My Finnish Academia

Today's challenge: highlight and categorize key points from at least two papers.

📌 What I did today:

✔ Got two relevant papers.

✔ Highlighted key arguments, methodologies, and findings.

✔ Categorized them and put some tags in Zotero.

Sometimes I need to force myself to actively process what I read.

Today's challenge: set aside 30 minutes a week for skimming newly published articles (even though I temporarily caught up on my reading).

📌 What I did today:

✔ Set a recurring calendar reminder for a "weekly lit skim" session.

✔ Checked that I got the necessary email alerts to streamline updates.

✔ Skimmed two new articles.

This habit feels manageable - just half an hour to stay in the loop without falling into a rabbit hole.

Today's challenge: send the literature review draft to my advisors and go over it with my partner. Because at some point, I need to stop thinking in isolation and see if my ideas hold up outside my brain.

📌 What I did today:

✔ Polished the rough draft.

✔ Sent it.

✔ Got some helpful feedback from the partner.

✔ Read some more papers.

Honestly, I was nervous about this, but talking through my ideas out loud helped me see what's actually solid and what still needs work. My research doesn't exist in a vacuum, and this reminded me that engaging with others is part of the process.

Today's challenge: taking my scattered thoughts and forcing them into actual sentences.

📌 What I did today:

✔ Took MI as the main gap.

✔ Wrote a short summary explaining

what's missing in the literature

how my work contributes.

✔ Realized that if I can't explain this in 100 words, I won't be able to explain it in my thesis.

A tiny step toward real research.

Today's challenge: find the "we don't know enough about this" spots that my own research could help fill.

📌 What I did today:

✔ Reviewed my notes and summaries.

✔ Wrote down research opportunities.

✔ Jotted down three specific gaps where my work could contribute:

Measurement invariance;

Data collection methods;

Longitudinal analysis.

It felt like detective work.

Today's challenge: draft a brief outline for the literature review section of my thesis. This felt intimidating, but I reminded myself: it doesn't have to be perfect - it just has to exist.

📌 What I did today:

✔ Looked at my notes, maps, and summaries to identify major sections.

✔ Organized my ideas into a rough structures (theories, key debates, research gaps, etc.).

✔ Wrote bullet points for each section with the main arguments and key papers to include.

✔ And finally, wrote a "fishbone" - a first rough draft that is okay to share with others.

I'm trying not to panic about how unfinished it feels :(

Today's challenge: revisiting the most important papers I've read so far and making sure my notes are actually useful.

📌 What I did today:

✔ Re-read key sections of top papers.

✔ Added more detailed annotations: why this paper matters, how it connects to my work, and what I might cite it for.

✔ Highlighted key quotes I might use later.

Today's challenge: organize all the old articles in random folders and cloud storage.

📌 What I did today:

✔ Renamed files properly!!

✔ Backed everything up to cloud storage and external hard disk because losing my entire lit review to a laptop crash would end me.

I won't lie - it was tedious. Future me owes me big time.

Today's challenge: taking all my chaotic thoughts and trying to make them make sense.

📌 What I did today:

✔ Took the two big themes I identified yesterday and wrote a short reflection on where my work fits in.

✔ Tried to explain in Simple English why these debates matter and how my research might contribute.

Today's challenge: identify two recurring themes or debates in the literature I've read so far.

📌 What I did today:

✔ Scanned my notes and summaries for repeated concepts, questions, or contradictions.

✔ Noticed two major themes:

a key methodological debate that keeps popping up

a gap in research that no one seems to agree on

✔ Jotted down how my own work might connect to or challenge these discussions.

Today's challenge: summarize five tables in a table and see how they are connected.

📌 What I did today:

✔ Picked the five most important papers.

✔ Created a table of Author|Year|Methods|Key Findings|Relevance.

✔ Unintentionally built a family tree for the field.

Today's challenge: spend an hour cleaning up my Zotero.

📌 What I did today:

✔ Deleted duplicate entries. Three copies of the same paper, ugh.

✔ Fixed missing tags.

✔ Edited the folders.

Today's challenge: draft a rough mindmap for my literature review. I've been putting this off, despite loving the idea of visually organizing concepts, because

my notes still feel like a mess, and

I have no idea where to start.

But avoiding it won't magically make it easier, so I sat down and gave it a shot.

📌 What I did today:

✔ Looked at a few papers that I know how to link together.

✔ Jotted down some broad ideas and several branches.

✔ Tried organizing the papers I've gathered and read so far into these branches - a work in progress...

It's messy, incomplete, and will probably change a hundred times, but at least now I have a map instead of just vibes and panic.

So yesterday, I read some papers in depth. Today? I go back and add highlights in Zotero so I don't completely forget what I learned.

📌 What I did today:

✔ Highlighted definitions and useful citations.

✔ Added a few quick notes on why this paper is relevant, how it connects to my research, and what are the gaps.

✔ Linked it to papers I've already found.

📌 What I did today:

✔ Chose a 2021 paper that I found interesting and relevant.

✔ Read it section by section, doing notes.

✔ Gap: a limited exploration of underlying cultural & socio-economic factors driving attitudes in question.

One week into the 30-Day Literature Review Challenge, today’s task was to find and download five new papers relevant to my research. Treasure hunt time!

📌 What I did today:

✔ Started with Google Scholar, searching keywords and checking recent citations.

✔ Downloaded five promising papers and added them to my reference manager. Why do good papers lead to ten more papers I suddenly need to read?

Some of these look super relevant, and some might be a stretch, but either way, I'm slowly building a more complete picture of the research landscape.

Today’s challenge: schedule a weekly "literature review day". Pick a time each week to sit down and read, organize, and process research instead of letting it pile up in my "to read" folder forever.

So, I pulled up my calendar and blocked out Wednesdays, 2 hours after Finnish class as my dedicated lit review time.

📌 What I did today:

✔ Picked a consistent time each week and set a reminder for it.

✔ Made a rough plan: skimming new research, reading in-depth, updating notes, and organizing sources.