Managing individual research projects, how to self study

[Robin04]

I’m starting my undergraduate physics degree next semester but I really like to study different fields on my own without any external motivation or obligation related to school. As I want to be a theoretical physicist I think this is something that I really have to be good at, because I imagine most of my work will be about getting deeper in particular topics, exploring new ideas, etc, and this requires some self management skills to avoid getting lost.

However, I realized I have some problems with this skill. Actually I’ve never had to learn this way before. In elementary school it was enough to just pay attention during classes, high school was mostly about survival and not hard work, and me pursuing my interest in physics was about surfing the internet, watching lectures, starting some books but not really finishing them. It got to me that I have to change and improve my learning skills, and it’s better to start working on this before my undergraduate physics education.

So my question would be how do you manage yourself while working on something? How planned is your project? Do you set smaller goals like you want to finish this textbook until some time? How do you manage to see your project as a whole and not get lost in the details? Do you struggle with motivation sometimes? How do you overcome it?

 

[Stephen Tashi]

Do you set smaller goals like you want to finish this textbook until some time?

Finishing a textbook (and understanding the material) is usually a huge project - and one that isn't often accomplished by self-study.

Theoretically, "top-down" planning makes sense. You set general goals and then plan the details. However, people who apply this type of planning for a course of self-study are trying to plan something they haven't learned about yet, so the plans are generally too ambitious.

On the forum, one often sees question like "What books should a high school student should master in order to become a theoretical physicist?" ( - or number theorist or other specialist). There may be small number of people who succeed in following such roadmaps. There are some people who profit from the experience of trying to self study such a roadmap and failing. Unless you fancy yourself an exception, the best advice is to begin by studying a "small" topic. Study one chapter of a book or study one article.

How do you manage to see your project as a whole and not get lost in the details?

I myself rarely see a project as a whole unless the project is defined by a simple practical outcome - "Fix the storm door so it closes properly", "Write a computer program to do PCA analysis of a set of photographs" etc. A type of success story one often reads about concerns an inventor or business person who always wanted to accomplish some specific practical goal and eventually did. I don't know the success-vs-failure rate of such an approach to life. My own experience is that I'm more likely to succeed when aiming for a practical outcome than when pursing the abstract goal of "mastering" some body of knowledge - a body of knowledge which I don't know about yet.

Do you struggle with motivation sometimes? How do you overcome it?

Struggling with motivation is an internal psychological conflict - I want to do this yet I don't want to. It's very helpful to interact with other people that motivate you to take the path you "really" want to follow, but that's not often possible in technical fields. The general sort of self-help advice may be useful.

 

[Choppy]

In my experience when I try to simply learn about a particular subject as a self- project, I tend to get so far and then the project kind of gets cast off to the back burner and put on hold as other thing bubble up to the top of my priority list.

What I find tends to work when trying to learn something outside of school is to have a specific goal in mind. For example, rather than simply learning how to program, I need to write a program that solves a specific problem for me. Then I have a clear end-point that allows me to know when I'm finished and then move on to the next thing. Without a clear end point, simply studying a subject could be "endless." And this approach tends to give you feedback too - if your project ends up doing what it is you want to do, you're making progress. If it's not, you're working the wrong direction. That's something you don't really get from reading or watching You Tube videos alone. Finally it tends to give you a specific context for the stuff you're reading about.

 

[jasonRF]

Since you are just starting your degree I would caution against setting very ambitious goals for studying material outside of your curriculum, unless it is to fill deficits in your background. If you want to become a physicist then you will need to concentrate on really learning the material in the math and physics classes you will be taking. I think you should only add outside "extra" learning when you are confident you are mastering the material in your classes. Even then, there may be better uses for your time, such as working for a professor's research group.

In my first year (and especially my first semester) simply keeping up wih my coursework, adjusting to higher expectations and workload, and adjusting to college life were already a huge challenge. By the time I was finishing my second year things were different; I had overcome some deficiencies, learned to manage my time better, and figured out what activities I wanted to make time for.

Good luck, and enjoy the journey.

Jason

 

[Dr. Courtney]

My standard operating procedure for entering new fields of research is to write a review paper for the field. Some have been fairly broad, some have been more focused on outstanding questions of specific interest. Some have been published and some have not been. But the process of analyzing and synthesizing really helps to wrap your mind around a new subject. One of these review paper projects became my most highly cited paper (145 citations) and is fairly well known in the blast injury community. In any event, the goal of writing a paper allows you to make specific project plans with a specific outline and path. These review papers have taken from 500-2000 hours of work.

 

[Robin04]

Thank you very much for your answers!

I think I'm more or less aware of my limits, or at least ready to admit if I set too ambitious goals, which happens quite often to be honest. I'm trying to look at my failures as guidance for what do I have to change about my approach to problems. What I really want to improve about myself now is persistance and realistic planning.

I really like this idea:

My standard operating procedure for entering new fields of research is to write a review paper for the field.

I think I'll try this with some small projects because I really like writing and it helps me to see problems more clearly and to reflect on my work.

 

[Dr. Courtney]

I think I'll try this with some small projects because I really like writing and it helps me to see problems more clearly and to reflect on my work.

Explaining a field to third parties really forces you to internalize and synthesize in ways that merely reading (with or without solving textbook type problems) does not. A good review paper also categorizes existing ideas and data and recognizes holes in the available data and the most important holes in the theory that more complete data would likely answer. Once you get to the point that you are designing thought experiments (that could be real experiments) to arbitrate between competing hypotheses or theoretical constructs, then you are well on your way to mastering a new field. Being a new set of eyes gives you the advantage of seeing the forest. Often, many existing players have already committed to certain theoretical views and are too close to the trees to keep a big picture in mind regarding the overall landscape.