RESEARCH SKILLS
The cut-off moment
- Simplify your transition between fieldwork and analysis
- Recognize signs that it’s time to stop the interviews and start writing
HOW TO
Awidespread mistake, in the field of
research as in many others, is going overboard: extending a task beyond the
point where work is productive. Many analysts get lost in never-ending
interviews, revealing more and more facets of an issue without truly shedding
light on it, because the analysis itself never gets written. Others continue to
read long after the literature has yielded the information they needed.
Boundless research often serves to postpone something difficult: engaging in a
fresh round of fieldwork taking us out of our comfort zone; coming to
conclusions; drafting a paper; or kicking-off an intimidating exercise in
fundraising.
Things would be easier to manage if we
admitted such misgivings, but usually we focus on some other, very compelling
reason to stall. A perfectionist will find that, to exhaust a subject, there
are ever more references to consult and people to see. A complex topic will
open new avenues for valuable research faster that anyone can pursue them. And
many issues are also moving targets: there is always something happening that
begs inquiry, if only because it may upturn our earlier thinking. An extreme
case is war: just imagine trying to write a timely ten-page report on a
conflict in its early stages, when so much is at stake and so little is clear.
Many analysts get lost in never-ending interviews
There are, indeed, causes to doubt our
instincts and findings, and to seek the comfort of greater certainty. But our
qualms are generally self-sustaining: more meetings and readings answer some
questions while posing important new ones. Worse, if the real problem is our
ingrained insecurity, they tend to undermine and confuse our judgment more than
they sharpen it. As our productivity nosedives and we fail to deliver, we also
create more stress for ourselves, which takes us further down a vicious spiral.
A ceaseless task is an oxymoron; it defeats its purpose.
Getting on with the job therefore
entails a cut-off moment, when you decide that, for better or worse, you’re
done with whatever you were doing and are moving decisively into the next
stage. This shift will not occur naturally—as the mirage of knowing everything
you want to know recedes toward the horizon—and is mostly arbitrary. You stop
before the money given to you runs out. You do so because you’ve agreed to, or
fixed yourself, a deadline. You wrap up on a hunch, sometimes, simply because
all this business has been going on for too long. At the very best, you know
you have reached a critical mass of information—enough to build your analysis,
or your advocacy strategy, or your fundraising pitch—although much inevitably
eludes you. In short, you are taking a risk and accepting it.
That’s when you lock the world out to
focus on the next task. Your retreat may last an hour (if all you were
postponing was an important email to send, a phone call to make or a recap
meeting with your boss) as it may take a couple of days (if you are about to
frame your thinking into an outline or a synopsis) or a month (if you must
draft a highly elaborate document). During that time, mercilessly ignore
precisely what you had been focusing on during your research: relevant
meetings, related literature and, critically, ongoing events. You’ll always
have a chance to come back to them later.
The shift from research to writing will not occur naturally
Your analysis simply cannot be fluid
and constantly updated: however you look at it, such analysis corresponds to a
snapshot of your thinking. A report, a concept paper, an action plan or a
fundraising proposal all exist frozen in time. If they cannot withstand
evolving dynamics, that’s because they were poorly designed in the first place:
they contained unproven or unrealistic certitudes, instead of factoring in your
knowledge gaps and making room for the unforeseeable. Missing information is no
reason not to write: it is reason to write with more nuance and caution.
When we prolong fieldwork or desk
research excessively, to suspend an upcoming task we feel particularly
discomforted by, we are doing something perilous: leaving a core weakness at
the heart of the project we’re busying ourselves with, by doing more of what we
do easily and less of what challenges us. The latter happens to be precisely
what we must identify early on, focus on, and get help with to succeed.
Procrastination doesn’t do much for us save one thing: hint at the issue that
is dying to be solved.
22 January 2017
Illustration credit: IBM 26 on/off switch by Marcin Wichary on Flickr / public domain.