What I use

Last updated: 2024-08-24

Inspired by Andrew Heiss's What I use post, here's a little bit about the programs I use in my workflow.

• Writing: Microsoft Word with the Zotero plug in
• Email/Calendar: Outlook (Although, this blog post says Thunderbird will get native Exchange support soon... )
• Slides: PowerPoint
• Reference management: Zotero
• PDF annotation: Zotero
• Notes (and task list note): Evernote
• Stats: Stata and R/RStudio
• Web:
  • Hosting: Ghost
  • VPN: Mozilla VPN
  • Search: DuckDuckGo
• Operating system: macOS
• Hardware: MacBook Pro. Two Dell 4k monitors.
• Social: Mastodon (Seriously, it's long past time to ditch Twitter. Mastodon rocks.)
• General lab coordination: MS Teams
• Cloud storage: Box
• Raycast for window management, snippets, shortcuts, calculator, pasting without formatting, file search, app launching, and more
• Password management: 1password (although I'm looking forward to seeing the new password management app in the next version of macOS)

Most of the above are pretty standard. I've tried a variety of different apps in nearly every category, but almost always go back to the more standard apps. My university uses Microsoft Office and Box—so those are largely what I use day to day.

If you are not familiar with Zotero, do yourself a favor and try it. It is incredibly useful free open-source software for managing references and PDFs. It has some incredibly useful features including auto populating metadata, recording annotations, search/OCR, tagging, clicking on a citation to take you to the reference, and even letting you know when articles in your library have been retracted. For a small fee, you can reliably sync your entire library of PDFs across devices. There's also a Word plug in that makes citation and reference list creation a breeze.

Raycast is a powerful open-source launcher and utility app. Think Alfred, but better. There are endless use cases and plug ins. Some that I use regularly are hotkeys for window management, hotkeys for pasting without formatting, snippets for en dashes and em dashes, querying google scholar, launching apps, quick calculator operations, time zone conversion, and searching files.

Evernote is a little divisive these days. Everyone loved it, then it had a pretty rough run for years of decreased quality and questionable decisions. It's recently taken a big leap forward under a new company—it's way faster, more stable, and is getting common sense feature updates and behind the scenes improvements regularly. It is admittedly pricy though. Strengths that keep me with Evernote are good web access, unparalleled search/OCR, and a good web clipper. Being able to add pictures, PDFs, and PowerPoints to notes and have search instantly pick up text inside the attachments is so useful. Being able to forward key emails into Evernote also is nice.

I don't use a task manager. At one point or another, I've used Things, Todoist, and Microsoft Tasks. What I've found works best for for me is a simple note with checklists under day of the week headings, a next week heading, and a future heading. Lastly, I have a heading in each weekly todo list note that lists my research priorities that help me decide what project is most important for me to tackle when I get time to do some research work. At the end of each week I duplicate the note, delete the checked tasks, and drag around the unfinished and "next week" notes into when I think I can get to the tasks for the coming week.

I also tend to keep a small notebook with me to write down quick things, help draw out thoughts on paper, write down meaningful quotes, and track some writing habits. If I write down todos in the notebook, I'll typically migrate them into my weekly task list in Evernote so all tasks are in one place. Although I don't follow it exactly, the Bullet Journal method/philosophy has been really valuable to me. My favorite journal is the Leuchtturm1917 Medium (A5) with a dot ruling. Right now I'm partial to the black Sakura Pigma Micron pens and the black Sharpie felt tip pens.