How I previously processed field notes ala Thoreau

In mid-2020, I tried following henry david thoreau’s routine of doing a fieldwork in the afternoon, taking notes, and processing those notes in the following morning.

Here are the steps I took to process those notes.

Field notes aggregation

1. Go through photos taken yesterday and delete anything that needs to be deleted.
2. Transfer photos from phone to Macbook.
3. Put photos to the Fieldwork folder.
4. Create a new subfolder with the date of the fieldwork as title (ex. 2020-10-17).
5. Transfer all photos and videos to this subfolder.
6. Use ImageOptim to reduce the file size of each photo in bulk.
7. Transfer each plant photo to be identified to Botany - Identify notebook in Evernote.
8. Create a new note in Nature Journal.
9. Gather all field notes in one note. Delete the notes after added.
10. Integrate all field notes to the new Nature Journal note.
11. Go through the photos and videos taken to add more details to the notes. Insert corresponding photos to these details.

Plant species identification

1. Start identifying each plant through NatureID.
2. If plant is not in Nature ID, post it in the iNaturalist community to get help in identification.
3. Search for plant details from Stuartxchange’s Philippine Medicinal Plants.
4. Start filling in the fieldwork report with photos and names of the identified plants.

I kept these narratives in a nature journal.

I stopped doing this after a few weeks when I realized it took almost the entire day, and that I had so much more interests to pursue. This made me realize that my love of nature is not as strong as Thoreau’s and that I like to spend more time inside my head. I switched to my note-writing practice not long after this.

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