Monday, January 11, 2021

How to quickly establish knowledge on a field

One of the fastest way to create a mental frame of a new field is to do a literature review. But it is not a passive processing of reading and reading and reading. Instead, while you're reading, you're extracting key information, key findings; and recording them. Give yourself time to immerse yourself into the literature. Pursue threads that interest you. Allow yourself to stop at a sentence or paragraph that makes a lot of sense to you, look at the citation, find it in the reference list and go after that article to find out more.

I record key findings into a table.

Gratitude for a library subscription

 One of the things you may learn to appreciate most about being in a university - whether studying or working - is the library subscription to all the journals. After you are out, you lose access to all the knowledge garnered in the world in their original form. You want to check the accuracy of some research? You have to go right to the source. And for research, the first unadulterated and polished work of researchers is found in the journal article.