Organising Foresight Research Inputs
Directed vs Undirected Inputs
One of the challenges when it comes to futures and foresight research, is that you’re dealing with a whole bunch of inputs — from research, scan hits, academic articles, maybe podcast snips and there’s always a combination of directed versus undirected inputs.
Directed inputs — these are the kinds of inputs you’re collecting for a specific project. Maybe you’re looking for scan hits for a project on ocean futures or you’re collecting research on information provenance specifically.
Undirected inputs — these are the gems you come across while you’re working; maybe it’s a really pointy scan hit or an uncommon project that doesn’t specifically relate to something you’re working on, but you want to capture it because it’s really unusual, insightful or you just know it’s going to be useful further down the track.
Collecting inputs without disrupting your work
The challenge here is how best to capture both of these kinds of inputs without interrupting your flow of work. I also find that when I’m researching, scouting about and collecting tidbits, I’m in a completely different headspace to when I’m doing deep working and really trying to synthesise information and develop my thinking. So in these scenarios, I don’t want to stop hunting to go deep in an article, but nor do I want to lose it altogether. So the question I’m always noodling on — is how best to deal with this kind of stuff without interrupting my flow of work.
Input Type # 1 : “Undirected Items” of information — Airtable
These are the kinds of input information I think as links, sources or connection points I want to save and review later.
Articles : Maybe you’ve just come across a great article that’s really interesting and has grabbed your attention. I’m always in the lookout for new tech tools so I like to collect things as I find them and I want to capture them at that moment and review them later.
Weblinks : Maybe I’ve had a great conversation with somebody or I’m in a uni class and suddenly I’ve got 85 tabs open on my browser but none of them directly relate to anything I’m working on but I’m thinking I want to check them out later.
Scan Hits: I might be looking for scan hits for a project and I want to save them super quick and come back to them later.
Future Lab / Uncommon Projects: There might be something about ocean futures which doesn’t relate to something I’m working on now but it’s really interesting or unique and I want to save it so that I can go back to it at some point in the future.
Bookmarks: Or it could be just general bookmarks. Something I want to check out but it doesn’t relate to the work in front of me.
I think about these kinds of information inputs as list “items”. So the critical thing for me is to save them in a way that makes them useable and useful for later.
Which means I want to be able to:
- web clip them easily
- tag them quickly and accurately in just a few seconds
- store them flexibly so I can find them easily, and retrieve them to use later in future work
Input Type # 1 : Saved as Undirected Database Items in Airtable
I think about these kinds of items as sort of undirected database items.
I’ll save these kinds of items in air table using the air table web clipper. Airtable’s web clipper is the bomb and it enables me to automatically clip things like page titles, URLs, meta tags etc and also to categorise the input instantly at the time directly from my browser without disrupting my flow of work.
I’ve got multiple airtable databases for different kinds of things and each one has its own preset web clipper which automatically tags it as a “scan hit”, or a “review link” or a “futures project” or “trend report”, you get the picture. I can save these kinds of articles to the airtable database, categorise the item with a quick topic tag, PESTLE or project tag, or free text in what I think I might use it for in the future so it’s easy to identify later and it’s all done in maybe 10 seconds , straight from my browser without interrupting my flow of work.
Input Type # 2: Directed Academic Research — Zotero
These kinds of items are when I’m searching for a particular topic relating to a project or uni assignment and it’s more directed. I have a specific active project in mind that I’m working on.
Maybe it’s academic papers which I save in Zotero which is obviously another kind of citation reference database. If I’m working on academic papers in particular I might also bring the PDF version into Liquid Text — both of which are integrated.
This means that I can take notes, highlight passages and I’ve linked the Zotero citations so there’s no need to go back searching when I need to input more detailed references later on. Likewise if there’s a really great academic paper that’s been really useful, it’s great to have all the citation references handy so I can use a tool like Connected Papers or Research Rabbit to find other papers that have similar topics or citations.
Once you download the Notero plugin (below) it’s super easy to sync your Zotero references with Notion and direct to your project dashboards.
Zotero to Notion Workflow
Zotero + Notion Integration
Both these links below give you step by step instructions on how to set up the database in Notion and connect Notion to Zotero, it also provides a link to download the Zotero plugin — called “Notero” which is free and very easy to install on the Zotero side.
Integration instructions — version # 1
Integration instructions — version # 2
Notero connector for Zotero (free)
Input Type # 3 : Undirected or Directed Web Research Content goes into Readwise
Anything that’s not a “link” or an “item” of knowledge (short pithy link) or an academic paper, goes into an app called Readwise. Readwise is really an aggregator of information sources of inputs from:
- Web articles
- Medium articles
- Podcast snips
- Tweets
- Kindle highlights
- Email newsletters
It also includes a read it later app called Readwise Reader — which is currently free with a Readwise subscription.
