Speaker 1: Reading, doing and analyzing. Those are the steps that will get you better at research. It is a skill that you need to build like any other skill. And unfortunately, in a research position, whether that's your master's, your PhD or postdoc or research assistant, there are tons of other just distractions that are gonna distract you from practicing the main core of doing research and getting better at research. First of all, read. Read as much as you can, as specific as you can initially and then slowly spread out. Set aside time for reading. I know it kind of seems a bit boring to actually block out your calendar to say reading, but you absolutely should. Set up a schedule and prioritize reading as part of getting better as a researcher. The second thing is doing. Make sure you do. We have a tendency to feel anxious when we start putting our thoughts, our hypothesis to the test. That's because we could be wrong. That is scary. But do not be scared. Learning from mistakes is so important in research and getting over the doing hump. After you've done reading, there's a point where you just need to do and do whether it works, whether it fails, whether it explodes, whatever happens, try not to explode too much. Do, do, do, that's important. And the third thing is about analyzing. Analyze what you've just done. Analyze in as many different ways as possible. Create graphs, schematics, tables, new information, use equations, plug them all in, go crazy with your analysis. Create as many outputs from that data as you can and then use that to re-inform your reading and the cycle starts over and over again. The more of these cycles you can fit in to your research life, the more you will become kind of attuned to what you think will work and won't work and you will get better as a researcher, no doubt, if you prioritize those three things. Learn to talk about your research. Becoming a better researcher really comes down to you understanding your research so well that you can explain it to anyone, from a child to a professional to a professor to anyone, your gran. We often talk about research passing the pub test but in reality, what it means is that you are so familiar with the challenges in your research and you've thought about them so much that you have the vocabulary to explain it to absolutely anyone. And by talking about your research more and more, not only do you sort of like start to kind of synthesize the information more but you also sort of like start to see gaps. You start to understand where the real issues lie and unfortunately, we don't talk about our research enough to other people outside of our research field. So getting used to talking about and explaining your research to everyone you meet, simply, succinctly, you know, we're not talking about a deep dive, we're just talking about sort of a party when someone goes, oh, what do you do? And you go, well, and your challenge there is to not bore them but give them enough information that they know what you do and they're intrigued. They want to know why, they want to know more. That is how you talk about research properly. I spat then, gross. Speaking about it with collaborators, speaking about it all the time will help you become better at research, I promise you. Learn how to break the big questions into smaller, more manageable chunks. When you start a research project, quite often you end up with a big question, a big outcome. Now, getting good at research means being able to break down that big question into smaller questions that all add together to answer that bigger research question. Now, how do you know if something's too big for you to answer? Well, it comes down to your anxiety. If you are looking at a certain question and you're like, you know what, that fills me with anxiety, I don't know where to start, that is a good sign that you need to break it up into smaller, more manageable, bite-sized chunks. When you get to a question size that you're like, okay, that's how I'd approach that, that's a good size, something that you can answer in a week or a couple of weeks of research, is a good chunk of question. So get used to listening to your internal anxiety clock and saying, you know what, this is too big a question, I need a simpler place to start, where do we go? How far down the ladder can we get to so that I answer a question that is able to be sort of like research, experimented on, and analyzed within a couple of weeks, and maybe a month if your field needs that amount of time. But yes, learn how to break down the big questions and then go back to the basics, read, do, and analyze on that smaller question. This video is brought to you by my newsletter, go check it out at andrewstapeton.com.au forward slash newsletter, the link is in the description. When you sign up, you'll get five emails over about two weeks, everything from the tools I use, the podcasts I've been on, how to write the perfect abstract and more, perfect daily schedule as well. It's exclusive content only available for free on that newsletter, so go sign up now. Getting better at research means constantly seeking clarity. Ask why all the time, that should be at the front of your mind. When you are doing a certain experiment, no matter how it goes, whether it's sort of good, bad, indifferent, you should ask yourself why. Become that annoying sort of toddler in the back of the car that's like, why, why? And just keep on going, it will get you deeper into your research, it will enable you to kind of like start to explore different areas. The why question is so open that it can take a number of different paths. I think in research, a lot of the time we lead with how all too often, how do we get a certain result? When in reality, your question should be, why did that happen? Get better at research by creating structure in your day. Set aside blocks of time to enable you to focus on those three core activities that actually make you better at research. When you're a PhD student, a researcher, a master's student, a professor, whatever it is, there are tons of other sort of activities that you could be doing and those activities are there only to distract you from the core activity of research. Now it may be applying for grants, that's very important. It may be having supervisor meetings, once again, very important. But as much time as physically possible, you should be dedicating to the core activities of doing research, reading, doing, and analyzing. And the problem is is that sometimes that little, those three steps can get really, really boring and so we do find ourselves drawn to these other activities and certainly with me, I feel like, you know, a little bit of ADHD where I'm like, oh, okay, I've done that for a bit, now I need to go here. But those distractions are just that, distractions from getting good at research. So try to minimize everything else that you're doing and focus on the fundamentals of doing research. The more cycles you can do, the better you're going to get at it. It's really tough. It's one of the toughest things to try to do, especially when there's loads of other people around you in the research environment demanding your time be focused elsewhere. Remember that saying no to other people's request is also an option. You should be writing before you are ready to. Getting your research out there is so very important and so write before you think you are ready. It is amazing the clarifying activity of writing can help you identify gaps in your own research. I used to wait until I thought I had a full story to write up and I just found that then I'd waste like months just sort of like trying to fill gaps that probably didn't need to be filled. But when you're writing, the gaps become obvious to you because you go, oh, we need a chapter on this or we need an experiment to explain why this is happening. All of that only comes about because you've started to create the story. Write well before you think you actually should be writing, even if it's writing up things like your experimental, even if it's writing up things like a single graph. Start plugging those into a story and your research will go faster because of that. Do not put off writing. I used to put off writing because it was a bit boring. Getting better at doing research means doubling down on the things that actually work. A lot of times, we tend to want to focus on a certain part of our research because we think it's the most important thing. The most important things will reveal themselves to you throughout the course of the research by showing you that they are actually working. I used to spend so much time trying to get something to work that would actually never work whilst ignoring the things that showed promise. So once you identify something that shows promise, double down on it for a little bit to see where that can go. It will also help keep your motivation up, minimizing the amount of failure you need to sort of like go through before you start seeing things working. So definitely double down on the things that work. There's the 80-20 principle that I even live my life to right now. 80% of your results quite often come from about 20% of your efforts. And in research, that sort of like ratio can be 90% and 10% or 95% of your results can come from 5% of your research. So just find that small percentage that's working and double down on it for a little bit and see where that can take you. If you get to a dead end, no worries, go back to what was working and follow that path. But really doubling down on what's working is what will make your research career more interesting. It will make you feel better about what you're doing. And overall, I think just accepting that some things won't work, even if you really, really want them to work, and focusing on the things that are working is just going to result in a better research career for you. And sometimes we can't predict where these results will take us. But if you start looking at what's working, double down on it, follow it to its end. That could be a whole new branch of your career, what you get known for. And like I said, I do it now even in my online entrepreneurial world, and it just keeps on paying dividends. So there we are. There are the seven things I think you can do to get better at doing research. Let me know in the comments what you would add. And also go check out academiainsider.com. It's my project where I've got my eBooks, my ultimate academic writing toolkit, as well as my PhD survival guide. And I'll see you in the next video.