A typical workday for freelancer Jyoti Madhusoodanan

For this installment of “A Typical Workday,” I interviewed independent journalist Jyoti Madhusoodanan, who covers health and life science. Madhusoodanan’s reporting has appeared in The New York Times, NPR, Discover, Undark, Science, Scientific American, Nature and other publications. 

Her article for The Open Notebook on using sensory details to enrich a science story is anthologized in “The Craft of Science Writing,” published in 2020. She has received fellowships from AHCJ and the Knight Science Journalism program at MIT.  

This conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Home base

I’m based in Portland, Or., and I have been here since the end of 2018. We moved from the San Francisco Bay area, where we lived for about eight years, and then I had a child. At that time, I used to work out of the guest bedroom, and I had a desk in the corner.

Office setup

Now I have a separate room for my office, which was one of the nicest things about moving to Portland. It’s a room with my desk and my bookshelf and a comfy chair for when people in my family want to visit and talk as I’m working, like my 6-year-old. I have a view of my neighbor’s house, so I put plants on my windowsill.

My desk

I love standing desks, and during the pandemic I upgraded to a sit/stand desk. It has a motor of some kind, and it has this little button on the side that I can press to move it down to sitting height and up to standing height.

I am one of those people who paces when I talk on the phone. I use it in the standing position when I’m doing interviews, listening to webinars, working through copy edits that are minor grammatical things, really anything that doesn’t require me to be super deeply focused. When I’m writing or really deep in a draft, I’m probably sitting. 

Daily routine

I’m usually up by 5:30 or 6 in the morning. I often end up scheduling interviews for 7 a.m. because it works well for East Coast interviews and Europe and other parts of the world. On other days, I get my exercise in — I like to take a walk — and help my daughter get ready for school, and then I’m at my desk by about 8 or 8:30 a.m. I work until 3 p.m., when my daughter gets home from school. A few days a week, I get a longer workday because my husband picks her up. So two or three days a week, I get to work until about 5 p.m.

Daily ritual

I’m trying to be really conscious about slowing down and just taking time to be present. So sometimes I do pomodoros [a time management technique that uses a kitchen timer to break work into 25 minute chunks, separated by short breaks.] So that reminds me to take breaks. I do drink a lot of water, and that becomes a sort of reset. And I have been trying to be conscious about being really present when I pick my daughter up from school. We have a snack, and she’ll have her milk and I’ll have my tea, and we talk about things, if you want to call that a ritual. 

Staying focused 

If I’m in the middle of a story and I can’t figure it out, there’s something structurally wrong with it, a walk usually helps with that. When I’m wondering, where do I even begin with a story, I find it useful to find some way to keep myself at my desk. My favorite way of doing that is with music. I put on instrumental music, something that is eight minutes long or so. And I say to myself, “I’m going to work on this thing for the length of this piece of music.” It’s okay if I’m just staring at a blank document for eight minutes. But usually I find that by the end of eight minutes, there’s something happening on the page.

Tracking story ideas and assignments 

I have a Word document on my desktop, which is fodder for future long stories, and I throw in links, webinar information, notes from webinars, all that sort of thing. I use Excel spreadsheets to keep track of everything that’s been assigned and in the works. It’s organized by month. It includes the name of the assignment, the outlet, payment, etc. The due dates are not on the spreadsheet; they go on my calendar.

Favorite tool or app 

I use Google Keep a fair bit. It’s a note-taking app on my phone. And you can also access it on your [computer] browser. I find it really handy because it syncs between the two. Occasionally, when I’m hanging out outside gymnastics or ballet or whatever class my kid is in and I’m researching a story, I can create a note and throw links in there. You know how when you’re walking and you figure out exactly what is wrong with your story, I can write it in Keep, and then I can access it on my computer later and stick it in the draft. 

Recording and transcribing interviews 

I record with a software called Evaer. It records from Skype. I save the audio files and then for most things, I use Temi to transcribe. It’s automated. Most often when I need human transcription, it is when I’m doing a patient source or interviewing for context and narrative. I do that transcribing myself because I find it helps to listen to the interview again, rather than outsourcing it. 

If you would like to nominate a freelancer to be profiled for A Typical Workday, please email Barbara at freelance@healthjournalism.org.