do everything that Notability can do, but is organized slightly differently which can make a huge difference if you are someone (like me!) who has very strong preferences for how things are organized!

Organization: I have always been an avid notebook, planner, and journal user so I find that Goodnotes is a much better replacement for that due to its notebook based organization system. In Goodnotes, you can actually create a notebook OR a document and then you can nest those notebooks or documents within folders. While the document storing on Goodnotes is fine, it is definitely more catered to the notebook system because you can create a cover for each notebook that is visible when you open the folder. In addition to that, Goodnotes offers a whole host of built-in templates like different notebook paper, graph paper, and planner pages.

Use Cases:

• Planner: I have been an avid planner addict for years and purchasing Goodnotes, it has become the home of my digital planner where I use daily, weekly, and monthly spreads to plan out my teaching, research, and dissertation-related responsibilities. I love having a digital planner because you can pick templates that work best for you and switch between templates if you have a busier vs. more relaxed day.

• Goal Setting: Like I said... I am a big planner nerd 😅 so I've gotten into the habit of doing all of these goal setting worksheets and planning goals at a weekly and monthly level. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't - but Goodnotes has always been the home for my goal-setting planner because I can collect different goal setting templates and fill them out all in one place!

• Notebook - Like I mentioned before, Goodnotes has essentially eliminated the need for all of the notebooks I had floating around my home before! If there are any thoughts or to do's I want to jot down quickly, I'll jot them in a catchall notebook on Goodnotes so I can re-visit and even search for them later.

• Scrapbook/bulletin board: In my free time I enjoy doing crafts or DIY projects and I've found Goodnotes to be the perfect fit for planning out those projects. For example, I'm currently loving making my own polymer clay earrings and to plan this project out, I've collected photos of my favorite designs and put them all together in a scrapbook style Goodnotes notebook where I take inspiration from my favorite designs and make them my own.

• Doodles, illustrations, coloring: I also find that Goodnotes is a great place for me to collect simple coloring pages and create simple doodles and illustrations. It's definitely no Procreate, but if I'm just designing my own sticker for my planner - it does the trick!

Where Goodnotes Wins: More flexibility and as a notebook replacement. If you're looking for a true notebook replacement, Goodnotes is where it's at. You can choose notebook paper templates that work best for you and replace just about any type of paper based notebook in a way that is easy to understand and user friendly. It also has a lot more flexibility when it comes to how you want to organize your notebooks - which allows for a more free flowing, creative application.

The Lowdown on Both: Syncing & Cost

The downside is that they both cost money - something that isn't true of all notetakings apps- and I know that with the low stipends given to most grad students, an expensive app may not be in the cards. The good news for both Goodnotes and Notability is that they are one-time purchases (not subscriptions) so once you buy it, it's yours to keep. The bad news is that if you want it to sync across your different devices (e.g., your Mac) you will need to buy the Mac version of the app. If you buy the iPad version of Goodnotes or Notability, you can automatically download it to your iPhone, but if you want it to sync to your Mac, it requires a separate Mac app.

I wrestled with buying the Mac app in addition to both iPad apps but in the end, I think it was well worth it. I use both apps daily and when I'm writing notes on my iPad but then want to switch to typing up a summary on my laptop, it's nice to be able to swing around to my laptop and have it available there as well. For me, paying for both the iPad and Mac versions of both apps has been WELL worth it because of how much headache and trouble they've saved me.

Another downside I wanted to point out for both apps is that syncing your notes across both apps is not always a seamless process. I have had issues with both apps not syncing and needing to troubleshoot the apps by updating them, deleting them, redownloading them, forcing it to sync over and over again - you know the drill. 80% of the time the syncs work well, but that remaining 20% of the time is frustrating AF. If you choose only to have the apps on your iPad though - which is still GREAT - then you'll never run into this problem 😝

It's common for students to either use Notability OR Goodnotes - but not necessarily both. I use both apps but for slightly different purposes and have found that both apps bring a whole lot of value to my PhD and personal life. Whichever notetaking app you choose, I think, largely depends on how you plan on using the app and what your personal notetaking style is like. I hope this deep dive was helpful! If you have any other questions, drop me a comment below and I'd be happy to help!

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What's on my iPad: Grad Student Edition | iPad Apps for Grad Students

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Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you click or purchase a product through these links I may earn a small commission. Thanks for your support of my blog!

Hey friends! Welcome to the second post in my back to (grad) school mini series! If you're new around here, I am currently a 3rd year PhD student and recently chatted y'all through why I use an iPad for grad school - but a question I'm often asked is what apps I use on my iPad so today I'm sharing the apps I use most often as a grad student.

My iPad Set-up

• 12.9 inch iPad Pro, 256 GB

• Apple Pencil 2

• Apple Pencil case

• Thin case from Amazon

• Matte screen protector

I use both an iPad and apple pencil and this combination has pretty much replaced any printed articles or paper notebooks I might've used in the past. My whole iPad setup is linked above but you definitely do not have to go as all out as I have - I talk about some more affordable options in my post on how I use my iPad for grad school!

Most of the apps I use for graduate school fall into three broad categories. (1) notetaking apps or apps I use for annotating books and journal articles, (2) to-do or planning apps and (3) file storage apps. Of all of these, the majority of my ipad time is spent using notetaking apps because graduate school is so much about reading and writing! In addition to the convenience of being able to keep all of my notes and plans in one convenient place, using an iPad to replace all the mountains of paper I would have used has huge environment-saving sustainability benefits as well. Alright, enough rambling, on to the apps!

Notability ($8.99)

Of all the apps on my iPad, I use notability the most by a landslide. I started using it at the beginning of my grad school career to download all of my readings so I could highlight, write, annotate etc all over the PDFs and not have to print out a mountain of paper every single week. Even though I'm no longer taking classes as a dissertator, I'm still reading tons of papers for my own research so notability is an app I use daily! Recently, I've also started using it to annotate my lecture slides during online lectures and sign documents for school or work.

Goodnotes ($7.99)

Goodnotes is the most common note-taking app pitted against Notability. It's common for students to either use Notability OR Goodnotes - but not necessarily both. I use both apps but for slightly different purposes. While they have many similar functions, Goodnotes' organization system is slightly different than Notability's in that everything is organized into notebooks. I have always been an avid notebook, planner, and journal user so I find Goodnotes is a much better replacement for that due to its notebook based organization system. I use Goodnotes primarily as a home for my digital planner where I use daily, weekly, and monthly spreads to plan out my teaching, research, and dissertation-related responsibilities. I am planning on doing a more in-depth blog post comparing the two apps so stay tuned for that!

Trello (Free)

Trello is a kanban board style productivity app that I've been using since I started college. If you've never used a kanban board style app before, it's a system that allows you to see all of your to-dos and projects on cards that are organized within lists that are organized within boards. That makes it sounds a bit complicated but it's really quite simple when you see it in use! I use Trello primarily to plan research projects and organize long-term task lists. There are so many things to keep track of in so many different areas of life that I often find it easiest to have a place where I can dump long-term to-dos into specific categories so I can organize it later. Trello serves that purpose for me.

Google Calendar (Free)

I use google calendar to track all of what I call my "butt in the chair" time. As a grad student, there are a lot of different roles and responsibilities you need to fill which means lots of places to be (during non-pandemic times of course). Rather than tracking all of my deadlines and meetings in the same place, I prefer to separate it out so that the places I need to be live in my google calendar while the things I need to do live in my digital planner. Google calendar syncs seamlessly with all of my other devices so it's an essential on my iPad

Google Drive (Free)

If you're a PhD student, some kind of automatically syncing cloud storage system is a MUST. There are literally a million files flying around at all times and you never know when you're going to need what! I use Google Drive to store all of my files and also back them up to a hard drive (when I remember to!). This means I have an extra copy of all of my files just in case anything goes wrong and I can access files from other computers if I ever need access and don't have my regular laptop with me.

SimpleMind (Free)

This app recommendation comes from one of the PhD students in my co-hort and it's honestly changed my research life! SimpleMind is an app that allows you to draw mind maps on your iPad to connect concepts, theories, research ideas - all of the above! Before using SimpleMind, I was actually drawing these kinds of mind webs by hand to figure out what my research interests really are and how they all connected with one another. With SimpleMind, I can do all of the same things I did by hand and now I can move things around and edit things, too - without having to redraw the whole dang map!

iMovie (Free)

This is a new one for me, but it's become a TOP app on my iPad this semester because of all the online teaching I'm doing! I've been recording online lectures all semester and iMovie has been a super easy way for me to edit my lecture videos.

YouTube (Free)

Admittedly, I don't always use YouTube for grad school purposes (read: lots of time spent watching YouTube for entertainment purposes!) but I often use it to learn new topics or watch videos on topics related to my research. There are lots of great statistics and teaching resources on YouTube that have saved me while trying to run a particularly nasty analysis or when I'm running into a tech snafu on my course website. It's become an invaluable resource for both entertainment and education 🙂

Hope y’all enjoyed my ramblings about iPad apps! I truly feel like having my iPad has made a world of difference in my graduate school career. It’s allowed me to be a whole lot more productivity and helps to keep all of my notes and plans all in the same place. Have you tried any of these iPad apps? Are there any other iPad apps you use for grad school that you think I should try?