ryqiem

Just wrote a short summary of my method to a friend. Might not be terribly readable for people who haven't used Roam, so take it for what it's worth. Hope it's for some use :-)

What I do is an interaction between the following:

Article <-> Tags <-> Hypotheses <-> Synthesis <-> Prediction <-> Research

So I might read an article, then tag the article/figures with the relevant tags. If it's for a specific project, I keep a list of tags on a separate page. This ensure that I use the tags consistently, so that I can find all the relevant articles later.

I purposefully keep the tags general, like "psychiatric conditions" rather than "depression, mania, schizophrenia" etc. When I reach the hypotheses page, this means that I can form relatively general hypotheses, and then nest them into gradually more specific hypothesis that are specifically supported by the articles.

Then, I use those hypotheses to form new predictions. These predictions turn into new research questions, which I either explore via the literature or doing my own experiments.

An example of this might be: "Wood 2018" <-> #Procedural Memory #Habits <-> Habits are part of procedural memory [[H]] <-> Habits are part of procedural memory [[H]] & Procedural memory is stored in the basal ganglia [[H]] <-> Damage to the basal ganglia disrupts habits [[H]] <-> Seger 2011

This affords me a lot of flexibility in total processing time; I don't spend a lot of time forming hypotheses that aren't interesting/necessary for me, I can quickly tag a lot of sources, and I can quickly collate those sources on a specific topic when necessary.

You might say that the first half of the workflow is "induction", the second half "deduction and confirmation".

I would love it if you had any questions or comments, but just writing this up has been useful for me as well.

I think you might find Roam Research (http://roamresearch.com/) to be useful for this!

I'm currently contemplating how to use it as functionally as possible (categorise articles by subject? By hypothesis? Both?), so would love to chat about it if you'd like