Rabbit Holes/Research
When I ran an essay seminar to think about all this, it turns out that a few of us have a ‘to read later’ folder to dump any interesting literature we found that does not relate to our topic. This way we can come back to it later.
You should also choose some of the texts from the reading list you’ve been given and read them using the SQR3 method - or another method that helps you read quickly and easily. SQR3 stands for ‘survey, question, read, recite and review’ and is a way of getting your brain to pay attention to the most important parts of what you are reading.
Check out this Reddit thread for a little more on SQR3, and the metaphor from ‘How to Read a Book’ by Mortimer Adler is very helpful too: ‘The ancient Greeks talked about two kinds of readers, "hedgehogs" and "foxes." A hedgehog is diligent in his area of study, someone who can be counted on to read things cover to cover. A fox is someone known for getting things out of books and other sources. If a fox knows nothing about a subject, his approach is to find someone who does know about it. Foxes are bored if they have to read books cover to cover. Their strength is sifting through information to find gold nuggets, and do this efficiently. In Athens, foxes would chat with people at the library and find out who knew what. Today's foxes surf the web. Good jobs for hedgehogs - historian, professor of anatomy. Good jobs for foxes - novelist, inventor, corporate executive.’ As much as I love being a hedgehog, to write an essay under time pressure it’s worth cultivating the ability to be a fox!
Mixing things up with videos can be great as just reading can get very tiring. Remember on YouTube you can often click the three dots below the video and get a transcript which you can then search through or quote from more easily (and find out the keyboard shortcut to search through a page of text for a particular word, Google ‘search keyboard shortcut’ and the name of your device, it takes seconds to work out how to do it and it will save you so much time).
80/20 can often be the quickest path to finishing a piece of written work, as it will prompt you to find the key ideas and sources that you want to concentrate on. Melissa Newman is a brilliant midwife currently completing her Ph.D., and she says that every essay has to have a ‘golden thread’ running through it that everything relates to. This is a similar thought to 80/20, essays are essentially an exercise in cutting through the noise and finding your direction.