Have you ever been in that situation where you know you had perfect evidence for something, but you either can’t remember quite exactly what it was, or quite where you found it. But you really need it. And you remember that it was probably in a book that you read a week or so ago, about a third of the way through, somewhere on the right hand side of the page, maybe… So you spend hours and hours hunting for it, searching in digital versions for the words that you think were used, attempting to re-read things in the order that you were reading on the day when you think you found it.
I used to do this all the time. Particularly when I was caught up in the excitement of following an argument trail through a range of documents. Like a child running off into a forest chasing a butterfly, I was more excited about constructing the perfect argument than I was about noticing where I was going.
In most cases, I’ve been able to find what I lost. But in one notable case in my PhD, I couldn’t. I got around it by fudging the reference, hoping no-one would notice. And no-one did, until I got a chance to publish that bit of work in a book chapter, and the editor wouldn’t let it go through until I’d found the exact, full citation.
I did eventually. But it took nearly a week of systematic re-reading.
What a waste of time!
I’ve, by no means, entirely overcome this tendency, but the pain of lost time has made me adopt more of a ‘one-touch’ approach. Like in getting chores done (yes, I did just send you to Homes and Gardens) the one-touch approach means that you deal with something completely, the first time you touch it.
I find it hard to work methodically when I’m excited. But I can, if I remember that the time I spend sorting, filing, noting and organising as I go along, saves me time in the end. Rather than running into the forest without a care for where I’m going, if I mark each tree as I go past, I can find my way out again.
I was SO grateful for this the other day, when I needed to find something in a folder of archived materials that I’ve not looked in for probably 2 years and there, at the top of the folder, was the index that I’d created of what was in it.
Something that, previously, would have left me despairing and would have probably stalled my work, and required a re-visit to the archive to get another copy, took me less than 5 mins.
The Garage of Books 