When I was writing to potential supervisors, I was working full-time in a research lab, 10 hours a day. So, it took me a while to actually start reaching out.

By the time I began, it was already late in the application cycle. Friends told me to wait until next year, since they had already contacted supervisors and secured positions.

That’s when I snapped out of my procrastination bubble and started thinking seriously about how to secure a graduate position. Before contacting professors, I went through profiles at hundreds of universities to find labs that matched my interests.

I realized I needed a robust but simple system to manage the whole process. After a few tweaks, I built an effective workflow using the Notion app.

With this system, it only took me two weeks to find professors whose research aligned with mine, and I secured a graduate position in a lab doing exactly the research I was excited about.