In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a grad student asks:
I'm a grad student working on my dissertation. There is just so much published in my research area and related areas. I always feel overwhelmed and not know exactly which to read first, and feel guilty that I'm not reading faster than I am, and not reading more topics that are written by under-represented scholars. And when I'm reading, I feel guilty about not writing more. How did you, or would you now, decide on what to read? How much did you read per week? How did you balance reading with writing?
These are really excellent questions, though perhaps not for the reasons one might expect. My own sense is that one of the biggest mistakes that grad students and other early-career people do is to spend way too much time reading. It was certainly a mistake that I made...
Early in my career, both during grad school and in my first job, I spent a heck of a lot of time reading books and journals in the search of research ideas--and it was an incredibly unproductive time for me. I hardly drafted anything, let alone publish stuff. I often felt like every good idea or position in a given debate had already been taken by people in the literature. Then, at one point, I remember hearing someone saying that at their elite grad program, some really well known philosopher advised students to think rather than read. This seemed bizarre to me at the time, but honestly, this is more or less how I approach research these days. I mostly come up with new ideas for papers not by reading the literature but simply by reflecting on questions about the world or ideas that spring to mind from daily life that inspire me in one way or another. It's only after I come up with what seems like a cool idea that I check to see if it's already been defended in the literature. Sometimes it is, but often enough it's not!
I think this is one real advantage of the approach. One problem with reading a lot before writing is that, by its very nature, it lands one in the midst of ideas that have usually already been mined by a lot of people...which is precisely what makes it so hard to come up with an original contribution this way. And, to return to the OP's questions ("How did you balance reading with writing?"), I almost always begin new projects not by reading, but instead by writing. Once I'm reasonably certain that a new idea hasn't already been defended in the way that I want to defend it, which is usually fairly easy to find by searches on Google, Google Scholar, and PhilPapers, I simply begin writing--and then, while I'm writing, I read any books or articles that might be relevant and worth citing.
In other words, I mostly let writing dictate what I read--and, as luck would have it, it's a great way to determine what to read and what not to. I will add, however, that I do make a point of reading widely while writing, including more obscure journals and work under-represented scholars, as I think think it's important to do scholarship like this, rather than to merely cite work from dominant voices in a handful of elite journals.
But these are just my tips and experiences. What are yours? I imagine that some readers might think that grad students should read more than people later in their career (which seems right), but again, my experience is that this didn't work all that well for me or others that I knew in grad school. So, I'm curious to hear what others think!
I agree entirely woth Marcus: let your writing guide the bulk of your reading. As you develop your own claims, it should become clear to you which kinds of articles you need to find and read--in other words, writing should help you to narrow the reading list and target particular topics.
But I also think you should make a little time to read philosophy stuff that interests you--i.e. papers from your PhilPapers feed whose titles or abstracts are intriguing, regardless of whether they pertain to your dissertation. Don't spend all day doing it, but an hour a workday or an article every few days will help keep you sane and engaged and excited.
Posted by: Michel | 07/11/2022 at 03:10 PM
SEP if one wants to know what the "hot topics" are, assuming that the articles are reasonably up to date; PhilPapers and the Philosophy Paperboy for new titles that look interesting and seem relevant; Google Scholar, especially "cited by" for potentially relevant and newly published papers; and papers cited by what one currently reads.
And I wholeheartedly agree that a) it's good to let writing guide reading, and b) cite properly, especially articles that appear in less prestigious journals as often those contributions are invisible (to many) and forgotten.
Posted by: non-tt faculty | 07/11/2022 at 07:19 PM
A good balance of reading, writing, and thinking are important. Robin Dembroff made a critique of some philosopher’s preoccupation of thinking over reading in their article “Cisgender Commonsense and Philosophy’s Transgender Trouble”. Perhaps setting a time limit for each and scheduling them each day. Annotate your readings with some kind of distinct color or mark of potential idea to work on. I like to use my Notes app on IPhone to jot down general ideas and make an outline for them. Then I go into detail with them and look up from relevant readings.
Posted by: Balance | 07/11/2022 at 08:08 PM
It is common to think of the research process as the gathering of things to read and then reading those things. I've come to think that an essential part of the research process is figuring out what you don't need to read. I've often find myself thinking after completing a reading that I really didn't need to read that or half way through realizing as much. Try to eliminate what you don't need to read. Taking on this perspective explicitly can be helpful. So really taking advantage of abstracts and introductions can be useful. You can always go back and read the piece if you find your initial judgment was mistaken. Skimming is your friend, as well. You just have to skim the parts or pieces that deserve being skimmed given your purposes. You can always go back and read it more carefully when the time is right. Given your research aims each piece calls for a different approach:1) don't read it, 2) read it like it's the most important piece of philosophy ever written, 3) read it while taking notes or marking it up, 4) read it casually marking it when absolutely needed, 5) read it to just get a sense of what the piece is about, 6) read it very quickly, 7) skim it, 8) read the abstract and or introduction. With books, it's often helpful to read a book review to get a sense of whether or not you really need to read the book. Lots of strategies are available when there seems to be a lot of literature to read.
Posted by: Gabe | 07/11/2022 at 09:41 PM
One thing that helped me is to develop an organized note taking system and to take notes on almost everything I read. That seems paradoxical: doesn't it mean you have less time to actually read? Well, yes. But it also means
1. You'll retain better of what you've already read and so have a better sense of what you should read next.
2. You'll train yourself to focus on the most important points of what you read and not waste time on what you don't need.
3. You'll do lots of incidental philosophical writing, which as Marcus noted will help you figure out what to read.
4. #3 will also make your writing go a lot faster. Pages and pages of my dissertation are patchworks of literature notes, emails to advisors, and Facebook comments that I was diligent to save to my note taking platform months or years earlier.
Posted by: Jacob J Andrews | 07/15/2022 at 08:07 AM
I recommend Hypernomicon for taking the sorts of notes Jacob talks about. http://hypernomicon.org/
Posted by: Daniel Weltman | 07/15/2022 at 12:45 PM
Daniel, that's really cool! I had never heard of Hypernomicon. I use Obsidian, which I like because everything is saved on your computer and in a nonproprietary format. It's wonderful but a bit of a DIY project to get it working just right for researchers. I'm going to explore Hypernomicon as something to recommend to other academics. Thank you!
Posted by: Jacob J Andrews | 07/28/2022 at 08:50 AM