What to do next after you have a research idea? 3 essential steps to take to minimize the early idea filtration process as a PhD student

You have a research idea.

Nobody else has thought of this idea, and you can’t contain your excitement. It sounds familiar to me. I was there many times only to have discovered a few months later that someone in the 1980s or, worse yet, worked on the same idea a year ago.

As a result of too many disappointments, I learnt not to get hopeful when I get an idea.

Optimize the time spent scoping out an idea to cut down losses.

If not, one can lose precious time that could have been better spent on a promising idea.

The most critical resource a PhD student has is time. Not optimizing time spent on an early idea to filter it in/out is being wasteful of one scarce resource. One will never get back the time spent on a futile line of research. That’s why it becomes vital to streamline the filtering process without letting emotions dictate the process.

The following three steps will help optimize the filtering process:

#1. If it is an empirical paper, find which data source you want to use.

Don’t spend more than one day looking for relevant data sources. If you cant, find the necessary data, abandon the project. Don’t get attached to the idea.

#2. Find the latest research and survey articles in this sub-field.

Spend 1–2 hours to find the relevant related articles in this sub-field. Make sure that your idea is novel. If the question already exists in the literature, examine your approach. Is it unique? If it isn’t, abandon the idea.

#3. Write a 1–2 page research proposal and email it to as many advisors/professors as possible to get early advice.

Most professors are willing to help early scholars. Use this resource. Take their feedback with a grain of salt. The more professors give you feedback, the more you will understand how they think. We can refine our idea and our way of thinking from this feedback.

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