What’s Next in Your Research Journey?

While reading this book, you will have gained new ideas about what research is and how to undertake it. We hope that we have also persuaded you to make research a habit—a regular part of your life. You should now be launched on your new research project. But we hope that you will look beyond your current project and envision ways to apply the principles and strategies you’ve learned in this book to other problems.

What lies ahead for you? To take another course in your Field? To become a professional researcher? You have a wide array of possibilities and opportunities for the pursuit of research.

Notice that we did not say academic research, necessarily. Research of any kind. The researcher’s life is a rich, rewarding, and critical one—it’s one that doesn’t stand by and complacently consume commonsense truths passed down to us. The research disposition is not merely skeptical. Reflexive skepticism, after all, is no more reliable than reflexive credulity. A researcher is skeptical and committed to undertaking the challenging work of turning skepticism into specific questions, and then to seeking out answers. The researcher is equipped to stress-test and evaluate the claims made by others, not necessarily because they have memorized all of the facts, but because they know how such claims are built in the first place—and deeper still, they know how research questions are built and refined.

TRY THIS NOW: Find a New Problem and Start a New Project

The goal: To begin planning your research future by thinking about what other problems matter to you, and envisioning how you might turn them into research projects.

When you find your center, you gain a superpower: the ability to discern when your Problem itself is changing, or perhaps when new problems are starting to take shape in your mind. Thus far, all of our examples and exercises have operated under the assumption of “one person, one problem.” For the sake of simplicity, we’ve pretended that every scholar has one problem that motivates and generates their work. Likewise, we’ve treated problems as something like a mathematical constant: an independent variable that stays exactly the same across time.

While some of this is true—problems can and do endure for years, sometimes decades—this does not mean that problems never change, or that a single scholar might not be grappling with several problems. (To repeat our earlier advice, however, if you tallied up your “problems” and discovered dozens, then you’re probably dealing with “interests” or “curiosities,” and not “problems” in the sense we use this word in the book. In that case, you might benefit from reviewing chapter 2.)

Problems change because people change. As you move through life, your Problem will transform. It may dissolve entirely. It may linger, and yet lose some of its power over you. For reasons we cannot always explain, sometimes problems that once cast a spell over us can, with the passage of time, feel small in retrospect. And a new problem, or problems, can take shape: new and enduring disturbances that keep you up at night, and hound you day after day, for years on end. To reiterate: we are talking about problems as productive and motivating research concerns. We are talking about disturbances that are personal but can nevertheless be analyzed and evaluated with a critical, independent eye.

Like the movement of tectonic plates under the ocean surface, the disappearance of one’s long-standing intellectual problem, and the formation of a new one, can be hard to detect. But, as a self-centered researcher, you will be better equipped than most to discern such subtle shifts. You are now attuned to take note of changes that your prior self would likely have missed.

So, with all of this in mind, one thing you might do right now is to identify a second problem and start a new project.

This might seem like peculiar advice, especially since your first research project is only just starting. But it’s not too early to begin building a small repertoire of projects. Yes, you’ll continue working on your current project. But what will you do when you need a break from Project 1? Or when Project 1 is complete? Start planning ahead now.

As we noted in the introduction, research is not a linear process. By that, we mean also that it’s possible—even desirable—to have multiple ideas and projects in play at a time. Is Project 1 exhausting you, or somehow not motivating you this week? Perhaps you can shift your attention to Project 2. You’ll be making progress on solving another problem you care about, but it will feel like a respite.

Then again, a single problem can (and often does) manifest itself in more than one project. You may well discover that Project 2 is connected to your core problem—maybe explicitly, or perhaps at a slight remove. Working on a couple of projects (not too many!) can let you view your Problem from different vantage points, like a battery of cameras mounted in different places but all trained on the same subject.

Finally, remember: the exercises in this book are repeatable, and can be used to launch any new project, from your first to your fifteenth. We use them ourselves. No matter if you’re an undergraduate student or an emeritus professor, a rookie journalist or a Pulitzer Prize winner, the beginning of the research process is always dynamic, often confusing, and always full of possibility. Harness that potential.

COMMONLY MADE MISTAKES

• Thinking that research is a linear process, or that you have to finish Project 1 before you start Project 2
• Mistaking many areas of interest as each being a separate problem
• Trying to take on too many projects at one time

TRY THIS NOW: Help Someone Else

The goal: To use the Self-Centered Research philosophy, techniques, skills, and exercises to help other researchers find their center.

Getting over yourself, like becoming a self-centered researcher, is not just something you think about, but rather something you do . . . over and over again.

As you become ever more familiar with the process of Self-Centered Research—of crafting and refining questions, rather than trying to answer them prematurely—you hone your abilities to analyze, appreciate, and advance not only your own scholarship, but also the research practices of others.

Imagine a world of centered researchers. No, don’t just imagine it—help make it a reality.

You’re ready. You’ve gained multiple techniques for centering your research. You appreciate at first hand the value of a varied toolkit for research decision-making. If you don’t feel you’ve mastered a certain technique yet, repeat the exercise. You have the capacity to offer feedback attuned to the needs of others: work by friends, colleagues, students, and even mentors.

Don’t assume that any of them have gone through what you just have. Even if they are competent, accomplished, distinguished, even eminent researchers, don’t assume that they have already found their center. We are all working on finding our centers. Even if a fellow researcher has found their center, remember: centers shift over the course of a career, and a lifetime, and we all have to recenter ourselves at certain points in our lives.

So all you need to do to make a difference in another researcher’s life is to apply the processes outlined in this book. When you read their work, or listen to their explanations, ask yourself:

• Are they falling victim to that common mistake of “trying to sound smart”?
• Are they concealing their motivating problems behind insider jargon, feats of eloquence, or invocation of “gaps in the literature”?
• Are they able to articulate their research concerns in ways that successfully disturb you as a third-party listener—as someone who might not care at all about their case but is certainly receptive to their Problem?
• Are they aware of who and where their Problem Collective is?
• Are they burying the most important and most critical insights in random places in the middle of their study?

When reading their research proposals, abstracts, or outlines, do you feel well guided, or do you get lost in the data and terminology? Do you feel invited into the problem, or do you find yourself tripping over insider-speak, unidentified persons and events, and unexplained acronyms?

As your ability to analyze your own research deepens, helping someone else will feel effortless by comparison.

In short, you are ready to become someone else’s Sounding Board. We think you should.

If you’re not sure how to help others in this way, here are several ready-made ways to get involved:

• Writing partnerships/workshops, in which the members offer good-faith critiques of one another’s works in progress. Organize your own!
• Manuscript reviews, which are confidential reviews of unpublished scholarly studies, written for a dual audience: the editors of the journal or publishing house who will decide whether or not to publish a particular work, and the author. Their goals are to offer constructive criticism of the work in progress, and a judgment about whether or not it meets the quality standards for publication.
• Book reviews, which are public appraisals of a published work of scholarship, credited to a named reviewer. These pieces of writing offer an opinion on the specific merits and shortcomings of a single study, and explain its contributions to a field of inquiry.
• State-of-the-field essays, which identify current trends in the field and summarize and appraise the contributions of several works of scholarship toward answering its questions and solving its problems. These are synthetic reviews on high-level conceptual or philosophical issues, for which evaluation of specific studies is a secondary priority.
• Conference and workshop presentations, which, depending on field, can be of studies in progress or completed studies. Typically, the researcher summarizes their findings, followed by a critique by a discussant (or panel) and comments or questions from the audience.
• For more ideas, visit whereresearchbegins.com.

You can contribute to the advancement of research by participating in any of these activities. Help someone in your Field. Help someone in your Collective.

Be our Sounding Board.

Reach out. You can help us by sharing your experience and ideas. How is the Self-Centered Research process working for you? Have you had success in adapting or modifying any exercises? We welcome your suggestions for improvement. Research, as we’ve said all along, is a collaborative and iterative process. This book represents just one small step in expanding a community.

We hope that you, like us, are in research for the long haul.