Research
Research is not reading. It’s directed searching with a question in mind.
The question shapes what you notice. Without it, you collect facts. With it, you filter for relevance. The question acts as a sieve. Most information passes through. Some sticks.
Two modes:
Exploratory. You don’t know what you’re looking for. You’re mapping the territory, finding the interesting questions. Wander the library. Follow citation chains. Let serendipity work.
Directed. You have a specific question. Now you’re hunting. Focus narrows. Efficiency matters.
Most projects start exploratory and shift to directed. The danger is staying exploratory too long. It feels productive but produces no output. At some point you must stop gathering and start writing.
Source selection determines output quality.
Not all sources are equal. The hierarchy, roughly:
- Primary sources. The original data, the actual study, the firsthand account.
- Scholarly sources. Peer-reviewed papers, academic books. Vetted for accuracy.
- Quality journalism. Deep reporting from reputable outlets.
- Popular sources. Books and articles for general audiences. Easier but further from evidence.
The telephone game degrades signal. Each level of remove introduces distortion. If you’re writing about a study, read the study. Not the article about the article about the study.
How do you combine what you’ve learned?
Notes alone don’t produce insight. You need a system that lets you see connections. Some approaches:
Commonplace method. Collect quotes under topic headings. Review and connect.
Zettelkasten. Atomic notes linked by concept. Each note captures one idea. Emergent structure over time.
Progressive summarization. Highlight, then highlight the highlights, then summarize. Layers of compression.
The method matters less than the discipline. A consistent mediocre system beats an ideal system you don’t use.
When to stop:
You’re seeing repeats. New sources confirm what you know. Territory is mapped.
You can explain it without notes. If you can teach the topic, you understand it enough to write.
You’re using research to avoid writing. The feeling that you need “just a bit more” is often resistance. You can always find more.
Smil’s method: read voraciously, take few notes, trust memory to retain what matters. What survives multiple exposures is important. What fades wasn’t.
Citation practices:
Credit ideas. If you learned something from someone, say so.
Quote sparingly. Your job is synthesis, not curation. Paraphrase most, quote only what can’t be said better.
Check primary sources. Misquotation cascades through secondary sources. Many famous quotes are wrong.
Follow the disagreement. Who disputes this? What’s the counterargument? If you only read sources that agree, you’re not researching. You’re confirming.
Go Deeper
Books
- How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens — The Zettelkasten method.
- The Craft of Research by Booth, Colomb & Williams — How research becomes argument.
Related: writing, epistemology, argumentation, tacit knowledge, compression, epistemic posture