3. Designing a Project That Works

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Having arrived at a problem, now you must make decisions about what you can accomplish, given your available resources. In particular, you need to think about the primary sources you’ll need to answer your questions and solve your Problem, as well as the resources you’ll need (including time!) to put together a project.

The issues this chapter deals with are both conceptual and practical: What are primary sources? Which ones can you actually access? How can you discover the full potential of a source related to your topic, or look beyond the obvious questions one might ask about a source to arrive at something original? How can you use such sources to pinpoint your Problem? What arguments can you make with your sources? How many sources can you acquire? How much time will you have to analyze them? How should you design your project, given your personal work habits, material constraints, or deadline?

Getting from a problem to a project involves more than just logistics. Project planning involves self-assessment and visualization. What model or type of project is most suitable for you? What do you want the finished product to look like?

Primary Sources and How to Use Them (or, Fifty Ways to Read a Cereal Box)

Sources are essential to original research, so figuring out how to identify, evaluate, and use them is a crucial practical consideration. Researchers conventionally divide sources into two general categories: primary sources and secondary sources. Research guides typically define primary sources as “original” or “raw” materials. They are the evidence that you use to develop and test claims, hypotheses, and theories about reality. Primary sources vary based on one’s field of study. For historians, primary sources tend to date to the period of focus, whether they are written documents, like letters and maps, or any other type of physical object. Anthropologists might rely on oral testimony, or audio recordings. In fields such as literature or philosophy, primary sources are usually texts.

Most research guides define secondary sources along similar lines. The Craft of Research (4th edition) defines them as “books, articles, or reports that are based on primary sources and are intended for scholarly or professional audiences,” and which researchers use to “keep up with developments in their fields” and to “frame new problems” by “challeng[ing] or build[ing] on the conclusions or methods of others” (p. 66).

While we largely agree with these definitions, we also want to reinforce a point well known to veteran researchers about the dangers of defining “primary” and “secondary” sources in terms of absolutes. We would advocate not thinking of primary sources solely as old objects or documents found in archives or online repositories, and secondary sources as studies that “use” primary sources the way one might process raw materials into finished products (to extend the above metaphor). If the term primary sources conjures up images of weathered manuscripts, sepia-toned photographs, shards of ancient pottery, or clippings from a centuries-old newspaper, it’s time for a shift in perspective.

Absolutist definitions of sources get in the way of the process of identifying primary sources and asking research questions, for two reasons:

1. 1. Any source can be primary, secondary, or not a source for your project.
2. 2. A source’s type is determined solely by its relationship with the questions you are trying to answer, and the problem you are trying to solve. A source is never inherently primary or secondary.

A more accurate definition of primary source would be the following: a source that is primary with respect to a particular question.

Notice how our definition recasts the “primary-ness” of a given source in relative terms.

Take, for example, a college-level US history textbook published in 2019. According to an absolutist definition of sources, there can be little doubt that this is not a “primary” source, since it draws on multiple works of scholarship. Someone who wants to learn about the First Continental Congress or the root causes of the American Civil War would refer to this book not as a primary source produced contemporaneously with the events in question, but as a secondary source that synthesizes historical arguments based upon sources, both primary and secondary.

But what if their question was not about the First Continental Congress directly, or about the causes of the Civil War, but about the history of textbooks themselves, or the history of how the American Civil War has been presented in American higher education in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries? What kind of source is this 2019 book now? Suddenly, a book that by all accounts should be considered “absolutely secondary” has become “primary,” despite the fact that it was published recently. Under these circumstances, this book from 2019 would show up in your bibliography amid other relevant primary sources: perhaps college textbooks from 1905, 1923, 1945, and so forth. Perhaps you might have access to the personal papers of the textbook author, or the possibility of interviewing the scholars and editors who were responsible for the 2019 work. Perhaps you might have uncovered a repository of course syllabi from a single university, which would enable you to examine the ways in which university courses explained the Civil War during, say, the immediate aftermath of World War I, or the lead-up to World War II, or during the height of the civil rights movement.

Let’s take this one step further. Just as the same source can be “primary” or “secondary,” depending upon context, so too can the same source be “primary” in dramatically different ways. The very same source can show up in the bibliographies of strikingly different research projects, and can be used by different authors to pose dramatically different kinds of questions.

Imagine that, in your database searches, you encounter a cereal box from the 1960s.

You’re not sure why this particular image intrigues you, but as you know well by now, “not knowing why” is entirely OK. Somehow, this source feels “primary” to your research interests, and so you trust your instinct and set out to figure out what questions it might help you answer.

Here you face a decision: how you treat this source will lead you down either a narrow path or a broad avenue of potential research questions.

The narrow route is to jump to the obvious candidates: questions about food culture, or perhaps about advertising or consumer culture. After all, you think to yourself, this is a box of cereal, and so the questions we would want to ask should obviously pertain to things like food, right?

You’re thinking yourself into, well, a box.

Remember: as a primary source, a box of cereal can be “primary with respect to” countless questions that have nothing to do with food per se. Let’s consider for a moment all of the different ways that a researcher could “read” a box of cereal. Or, to put this differently, let’s brainstorm for a moment different kinds of research projects that might conceivably include this source—a 1960s cereal box—in a bibliography or list of sources.

Let’s even go one step further and brainstorm what other primary sources this cereal box might end up “working alongside,” depending upon the particular research project in which it appears.

Based on what we come up with, let’s then give a name to the genre of questions we’re asking, on the assumption that it might be connected to an underlying problem.

The rows in the table 4, while numerous, offer only a sample of the different directions one’s research could take based on a single primary source. The key here is that when a source is unquestionably “primary,” the question still remains, Primary how?

Table 4. THE CEREAL BOX CHALLENGE: HOW TO QUESTION PRIMARY SOURCES

What I notice about the source	Questions/concerns I might have	The very next primary source I might want to find	Broader subjects and/or genres of questions that might be related to my problem
The various codes found on the box (e.g., printing codes, shipment codes, or for later cereal boxes, bar codes)	Who uses these codes? Why are they positioned where they are on the box? How are they read or decoded? When did cereal boxes start to have such codes?	Materials related to laser scanning and its application to logistics (consumer, transportation, postal system, etc.)	Technology Supply chain logistics History
The “Nutritional Facts and Recommendations” on the side of the box	How are these facts and recommendations generated? By whom?	Early medical and public health treatises on recommended daily food intake, materials on the discovery/invention of the concept of the calorie	Biopolitics Standard measurements of energy and nutrition Government-industry relations
The “storytelling” one often finds on the back of the box	What did the producers or consumers of this product want it to say about the world? About consumers? About the company? Have the stories appearing on the backs of cereal boxes changed much over time? How about by type of cereal (e.g., sugar cereal vs. “healthy” cereal)?	Other kinds of consumer packaging in which stories are told (children’s toys, exercise equipment, health and beauty products, etc.)	Stories, narratives, discourses Times: Future and past
The shape, size, and dimensions of the box	Why does the box have this weight and size, when assembled or pre-assembled? Where is the box stored or held? at various stages of the delivery process, and for how long at each stage? How does it get from where it was made to where it was intended to go? How many boxes are in a shipment?	Materials connected to the early history of containerized shipping	Transportation Logistics Global capitalism
The typefaces used on the packaging	Why are some typefaces larger than others? How were the fonts chosen? Which possibilities were considered and rejected?	Sample printed matter using low-cost, mass-produced paper stock, like telephone books, tabloid newspapers, psychological warfare pamphlets, etc.	Typography Design history Hierarchies of design
The color palette and symbols used on the package	What are the primary considerations influencing the color palette? What do the symbols on the box represent?	An advertising agency’s internal report on how colors affect consumer behavior, circa 1960s Other products made by the same company	The psychology of color
The 4-color printing guide hidden under the top flap	Why is this design element positioned so that it cannot be seen in the store? Why is it on the box? How is it used? What other design elements are meant to be “invisible” to the consumer?	Other consumer products or food products containing hidden designs on the packaging	Machine-driven design Invisibility
The “Best If Used By” date	How is the expiration date calculated, and by whom? Does it appear on boxes of this cereal distributed in other countries?	FDA regulations on food expiry calculations and consumer notifications	Food safety Government regulatory regimes (national/international)
The paper or cardstock used to make the box itself	Which type(s) of tree is used to make the paper/cardstock? Where was it produced? How many trees per year were used to package this product? Is this (still) the industry standard?	Other material objects produced using wood- and wood-pulp-based products	Environmental history Forestry
The glue used to seal the box, and the interior pouch	What substance is the glue made from? Who made it? How was the adhesive chosen? How do most consumers open it? How much of the product do the producers expect to go bad before it can be consumed?	Company R&D records on consumer habits Contracts with packaging vendors	Chemistry
The tab used to close or open the box	How would the box be used? Which designs were considered but rejected?	Other food products requiring repeated unsealing and resealing	Durability Utility
The archival box or container in which the cereal box is preserved	How and why did this box come to be preserved? Who preserved it? How? Where? Was it preserved by accident, or intentionally for some specific purpose?	Programs from annual meetings of the Society of American Archivists	Archiving Determinations of cultural/historical worth Museology
The price tag	How much did this box of cereal cost? How and where was the price advertised? Was the box of cereal cheap, of average cost, or expensive for US consumers in the 1960s? What was the item’s availability? How did the price compare to the production and distribution costs? How much profit went to the producer versus the wholesaler versus the retailer?	Archives of historical grocery stores and food producers that enable one to chart fluctuations in the cost of basic consumer goods	Economic history Demographics Pricing strategies

Mastering this method of dealing with primary sources will enhance the originality of your research. You will never again take a primary source at face value, or fall into the trap of asking only obvious questions. You’ll always be thinking “outside the cereal box.”

TRY THIS NOW: Treat Your Primary Source Like a Cereal Box

The goal: To adopt the habit of asking multiple genres of questions about each of your primary sources so as to identify problems that are not self-evident and thus might easily be overlooked. This technique will both enable you to decide which problem interests you most, and enhance your ability to conduct original research.

Now it’s your turn to take what we call the Cereal Box Challenge.

Using the search techniques you learned in chapters 1 and 2, track down and obtain a single source. The source should exert an unmistakable magnetism for you—it should be a source that you instinctively feel must be “primary” with regard to your emerging research concerns.

Using table 5 as your guide, take notice of as many different features of your source as possible. Disaggregate the source into its different elements, just as we did with the cereal box. Identify as many elements as possible, but no fewer than ten. Don’t let yourself off the hook. If you don’t find the equivalent of a UPC symbol, or a bar code, there might be other features of your source that connect it in some way to a broader system or standardization scheme. There might not be an allergy warning or a table of nutritional recommendations, but there is a high likelihood that the source is “caught up” in broader political, economic, sociocultural, or other discourses of concern to you. You will need to abstract and extrapolate from the cereal box example, because your source will likely not possess most of the specific features of that particular source.

As you fill in the first column, try to imagine the kinds of questions that could be asked by focusing on one or another specific feature of your source. Think expansively. Push your mind. Don’t settle. If all of your “potential questions” are all about . . . well . . . cereal then you know you’re not thinking hard enough. If you let your mind relax and commit to this exercise, you will quickly begin to ask questions that, proverbially speaking, get you from breakfast cereal to lasers in a single step. Add these questions to column 2.

Now imagine what a potential “very next source” might be for each of these feature-question pairings, and fill in column 3. Again, don’t settle. Surprise yourself. Whatever you assume is too extreme is likely not.

Finally, return to your increasingly skilled faculties of introspection, asking yourself:

• • Which of these feature-question-source#2 triad(s) lights my fire?
• • Which excites me the most? Why, if I had to venture a guess?
• • Which of these bore me? Why, if I had to venture a guess?
• • What does this suggest about what my primary concerns might be?
• • How is this source “primary” with respect to my questions and concerns?

Write all of this down.

Table 5. TREAT YOUR PRIMARY SOURCES LIKE A CEREAL BOX

COMMONLY MADE MISTAKES

• • Asking only obvious or self-evident questions related to the ostensible topic of the source, instead of multiple genres of questions
• • Asking questions that are vague and general instead of specific and factual
• • Asking too few genres of questions—aim for at least ten. Err on the side of being creative, even far-fetched
• • For “the very next primary source I might want to find,” thinking only of sources within your Field (like food history, for a 1960s cereal box; for more on Fields, see chapter 5)
• • After completing the table of noticings, questions, next sources, and genres of questions, skipping the steps of (a) gauging your relative interest in those results, and (b) writing down the result

TRY THIS NOW: Envision Your Primary Sources

The goal: To identify places you might not have originally considered looking for primary sources. This will enhance the comprehensiveness, originality, and significance of your research.

Doing original research requires looking where no one else has looked for a solution to your Problem.

Because of the sheer quantity of sources that are searchable online, it is very easy for even the most experienced of researchers to become a kind of passive bystander, allowing the library catalogue or database to demarcate the boundaries of their bibliographies. After all, if you have already “educated your questions,” and used the techniques above to discover all of the possible search terms, then what more is there to do than to run all of these keywords through as many databases as possible, and to reap the harvest of thousands of primary sources?

Isn’t it time I began searching?

Researchers nowadays often make two major mistakes here. They think that

1. 1. all of the information they need to do their research well is available online; and
2. 2. all of the information available online is searchable.

In fact, digitized materials make up only a small fraction of the total number of primary source materials. The library at Stanford University, where Tom works, is one of the world’s most advanced institutions with regard to digitization. Nevertheless, only about 1 percent of Stanford’s millions of archival and manuscript materials have been digitized. The rest remain in analog, physical format. Some always will. In limiting ourselves to an online, keyword-driven project, we write off 99 percent or more of potential materials without even looking at them and perhaps not even knowing that they exist.

The second mistake researchers make is arguably even more significant. When we allow databases and search results to define the shape and content of our bibliographies, we surrender our critical faculties as researchers. We stop asking critical questions about our subject matter, and we stop using our creativity and our imagination, which would otherwise deepen our engagement with our subject.

Instead of letting keyword searches define the boundaries of your source base, try closing your laptop or your browser, instead envisioning in your mind’s eye where relevant sources about your subject might be located; what these sources might look like, in terms of their format and genre; and who or what organization might have produced them. In other words, rather than limiting yourself to what is (database results), expand your search to include sources that could be or even that must be.

This is a peculiar exercise in many ways, and one that researchers are typically encouraged not to do. We are not allowed (and for good reason) to “make up” hypothetical sources. In this case, we are asking you to do a slightly different thing.

We believe that this imaginative exercise is one of the things that separates the great researcher from the good one.

Let’s say that you are interested in the lives of working-class women in early twentieth-century New York. Rather than running keyword searches, sit back in your chair, stare up at the ceiling (or close your eyes), and ask yourself: Where would the life of a person like this have been recorded? Where might they have left traces of their lives? Did hospitals in 1920s New York keep records of patients? What kinds of records did schools keep about their students? How about employers? What about immigration documents? Marriage certificates? Baptismal records? Censuses? Criminal cases? Phone books? You could ask the same question about Russian serfs in the 1720s, Austro-Hungarian elites in the 1820s, or Senegalese schoolteachers in the present day.

In a word: What are the archives?

It takes a special form of “education” (see chapter 2) to answer questions like these. You need to know your time and place (New York in 1925 or Trieste in 1825 or Dakar in 2022) well enough to know something about how these societies functioned, and how they produced evidentiary traces. While you may not have any interest in the history of criminal law in the Russian empire or university administration in the United States or customs offices in West Africa—those might not be your primary research “topics” or “problems”—if you know a bit about them, it will help you envision where the people you are interested in may have left behind traces of their existence.

Sometimes, in order to get to specifics, you have to think systematically and institutionally.

Think of all the fragments every one of us leaves behind on a weekly, daily, and even hourly and minute-by-minute basis as we go about our days. Credit card payments. Swiping your ID-linked mass transit card on your way to school or work. Yearbook photos. Holiday cards. Traffic tickets. Voter registrations. We leave millions of fragments in a diaspora that spreads across many different domains. Not all can be recovered, of course. Some (we hope) are locked tight in digital vaults. Some will be destroyed before long. Others, even if they were found, could not be linked to you.

Still, some can.

Now imagine someone in the distant future—say, the year 2500—trying to find primary sources through which to reconstruct and understand your life. If that person knew nothing about the history of twenty-first-century credit bureaus, legal systems, voter registration, email, or social media (or did, but ignored them because they decided that those weren’t their topic) that researcher would be missing out on troves of materials.

You can see now why you want to take the time to envision sources. Keyword searching is not always the place to start, nor does it turn up all of the results you might need. Instead, you need to envision where sources might exist, and only then go back to the work of searching. By then, you will know to look in more and different places. Your list of catalogues, databases, and archives will be larger and more diverse. You’ll discover more primary sources, generate more useful questions, and deepen your research in ways you did not anticipate.

The steps for this exercise are straightforward:

1. 1. Write down your research questions, as always, with as much precision as you can.
2. 2. Brainstorm: What sources might exist that would be primary with respect to my research questions?
3. 3. Write down as many types of sources as possible.
4. 4. Optional: If you have time to spare, and as long as it doesn’t distract you from steps 1 through 3, try to find such sources. If you find any of them, put them through the Cereal Box Challenge.

COMMONLY MADE MISTAKES

• • During brainstorming, thinking only in terms of your specific case and not in terms of the general categories or institutional structures in which the world might have arranged sources related to your case
• • Excluding sources because they do not appear to be related to your topic or keywords
• • Worrying about whether or not you can actually obtain the sources you envision
• • Not writing things down

Connecting the Dots: Getting from Sources to Arguments

Now you have a primary source in front of you, maybe several. Now what? What do I do? How do I make a “thesis-driven argument” out of this source? Where do I begin? What should I take notes about?

All fair questions. And not the only ones.

Your methodological challenges are both practical and ethical:

1. 1. How many primary sources, and which types of primary sources, are enough to do my research?
2. 2. How can I evaluate the reliability or usefulness of sources?
3. 3. How do I identify and exclude irrelevant sources?
4. 4. How do I determine how my sources relate to one another?
5. 5. How do I use various sources to make an argument, or express my degree of certainty or doubt about the argument I am using these sources to make?

That’s quite a barrage of questions, so let’s take a moment to think about how to connect the dots.

When we’re young, many of the puzzles we solve come in a box or in a book. They were created by other people and come to us in the form of prepackaged games: word searches, jigsaw puzzles, anagrams. Someone else already knew the answers, and then crafted a puzzle for us, whether to test our intelligence or to give us fun pastimes.

Remember the game Connect-the-Dots? On the page is a set of dots, each dot accompanied by a number, and the puzzle-solver draws a set of straight lines linking dot 1 to dot 2, dot 2 to 3, and so forth. After connecting all fifty or so dots, the secret image is revealed. In some cases, the image is the answer to a question, like “What is the biggest animal on earth?”

What if, instead of a connect-the-dots puzzle like that, you were presented with one that looked like this:

You see the issue here: you can draw an infinite number of lines through a single point (i.e., a single source), and this means that practically any picture—any argument, that is—can be made when based on only one source.

Even with two points, or three, the puzzle is overwhelmingly unrestricted.

How do you connect the dots when there’s only one dot to connect, or even only a few? How do you begin to chart out interpretations and arguments—the lines of reasoning that connect the dots—when you are just at the very beginning? What if you have only one, two, or three dots to work from? As eager as you may be to make headway in creating “a thesis-driven argument,” how can you possibly do so at this stage?

You can’t, and you shouldn’t try to.

In the early stages of research, faced with an unlimited number of potential questions and interpretations, any attempt to connect the dots rapidly spins out to infinity. The puzzle is unsolvable. An infinite number of lines—for the researcher, narratives and interpretations—can pass through such a small number of “dots,” or sources.

Yet the lesson here is not just that you need an adequate number of sources to connect the dots of a good argument. It’s more fundamental than that.

Over time, we discover that puzzles no longer come to us prepackaged and ready to solve. To the contrary, the main challenge becomes not solving, but creating puzzles that are nontrivial, not preordained, open-ended, and significant (no matter what the answer ends up being). In order to create puzzles, we need to be able to envision and identify unknowns.

Consider, for example, present-day engineering challenges such as self-driving cars or artificial intelligence. These are not fill-in-the-blank or jigsaw-puzzle-style questions. They are questions that are still in the process of being asked in the right way, let alone being solved. How can we transform the complexities of human experience into something machine-readable? How do we take such concepts as “life” and “death,” and transform them into a stable and comparable set of “life events” that can be captured and digitized? Which types of human behaviors can be predicted, or influenced, using algorithms?

Let’s see how we can make the connect-the-dots analogy work for us as researchers. In the opening phases of a new project, the researcher confronts their own kind of connect-the-dots puzzle, but one that behaves differently than either the blue whale or big data examples. Instead of simply taking delivery of a prefabricated, ready-to-solve puzzle, with all the dots present and enumerated, the researcher needs to do the following:

• • Find the dots! Unlike a puzzle with a predetermined answer, your dots are not all laid out on the page for you, conveniently numbered in sequential order. You might find some dots by chance, but most of them you’ll find through purposeful searching.
• • Figure out which dots belong to your picture, and which dots belong to some other picture. Since the dots are not numbered, you need to keep an open mind and be able to envision multiple possible outcomes. An archaeologist who digs in the right place and comes across a deposit of dinosaur bones has the advantage of having all of the bones in one place, but the bones might be mixed with other skeletons, and even if they’re not, an archaeologist still needs to figure out which bones attached to which in order to reconstruct the skeleton. A similar issue faces their colleagues excavating ancient Chinese texts from a tomb. Texts were often written on slips of bamboo, which were then tied into order with string. One tomb might include multiple texts. Over centuries underground, the strings disintegrated, leaving a jumble of bamboo inscriptions. That archaeologist might be lucky enough to have discovered many “dots” in one go, but they still need to distinguish one text from another and then put the bamboo slips in order. Even if you have all of your data points in hand, you still need to know how to analyze them so as to come up with the right solution.
• • Determine which “dots” are not dots at all, but smudges. We call these non-sources. Sources are sources because they have utility for the researcher trying to answer a question or solve a problem. Their usefulness is relative—they may be more useful or less. You may recognize an item as being “someone else’s” source instead of “your” source, because it’s relevant to their Problem. Think of the astronomer trying to discover a new star or galaxy or black hole, who has to filter out the noise of the universe in three dimensions and at great distance. Not everything out there is a source. On the other hand, you might discover that what at first appeared to be a smudge turns out to be something interesting. A single dot could reorient your whole research project.
• • Do all of the above in real time. Not only do the dots not come numbered, and not only do you have to find them, but when you do start finding your dots and making your connections, it is highly unlikely that you will first come across Dot 1, and then Dot 2, and then Dot 3. More likely than not, your first discovery will be Dot 74, followed by Dot 23, and so forth. This places you in the challenging position of having to start interpreting your data without the certainty that you are already in possession of all of it. Visiting another archive, looking at a digital repository, undertaking another day of ethnographic work, another day of an archaeological dig, another day in the chemical compound analysis lab, another oral history interview, or simply another pass at listening to the recording of the interview—these actions add dots to your page. And as more dots appear on your page, the picture becomes clearer. Each additional dot adds a constraint, limiting the number of interpretations that is viable. Where you once had an overwhelming number of possible interpretive lines that could pass through your first few dots, many of those lines disappeared as your data got better. By adding and observing new constraints, you get closer to your answer.
• • Decide when you have enough dots. Obviously, the answer to the conundrum of how many data points is enough—when to stop digging for bones and when to start writing up the report—will vary by research project. It’s during the research process itself that you’ll learn to identify thresholds of probability, confidence, and certainty.

Sources Cannot Defend Themselves

Before you connect some dots (not all of them, yet) on your own project, there are ethical issues regarding the use of sources to consider.

One difference between “grown-up” puzzles and the ones we played as children is that you get to decide how to draw the lines. In the kiddie puzzles, the lines between two consecutive dots are always drawn straight. The games are designed that way. Writing is a different art form, however, and when you construct the narrative of your arguments and your explanations, or when you tell the story of your research findings, you have the choice of connecting your dots using straight or curvy lines—or, most likely, some combination of the two.

Imagine that, in the early phases of our research, we know only five basic facts about a historical person of interest to us:

• • date they were born
• • city where they grew up
• • institution where they pursued their education
• • degree they earned
• • date they died

Let’s consider three very different ways we might connect these dots:

1. 1. The ruler-drawn line (tight; no elaboration)
2. 2. The curved line (loose; some elaboration)
3. 3. The zigzag (extremely loose; highly speculative)

The Ruler-Drawn Line

John Smith was born in 1914, and grew up in Chicago. He received a degree in engineering from the University of Illinois. He died in 1989.

This is akin to using a ruler to draw a straight line between our empirical dots, because it “sticks to the facts” and avoids any and all elaboration. At the same time, it could be said to lack interpretive power. It feels static and even lifeless.

Now consider a slightly looser fit.

The Curved Line

John Smith was born in 1914, on the eve of the Great War in Europe. He grew up in Chicago, then a bustling center of industry. He received a degree in engineering from the prestigious University of Illinois. He passed away in 1989.

Here, the researcher’s narrative has connected, or “passed through” each of the four dots, and yet they have also supplied additional tone and context to the prose. This supplemental context, although empirically defensible (World War I did begin in 1914, and Chicago was a center of industry), still represents a choice, even a strategy, by the writer. Was Smith’s life shaped by the Great War? Was his life shaped by the economic history of Chicago? Why or how much does the prestige of the university matter to Smith’s life? By “pass away,” do they mean he died peacefully? Here the writer is not telling us one way or another in any explicit fashion—they are merely implying. As a reader, we wonder: Are these contexts relevant, and defensible?

Now an extremely loose fit.

The Zigzag

John Smith’s birth coincided with an event of global historical importance—the outbreak of World War I in 1914—and his death, yet another—the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. He received a degree in engineering from the University of Illinois, a choice shaped perhaps by his upbringing in Chicago, then a bustling center of industry headed by Mayor “Big Bill the Builder” Thompson.

In this third example, the writer is clearly taking undue license. Although they have not uttered any factually untrue information—all the dots are accurate, and all of them are connected—a host of dubious cause-and-effect relationships are being implied here, all without a shred of supporting evidence. Was Smith’s Chicago upbringing under Thompson’s mayoralty the “cause” of him studying engineering? Does it really matter that Smith’s birth and death coincided with these events in Europe? (Did the Berlin Wall fall on him?) Isn’t it the case that one might be able to find major events that coincide with the birth and death years of practically anyone?

A few key takeaways here:

1. 1. Sources cannot speak for themselves, nor can they defend themselves against you; thus it is your obligation to represent them accurately. As soon as you start dealing with primary sources, you have to make ethical decisions, the first being to represent the sources as honestly as possible.
2. 2. Research integrity requires not just dealing in facts but also not forcing them to tell a story. Fidelity to one’s sources is not limited to a question of empirical accuracy. As seen above, even when the author deals entirely in “fact” (the Berlin Wall did come down in 1989), there are, nevertheless, ways to connect the dots that “force” them to say things that the author wants them to say.
3. 3. Connecting the dots from sources to arguments is always a deliberate choice involving ethical responsibility. Don’t be lulled into thinking that your responsibilities as a researcher are satisfied so long as your treatment of sources is “straightforward” or “objective.” The “straight-edge” method of connecting the dots is not pure, perfect, or always desirable. A rote inventory of facts can have unwanted effects, such as neglecting essential contexts, or silencing fundamental questions. For a researcher, the connecting of dots always involves active choice. The key here is not to avoid or downplay this responsibility, but to make these choices as deliberately and defensibly as possible. Making decisions is your responsibility as researcher—and at every point, a decision must be made.

As you make choices about sources, be aware: even though sources cannot speak for themselves, this does not mean that sources are merely inert objects subject to the will or manipulation of the researcher. They have a kind of agency of their own, even in their seeming silence.

A source might be any of the following:

• • Incomplete or fragmentary. In our experience, most sources are.
• • Purposefully deceptive—a “pseudo-dot,” to use our earlier terminology. Documents can lie, as can interviewees, objects, and observers.
• • Wrong by accident. People (and the various utterances they leave behind—documents, recordings, etc.) can be unintentionally deceptive, perhaps because they were relying on bad or incomplete information themselves.
• • Biased—sincere or well-meaning in trying to tell truth, but distorted by unconscious bias. Maybe at that time they thought the Sun moved around the Earth. Maybe they categorized peoples or plants differently. Maybe they will tell you, because of who they are, “My culture doesn’t believe in X.” Their claims might be speculative or projecting.
• • Motivated by an acknowledged or unacknowledged agenda. They may be trying to persuade you to adopt a certain point of view, or accept a way of thinking.
• • Inconsistent. A source might be sometimes reliable and sometimes unreliable. Even the experts make mistakes.

These are just a few reasons why the best researchers adopt a critical, searching mindset. They realize that we always have to question our sources, however reliable or authoritative they may seem. We have to seek corroborating or falsifying evidence, since both are valuable. While evaluating your own sources, use the bullet points above as a checklist, and make a note of further steps you might want to take to understand them better.

Just one more caveat to keep in mind while evaluating sources at this early stage in the research process—and this is a crucial one: even if a source you come across is any of the things described above, it can still be useful to you, so don’t reflexively dismiss it. Instead, incorporate it into your question-generation process. Why might this source be trying to deceive me? What phenomenon is this source symptomatic of? There are no “bad” materials when it comes to generating questions or educating your questions. Radioactive material can be used to generate energy. If you come across a suspect source, use it to generate energy for your own purposes.

TRY THIS NOW: Connect the Dots Using Your Sources (in Pencil)

The goal: To start thinking about source criticism early in the research process, while remaining flexible and inclusive.

Does it seem like we’re getting ahead of ourselves? After all, you’re still gathering sources on your topic and trying to determine their relevance. You are discovering whether or not they are “primary with respect to” your Problem. Isn’t it too early to start winnowing them down, or to number the dots and arrange them in a pattern?

Yes, and no.

Research, once again, is a nonlinear process, which is why we keep encouraging you to think through your ideas, your questions, and your sources in a subjunctive mode—to keep thinking What if? We want you to take the time to chart and rechart your course as many times as necessary before you launch your journey.

In practical terms, this means being aware of research issues—for example, that you will likely need to create your own research puzzle, instead of finding it lying on the ground, ready-made—and trying out different possibilities, without jumping to a question or forcing a project.

For this exercise, try connecting some dots using your sources, but do this in pencil so that you can erase the lines and draw new ones later. Assume that you’ll have to.

The steps are simple, but they require bringing together some of the work you have done so far on creating self-evidence, and some new thinking about how to synthesize it. Write down answers to these questions, based on wherever you are right now in the research process. This is an iterative process, involving repeated corrections and updates, so repeat it as needed later on.

1. 1. Where are my dots (sources)? Draw on what you wrote down for the “Envision Your Primary Sources” exercise.
2. 2. How will I determine which dots belong to my picture, and which to someone else’s? Both this and the next question require you to be as honest as possible about the problem that motivates you.
3. 3. How will I determine which of the things I have are actually dots, rather than smudges?
4. 4. What is the best way to arrange my dots, so as to create an accurate, three-dimensional picture? Consider this part of the drafting process: you are trying out some narrative possibilities by structuring and ordering your sources in different configurations, to see how they speak to one another. The key, of course, is not to force any pieces of the puzzle together.
5. 5. How many dots will I need to answer my questions, solve my Problem, and complete my project? This is a question that only you can answer, although your Sounding Board might be able to help you make this assessment.

COMMONLY MADE MISTAKES

• • Thinking that you have to have all your sources in hand before you start this process. You will need to have multiple sources (dots) to begin this process, but not all.
• • Writing in pen rather than pencil. Recognize that the connections you make between sources right now are necessarily tentative and speculative. Expect that you will have to reassess your judgments later on, and don’t think that you have to “stick to” your original thought.

Taking Stock of Your Research Resources

You have some sources. You’ve started using them to think through your Topic and focus in on your Problem. You’ve been taking both logistical and ethical factors into consideration, tracking your keyword searches and being mindful of how you are connecting the dots with sources. By now, you should be in a mental space where your ideas are taking shape, even as you remain open-minded about where your research might take you. But to turn research ideas into a research project, you need to take into account an array of other material factors, including the following:

• • Time. How much time do you realistically have in which to conduct your research? By when do you have to finish the project? Is it possible to do justice to your questions given this amount of time? What other commitments will be competing for your time between now and then?
• • Funding. How much will it cost for you to carry out the proposed work? What funding is available to you, and what types of research expenses will that funding support? Is it enough? If not, are there ways to relocate your work to make it financially viable, while at the same time preserving your core problem?
• • Writing speed. Are you the kind of writer who works well on tight deadlines, turning research into text rapidly? Or does it take you time to mull over your questions? Does your proposed research depend upon an urgent time frame to be of value?
• • Family responsibilities. How might your relationships affect the time you’ll have for research? What types and volume of research will family obligations allow? Are you a caregiver? Will you be able to subdivide your work into shorter segments, spread out over a longer time? Or does the nature of your research require a long, unbroken period of time to complete?
• • Access. Can you obtain the materials you need to conduct this research? Does your library subscribe to the databases you might need? Will you be able to visit the archives, corporate files, or private papers that you’ve identified as being essential to the project? Is your proposed research politically sensitive, and if so, do you know whether you will be permitted access to sources?
• • Risk tolerance. Researchers in war zones, or on volcanoes, place themselves in life-threatening situations. What is your risk tolerance? How about discomfort? Are you capable of working over long periods of time away from, say, access to medical facilities, electricity, and running water? Be realistic.
• • Abilities. What is your skill set, or that of your research team? What languages do you speak and read? Do you have the necessary expertise to conduct this research?
• • Human subjects. Does your proposed research include work with at-risk populations (such as marginalized communities or children)? Do you need ethics board approval for research involving human subjects? Have you prepared adequately and rigorously to handle the particular challenges of such research, in terms of confidentiality, data security, and more? Can you keep your sources safe, or would your work endanger them?
• • Personality. One of the most abstract, yet also most important, factors to consider is your own personality. While the binary of “extrovert” and “introvert” is a blunt tool with which to categorize sensibilities, ask these key questions: In which kinds of situations do I find my internal battery recharged, and in which situations is it drained? Do frequent social interactions leave me feeling energized, or do I prefer solitary work? With this in mind, what kind of research will my work realistically entail? Will it entail long hours of solitary reading? Or will it involve morning-to-night lab work or fieldwork, where time to myself will be scarce or nonexistent?

The point here is not to be “essentialist” about yourself, your identity, and your capacities. No matter who you think yourself to be right now, remember that research is a powerful process that can and often does challenge and even transform the researcher. So don’t be surprised if it brings out aspects of your character that you didn’t know existed. Likewise, in some cases a project might feel so important to a researcher—their sense of commitment may be so strong—that just this once they are willing to work beyond their comfort zone.

Just remember: it is OK to recognize your own limits and to act in accordance with them. It is equally OK not to pursue a project that would cause you harm.

And above all, know this: even in those cases when you decide not to pursue a project, this is not tantamount to abandoning yourself or your underlying problem. As we have hinted at earlier, and as we explore in more depth later in this chapter, it is possible to find your Problem in another project, and to pursue it just as meaningfully and just as rigorously.

TRY THIS NOW: Decision Matrix

The goal: To envision which factors will likely have the greatest impact, positive or negative, on the success of your research project, and to adjust your plan accordingly.

Table 6. MATERIAL FACTORS

• Time • Funding • Writing speed

• Family responsibilities • Access • Risk tolerance

• Abilities • Human subjects • Personality

Table 6 lists several material factors.

Using table 7 as your guide, follow these steps:

1. 1. Create an inventory of all of the factors that could impact the success of your project as you currently imagine it. Aim for a list of ten to fifteen factors. You might phrase them as follows:
   • “I like talking to strangers.” (personality)
   • “I have to do daycare pickup at 3pm, M-F.” (family responsibilities)
   • “I’m great at math, and I love statistics.” (abilities)
   • “I will only be able to do field research if I get grant X.” (funding)
2. 2. Categorize each factor as positive or negative. For example, if you thrive in social settings, and draw energy from meeting and interacting with complete strangers, you could categorize this as a positive factor, if you envision a project involving extensive interviewing. By contrast, if you grapple with severe anxiety in social settings, then this might count as a negative factor.
3. 3. Categorize each factor as high-, medium-, or low-impact, depending on the degree to which you believe it will affect your project.

Something to keep in mind about step 2: when we speak of “positive” and “negative” factors, the goal is not to cast judgments about ourselves as people—there is nothing fundamentally better or worse about being an extrovert or an introvert—but rather to assess the compatibility between the project you envision and yourself as a human being. The goal is to take an inventory that will give you an honest, unvarnished overview of the different factors that will shape your project.

Table 7. CREATE A DECISION MATRIX

Feel free to add other factors and to add more columns to your own table, as necessary.

Create an outline, or list if/then scenarios for these factors, if that helps you.

Whichever approach you choose, while mapping out what it might take to carry out your project, include as much detail as possible and be honest with yourself about your own capacities and limitations. Indicate clearly which factors will be the most decisive and which will be the least decisive. Use this hierarchy to figure out your probabilities of success with different types of research projects. Adjust your research questions accordingly.

COMMONLY MADE MISTAKES

• • Underestimating the amount of time it will take to complete the project
• • Listing only “professional” factors and failing to include personal factors that might have a real effect on your research progress
• • Neglecting to consider ethical factors such as the effects of human-subject research on participants

SOUNDING BOARD: Is Your Decision Matrix Complete?

After you’ve done your own assessment of the practicalities of various research scenarios and written them down in your decision matrix, discuss them with your Sounding Board. They might be able to point out sources or research tools (or constraints) you weren’t aware of, or to introduce you to people with firsthand experience of the archive you hope to visit. A conversation with your mentor can be an efficient way to refine your scope.

Two Types of Plan B

We hope that everything works out well for you, of course, and that your intended research proceeds smoothly. In case it doesn’t, however, you want to be ready to pursue other possible pathways. As researchers, much of what we do is a plan B of one kind or another. Best to learn early on that being flexible is part of the job description. One of the thrills of research, in fact, is overcoming a challenge or being nimble enough to bypass a roadblock to accomplishing your goal.

Consider these two scenarios.

Scenario 1: Same Problem, Different Case

What do you do when you’ve found the right problem, but the project you envision cannot be done for practical reasons?

A student in Tom’s History of Information class came to office hours to discuss a paper topic. The student was interested in activism and protest and the relationship between social media–based online organization and real-world offline organization. How did the two relate, if at all? Black Lives Matter (BLM) was of particular concern to the student, and so their question as originally formulated was, How have BLM activists used online organization techniques in support of real-world demonstrations and actions?

The topic and question were great, but the methodological obstacles were daunting: if the student had months to interview BLM activists, engage in ethnographic research, and gain trust and access to personal accounts and records of their activities (texts, emails, etc.), this could be a stellar project. But the student had mere weeks to formulate and complete the project, no way to access private collections, nor time to engage in the ethnographic fieldwork necessary to form a credible empirical basis. The student had a great set of questions, but the conditions were just not in place for the project to succeed as envisioned. Not even a seasoned researcher could complete such a project in a few weeks without doing serious injustice to the complexities of the subject matter.

What to do?

Instead of abandoning the problem, the student and Tom carried on the conversation, trying to get at the deeper layers of the question. Instead of getting overly distracted by terms like “social media” and “online organization,” they tried to identify the underlying stakes involved—what each of these terms was a “case of.” Was the student’s interest fundamentally connected to Twitter and Facebook? (No, not necessarily.) Would other kinds of telecommunications and information technologies also be of interest—say, technologies like the telephone, or even the telegraph, if we were to imagine a BLM movement happening in, say, the 1910s or the 1960s? (Yes.)

What about earlier civil rights movements? Did the focus have to be Black Lives Matter or would something from further back in history be valid as well? (Yes, but it would have to be a movement that addressed racial inequalities in particular.)

These exercises enabled the student to identify the underlying “problem” of their questions remarkably quickly.

Suddenly, the researcher had opened up a world of possible cases to consider, all while keeping their core problem constant. How did the Freedom Riders or Martin Luther King Jr. or the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) use communication technologies in the course of their operations? Or, perhaps, how did Gandhi or Cesar Chavez? In particular, how did these organizations use technology, not simply to organize marches well in advance, but in the course of “real-time” emergencies: the arrest of key members, the need to respond to physical emergencies, the need to communicate to news media outlets in the context of constantly changing circumstances—operations that we now take for granted in the internet age?

Suddenly, carrying out this research project no longer depended upon having years and years to do ethnographic research, or gaining access to the private diaries of political activists. Because the student was aware of the problem underlying their work, it was going to be possible to pursue that problem by different means. The chances of finding a relevant body of primary sources became significantly higher, whether in analog format (in the archives at a nearby library, museum, or college) or via online archives.

The key point here is that when you as a researcher know what is core to your research problem, rather than what is merely a “case” of it, this gives you a kind of passport with which you can travel to all kinds of different places, times, and communities—all without leaving behind your research “center.” What is more, even if this student had, right after this conversation with Tom, happened upon a previously unknown repository of primary source materials connected to Black Lives Matter—something that could be explored in time for a final project—this introspective process would still enable the student to approach this case with the insight that only comes with knowing what the core stakes are in the research question. Rather than, for example, assuming that BLM’s techniques of organization are fundamentally unprecedented, all thanks to the existence of social media, the student would be able to situate this “online-offline” dyad within a broader historical context of, say, technologically mediated communication and on-the-ground organization. Either way, the student’s research would enrich their understanding of the problem.

In short, being realistic does not mean abandoning your ideals. Blue-sky thinking can sometimes lead to viable research projects. But if your ambitions outstrip your resources, don’t give up hope. Simply return to the problem that underlies your questions and your project, and seek out another case that might let you pursue it.

Scenario 2: Same Topic, Different Project

What do you do when the project you envision could theoretically be done, just not by you?

As we saw in the Black Lives Matter example, knowing their core Problem enables a researcher to locate it in any number of different cases. You might have thought that you were exclusively concerned with Brazil or women’s literature, but then, by way of discovering your actual Problem, you realized that both “Brazil” and “women’s literature” were in fact cases of that Problem. And this now frees you to relocate your project in different ways.

But there are other limits to the cases you could choose that go beyond questions of the ability of sources or time limits. Choosing the right case for your Problem is also a question of temperament. It needs to fit who you are as a person. Let’s say you want to understand the interior lives of communities who live in the margins of contemporary society: individuals living in homeless encampments in your city, unemployed youth in the Rust Belt, individuals struggling with mental health challenges, or undocumented migrants. As marginalized communities, they may not have the power to shape the narratives the rest of the world uses to understand them—and this disturbs you, emotionally and intellectually.

But let’s also say that you are a deeply introverted person, one who experiences social anxiety. Are you prepared to carry out a project that will likely require you to engage in extensive fieldwork over long stretches of time? Are you able to sustain yourself in contexts where you are perhaps far from your own loved ones, from your own routines, from your support systems for extended periods of time? Are you able to take care of yourself in the context of immersion of this kind?

If the answer is “yes,” then perhaps this is the case for you. If the answer is “maybe not,” don’t feel bad about it. And, even more importantly, don’t try to deny it. You may worry that, if you give up on your case, then you have to give up on your Problem as well—but this isn’t so. As long as you are in tune with your Problem, and truly understand what it is, then it is possible to change your case quite dramatically without abandoning the underlying problem that excites and disturbs you. If you’re not sure how to do that, begin again with more introspective work to help you understand your underlying problem. More insight about your motivations will in turn make finding another compelling and appropriate case much easier.

Now that we’ve examined some of the common ways a project can be thrown off course, as well as how best to pivot, let’s consider some of the more nuts-and-bolts tasks that go into designing a project that works: setting up your workspace, choosing the right tools, and planning a work schedule tuned to your needs.

Setting Up Shop

Research is a craft. And as a craftsperson, it’s important that you set up your shop just the way you like it. If you have friends who are serious artists or musicians, you know how much they love to talk about their instruments, tools, and work habits. Painters search for the perfect brushes, violinists for the perfect bows, oboists for the perfect reeds, and guitarists for the perfect strings. The same is true for chefs and their knives; fishermen and their lures; mechanics and their machines.

You’ll thank yourself if you take the time to think through the design of your work environment. You’ll be spending a lot of time in this physical space and using these tools. Remember how we said in chapter 1 that with questions it’s best to start small? When setting up shop, details matter too. Get a few seemingly minor things right and you’ll reap the gains in increased motivation, productivity, and happiness. There is nothing superficial about giving due attention to physical conditions, since it will affect the well-being of you and your research.

Assess which research tools are worth investing in, given your available resources and what you want to accomplish. Will you be doing a lot of interviewing? You’ll need a microphone, a recorder, and a storage and retrieval system. Will you be composing voice notes in the field? You might want to invest in reliable voice-to-text software, and a long-lasting battery. Concert pianists might shell out more money for a piano than the rest of us would (or could) for a car because for them it’s not a luxury. A well-funded researcher might be able to accomplish more by hiring assistants, but this is not an option for all of us. Consider what you need (wants are secondary), so that you can set up shop in a way that is “perfect for me, here and now.”

When a paring knife or a calligraphy brush sits in one’s hand just right, it makes the act of preparing a meal or composing a work of art incrementally more joyous, inviting, and sometimes seemingly effortless. The same is true for you as a researcher, and so you should give thought to your tools and your workspace.

Here are some of the things you will need for your shop to run smoothly.

The Right Tools

If you write by hand, your choice of pen or pencil matters. Does the graphite in your pencil have the right texture for you? Does it dull or break too often? Do your pen and your writing surface have a nice bite, or does the ink spill out messily (and does that bother you)? How quickly does your hand grow fatigued? Likewise, do you need a $25 leather-bound blank book to get you in the writing mood, or will a $2 cellophane-wrapped sheaf of loose-leaf paper from the local drugstore do the trick? Even this type of decision can have real consequences. The blank book might inspire you to take writing more seriously, and thus to invest more energy in it. Maybe it “slows you down” in a good way, inspiring you to take more time to think through your ideas. A bound book, in contrast, can be intimidating, its price tag and design almost scoffing at you as you lift your pen. This had better be good, you can almost hear it say. You convince yourself that passing thoughts are unworthy of the journal, and try to save its pristine pages for those moments when you truly have something “worthwhile” to say. Every thought must be complete, every sentence sparkling. Drafts and fragmentary thoughts must never besmirch its pages. Your paper choice has led to disaster. Writing and note-taking are hard enough on their own. None of us needs an added inhibition. Perhaps you’d benefit from a less reverent relationship with your writing surface.

These might all seem like inconsequential things, but everything about your workspace will shape your desire to write, the rate at which you will lose steam, and even the quality and tone of your prose. If you use a note-taking system that subconsciously makes you feel rushed and bottled up, like a tiny memo pad, this will affect your work. Your ideas will have less space to unfold, and you’ll constantly be cutting yourself short. By the same token, a note-taking system that feels cumbersome and inconvenient (like an app that requires you to have Wi-Fi access at all times, or a large sketch pad, which is hard to transport) can easily result in writing less often. Like other artists, musicians, and craftspersons, you have every right to be choosy about your tools.

The Right Time of Day

When to write? More specifically, at what time of day should you focus on what type of writing? The answer varies widely from person to person, but here is a rule of thumb: do the “heavy lifting” when you’re fresh and focused, and the more “mindless” work when you’re tired or distracted. If you’re most alert in the morning, or late at night, then that is when you should write new prose. By contrast, many of us experience fatigue or distraction at other times of day. These are good times to pivot and work on those forms of writing that demand less creative engagement: cleaning up footnotes, spell-checking, and the like.

Writing also has its seasons, and sometimes you have to let the project lie fallow to let the soil regenerate. Take a break and go for a walk. Watch a movie. Exercise. Have a meal. Sleep. You may feel like you are taking “time away” from your work—and, indeed, you are. But the truth is, chances are your mind is still at work on the puzzle of writing, and may even untie some complex knots without any conscious effort on your part at all. When this happens (and it happens often!) a writer returns to the page and can sometimes feel as if someone else must have solved the problem or cracked the code for them—because suddenly something that seemed overwhelmingly complex or difficult to articulate simply flows, effortlessly.

You can also ask someone, or something, to read your work to you. When you simply cannot bear the thought of reading through your draft another time, ask a friend to narrate it aloud. Or, if that’s simply too much to ask of even a close friend, use one of the readily available “text-to-audio” functions that translates written text into spoken audio. Sit back, or stand up, and simply listen to your draft, narrated to you in sometimes comically awkward computerized voices. What you will discover is that even when you are unable to detect typos in your draft, having become too familiar with the text to spot them anymore, you will somehow be able to “spot” them immediately when you listen. Something will simply feel “off,” prompting you to return to the text, locate the culprit, and fix the error.

Listen for cadence as well. Is the prose lyrical and patient, or does it feel rushed in parts? Are there any stretches of self-indulgent prose? Are there any points you are belaboring, or perhaps long stretches in need of a segue? Or maybe one paragraph has too many sentences all of the same length, and the passage is crying out for variation.

Remember that when someone does read your work, they don’t just download it instantly into their minds. Reading is an experience, and it’s up to you to make that experience a fulfilling one.

TRY THIS NOW: Get Money for Nothing (Prepare a Formal Research Proposal)

The goal: To catalyze all of the “potential energy” you’ve been building up thus far, by giving it a sudden, unexpected jolt—namely, by writing a formal, forward-looking prospectus about your project-in-the-making, where you try to persuade someone to support your work. This research prospectus will also bring into even sharper focus your assumptions right now about what other people might find compelling about your study. This is definitely going to feel premature, but trust us: it’s still part of the process.

Up till now, we’ve been urging you to focus on introspection, and to avoid worrying about the outside world. We’ve urged you to identify and trust your own instincts. Even while looking at search results and examining primary sources, your goal has been to think of your project from the inside out, not the outside in.

For this exercise, however—just for a moment—you’re going to become an extrovert. You’re going to take the self-dialogue you’ve been having and turn it outward, explaining your project to an imaginary reader in as coherent and persuasive a manner as you can at this point. And you’re going to do it all before you’re ready.

What is the title of your research project?

What are your main research questions?

Why have other people failed to ask those questions, or to answer them well?

What are the primary sources you need in order to answer your questions and address your Problem?

A word of caution (but also comfort): you are not going to feel ready for this. In fact, you shouldn’t. After all, how could you possibly know how to explain the point of a project that is still in formation? But there’s no time to fret about this. Imagine that it’s the morning of a big exam, or a job interview, only that late the night before a power outage reset your alarm or let your smartphone battery run out. Your eyes open, and the realization hits you like a wave: I’ve got to go!

Don’t have a title? Make one up! Don’t have a final list of primary sources you’ll need? Finalize it! Haven’t finished thinking through the potential implications of your work? Open your mouth and start talking. The curtain is up, you’re on stage, and the audience is waiting. In short, pretend for a moment that you are much further along in the research process than you actually are, and try to convince a research-funding agency to choose your project over all of the many other deserving applications it receives every year.

Why in the world would we recommend such a thing? Isn’t the whole point of this book introspection, patience, centeredness? Yes, but keep in mind two important things.

First, research requires imagination. Yes, research requires other qualities, like competence, tenacity, and honesty. You have to do a ton of note-taking, along with meticulous record-keeping, fact-checking, and source citation. But research is not merely transcription or stenography or the precise replication of existing ideas. Research depends on one’s ability to envision realities and ideas that don’t yet exist. And because they don’t exist yet, no amount of preparation will ever leave you “100 percent ready” to begin.

Simply put, you never know enough to begin.

The adage applies as much to someone who has years to complete their project as to someone who has only weeks. And yet: if you don’t begin, you’ll never finish.

Counterintuitive as it might seem, then . . .

Before you write a single page of your book, give it a title.

Before you shoot a single frame of your documentary, give it a name.

Go even further. Write a review of the book you’ve yet to write. Write a blurb for the dust jacket. Now write a scathing review. Now write your rebuttal.

Remember when we spoke of the “executive part of you that speaks, but does not know,” and the “intuitive part of you that knows, but cannot speak”? Up to now, we’ve been focusing on building up the intuitive side. As we saw with that student of feng shui, if you ignore or suppress intuition, you might never get started, or you might end up executing the wrong plan. But if you listen to your intuition first, the executive side’s job is much easier. The insights come pouring out.

Now is the time to let that “executive” part of you back in the room, since now you know what it needs to do. Instead of shouting down your intuitive side, or trampling over it with big words, that executive part of you will now be working in collaboration with and in service of your intuitive part.

And something magical will happen. At first, maybe you’ll cringe every time you write a definitive-sounding sentence—because, deep down, you’ll know just how undefined everything still is. Your air of certainty will seem forced. You might even feel like a fraud.

But, then . . . you’ll write a sentence, and maybe another, that makes you stop and think: Wait. That’s not too bad. Not every sentence is a keeper, but these sentences are good. You’ll read over what you wrote and realize: I never thought of that before. This is a new idea. I might be onto something! It’s a strange feeling, as if the words were written by someone else.

What is happening is this: under the stress of having to articulate ideas that are still inchoate and underdeveloped, your executive intelligence will kick into autopilot and start to assemble one “smart-sounding” sentence after the next. It will iron out the wrinkles, and fill in the gaps and crevices, building up paragraphs that—to the undiscerning eye—actually seem like the author knows what they’re talking about.

The second thing to keep in mind is this: this exercise is still part of the introspective process. It’s still taking place “behind closed doors.” You shouldn’t really submit this proposal to public scrutiny. The reason to do this type of envisioning now—even before you have done all of the due diligence on what other research exists on your topic—is to produce a type of self-evidence that you can generate only in this raw, unpolished state. Every time you delay your “start date,” telling yourself, Just one more source! another one of your rough edges will be sanded down and smoothed out, your fresh, exploratory mindset slowing giving way to something more formal and “professional.”

The polish will come later. For now, what you need most of all is to articulate, in written form, your earliest thoughts on a subject. Your agenda.

What were my initial thoughts, back when I was still in that fresh, exploratory mindset? I never wrote them down, because I assumed I wasn’t ready to start. This is one lamentation you never want to have as a researcher.

Completing this exercise will not only create a record of those thoughts, but will help firm up your self-centered foundation, preparing you for the next big step you’ll take in part 2 of delving into the wider world of scholarship.

So, try this.

Prepare a research grant proposal in which you articulate a research question and argue that someone should give you money to answer it. Force yourself to be clear and concise by writing a formal document, within tight constraints:

• • 4–6 double-spaced pages
• • 1-inch margins
• • Times New Roman, 12-point font
• • Due in one week (to be submitted to yourself only!)

Make your case with confidence. No need to reveal just how tentative many of your ideas still are. It’s time to ask your questions out loud, and to proclaim your Problem clearly. Be bold, even if it all feels a bit premature.

The research proposal should contain the following four parts. (Sample proposals to help you jumpstart the process can be found at whereresearchbegins.com.)

1. 1. Contextual framework. Briefly situate your reader in time and space. Pretend you are writing a paper for a faceless committee of reviewers whom you have never met, and who may not have the same level of expertise with your subject matter. You need to equip them by explaining (succinctly but thoroughly) the essential knowledge and frames of reference that they will need to understand the facts of your proposed research and appreciate its potential significance.
2. 2. Goals and objectives. State the questions you propose to answer using primary source archival materials. It is OK, even essential, for you to include more than one question, so long as they collectively “add up” to a meaningful and coherent constellation of questions that helps you explore a specific, researchable, and meaningful question. This is a proposal for funding/future research, and so you are encouraged to frame your project as exploratory research with open-ended questions. At the same time, this section should prepare your reader for the case you will be making in part 2 about the potential significance of your findings.
3. 3. Significance. Based on your current understanding of your chosen area of analysis, explain the significance of your proposed questions. Why, given what we already know about your topic, would our understanding be significantly improved by your project? And remember: since this is a proposal for future research, rather than completed research, you cannot justify “significance” based on any “hoped-for outcome.” That is to say, the significance of your proposed questions cannot be pegged to one expected answer to such questions, otherwise your research will likely lead to foregone conclusions. Rather, the significance of your proposal must reside in a well-articulated, meaningful, and open-ended problem that you have arrived at through primary source–based (and secondary source–based) research.
4. 4. Project plan. Which specific primary sources would you plan to use to undertake this project, and where are they located? Additionally, if your project were approved, and you received travel funds, which fieldwork site would you visit, interviews would you conduct, datasets would you access, archival collections would you use, etc.? (Be as specific as possible here. For example, cite interviewees and/or archival collections by name, if possible.) Provide a detailed methodology that will enable you to achieve your project goals. What texts, observations, or other source materials will you need to answer your question? What analytical framework will you use to understand or interpret these sources? Provide a logistical plan, including your timeline and list of project milestones.

COMMONLY MADE MISTAKES

• • Avoiding writing this draft by using one of the oldest procrastination tricks in the book: “I just need to do a little bit more research.” Save that for later. For now, however, think and write from where you are at this moment.
• • Writing defensively. Anticipate things that your reader might ask about or challenge, certainly, but do so in the service of drawing attention to the potential contributions of your project. Don’t tell us what we won’t learn, but what we will. This is the time for positive thinking.
• • Adopting a tentative, unsure, or apologetic tone. When you are envisioning your ideal research-future, do so with confidence. Say “I will . . .” instead of “I will attempt to . . .”

SOUNDING BOARD: Share Your Proposal with a Trusted Mentor (Who Understands How Preliminary This Is)

Read through your own proposal. Is it persuasive? What questions might someone ask about your goals, sources, methods, assumptions? Anticipate these questions and revise your document accordingly. Then—and this is totally optional—show it to someone you trust and solicit their feedback. Explain the goal of this drafting exercise, as described above. Does the proposal make an effective case for why this project is compelling and important? If your mentor didn’t know that this was your proposal, would they give the applicant the money? Why or why not? Which parts of the proposal do they think could be improved? Oral or written feedback are both welcome, but if possible set up an in-person meeting to hear what they have to say. Write down their suggestions, and then—be sure to do this before proceeding to part 2—rewrite your proposal based on the suggestions you agree with.

Then send a message of thanks.

You Have the Beginnings of a Project

Everything is now in place. You’ve checked and clarified your own motivations and interests. You’ve settled on research questions and identified the underlying problem that these questions belong to. You’ve identified the assumptions that brought you here, and you’ve taken ownership of them.

If you still harbor some doubts, take note of them. Write them down. But remember that you are still drafting. Uncertainties are normal. Everything, in fact, is provisional until the study is complete, and a researcher should always remain open-minded and ready to change as facts warrant. If, at this stage, you feel grave misgivings about the direction things are going, you can revisit the exercises you found most useful, and double-check to make sure that you have avoided the commonly made mistakes. But don’t worry. In part 2, you will find even more useful techniques for articulating, evaluating, testing, and rethinking your Problem. You’re not done with introspection.

For now, take another moment to review what you’ve done. By this point, you should have a good sense of what the stakes of this research are for you, and why the results will be meaningful. You’ve also taken some pragmatic steps: doing an initial review of some primary sources, taking stock of your abilities and constraints, seeking advice from your Sounding Board when necessary, and choosing the type of project that best suits your temperament. You’ve even written out a first-draft research proposal, envisioning your project in formal terms. And you’ve been writing all along.

Now it’s time to begin your project.