Welcome back to the book writing course. In this video I am going to show you how do I organize and analyze (check) my references for better selection process.

The analysis of the references is needed to identify whether you have been referred to authority and trustworthy sources.

The organization of references is needed to save time when you need to find one. At the end of your book, you will have a bibliography and reading list which will come from the references we have.

You have the materials in the Word document and at the end of each description there are 1 or 2 links provided. In ChatGPT although there are on average 5 to 15 references. I organized them for you to see what information you have at hand. This is not an instruction for you to follow. But if at some point you will feel that you like this method you can totally employ it.

Few reasons I work the way I do:

1. I want all materials to be on my computer and not only in ChatGPT, because that secures my work from losing it in case ChatGPT will stop working or I lose access to my Chats.
2. I want to see which references are unique and which are repeating (I don’t have this picture in ChatGPT)
3. I want to have a quicker access to my references for more productive work.
4. Save time for bibliography and reading list organization work that we will do at the end of the book later

This work might feel tedious to you, because there is a lot of repetition. You may skip without regret the organization method I am showing. Or you can employ it and make it the way I do, if you like details and extended feeling of control. But you definitely should watch this lesson to understand how ChatGPT works and what references it provides. It will help you later to decide how do you want to organize your work.

v Organizing References in Excel

The excel structure I will show you pursues the following goals:

1. Have a clear picture of what links I have
2. See how many are repeating across different materials
3. Have room for comments or marking those that I want to definitely refer to
4. Get simpler view of all materials than the one we have in Word where materials come with their descriptions
5. Map the chapter recommendations

Let me show you how I have done it:

You can see that in the heading of the row I have the name of each material and then in the columns all the suggested links to them.

Let me explain why do I manage the reference links and descriptions separately in few words

v Why adding links under each material in word did not work?

I use the Audio function to read the description of the suggested by ChatGPT materials. You have seen that when we copy the content of ChatGPT it copies with the chat content only a few links. The rest are not shown and I don’t know if I will need them or not. So that is how I decided not to be overwhelmed by analysis of the links. Make them visible.

ChatGPT reads the whole URL

I have gathered them firstly under the Material description in the Word document. Just like it is in ChatGPT. But in that case the Audio function reads for me every single letter in the references, each slash, dash and colon… and I don’t need to waste time on that. I want to have a flow when I am listening to descriptions and suggestions. Thus, I have decided to put the links separately in Excel.

Let us see how the excel works and you can decide for yourself if you should work this way.

v The Reference Links File structure and functionality

Showing you the Reference Links File structure and functionality

The excel file structure:

• The row headings stand for material type and name
• The column headings stand for reference integration chapter with comments and reference number
• Color stand for duplicated (repeating) links

Using this file, I go to my Miro Structure and distribute the materials. If I see that the same reference stands for different materials and they are appearing in different chapters as a suggestion, I might use the points for one chapter.

This visibility gives me clarity and reduces overwhelm.

If you need the instruction on how to spot duplicates and color-code to organize references see the link to an advanced video instruction.