#24 From Stuck in Reading to Doing

Practical advice

Read time: 3 min.

I was speaking with a PhD candidate recently.

The main challenge of this candidate is "disguised procrastination":

A lot of time spent reading others' works.

But no time spent on doing research:

I was doing the same a few years ago. I read a lot but my research was stuck.

Reading others' research papers does not give you all the answers on how to do research.

Hands-on experience teaches lessons you may not find in books/articles/guides.

Of course, we should not stop reading.

Reading is important.

But we get expertise and close to "mastery" with real-world experience.

Read. Apply. Repeat.

The best way is to start trying to do things and learn by doing.

You could apply this for pretty much anything and not only scientific research.

Read a few relevant papers and see how they’re structured. Then apply this structure.

Then read each section of these papers and get their structure.

As Nike says: “Just do it”.

Set some time for reading. And some for action (experimentation, data collection, analysis, writing…) that only you must do.

That’s it for this week. Let us know in the comments if you think I missed anything or if you have any other suggestions.

As usual, if anything is unclear or if you need help with your research projects, please contact me and I will reply.

See you next Sunday!

Jamal

How do you beat procrastination?

Let us know in the comments.

I simply enjoy my time and the nice weather with my family in Europe. It’s about 25 degrees, without the AC!

I have to say that I like the feeling when you finish a research project. Time to do something else. Something new. More on this soon.

or to participate.