Research is a very interesting field in terms of its requirement for Motivation, Innovation, Consistency, Time Management, Communication Skills, Composing Deliverables, Presentation, and Post-research Follow-up. I will discuss each of these elements one by one to highlight the important points that each researchers should consider.
Researcher’s motivation is the most important ingredient for a good research work. At the same time, it is very difficult to maintain at peak-level. Motivation of researchers passes through see-saw. Initially, every researcher is highly motivated and over-optimistic. This results in a very common error of targeting more, planning more, and doing nothing. As we have large targets to achieve, with passage of time, the volume of these targets start to hamper our productivity and results in reduced motivation.
• Be realistic. Do not try to be superman/woman. Do not try to be Newton or Einstein. Rather focus achievable targets and build on them to keep your motivation level high.
• Play on your strength.
Innovation is required, but it will never appear from nowhere. To be innovative, you have to know what others have already done and why. At the same time, an understanding of what others have not done and why did not. Just thinking about an idea in isolation and then assuming that it will be innovative will be a spider web. Once you get into it, the more you move, the more you get stuck. Rather, a problem solving attitude or service provider behavior will result in more innovation.
• Identify the needs. Try to solve them in a better way. You will get innovative.
Consistency in research is like growth in living beings. If you lack it, you will never grow as researchers. When I say consistency, I talk about consistency in terms of targeted research problems, consistency in terms of efforts put into research, and consistency in terms of deliverable that a researcher produces. If you are not consistent in terms of types of research problems you target, you will finish with immature work on different problems areas. If you are not consistent with the effort you put on your research, you will end-up short of your deadline. Similarly, if you do not deliver research results consistently, it will get difficult for you to attract research community or your supervisor. Research communities and supervisors prefer researchers who produce reliable research results in continuity.
• Be consistent, target related research problems, work regularly on research problems, and produce research results/deliverables regularly in incremental order.
Time management is what research is all about. People use to say this, especially for PhD research projects. If you know good time management, you will probably end-up with good research work. Avoid distractions. One should plan, where he/she want to invent his/her time and when. A better approach is to keep a listing of deadlines. For researchers, a list containing the research papers submission, reviews, and presentations deadline is a must. Furthermore, one should plan ahead. Normally, yearly plan is a must for successful research. A good researcher always keep track of where his/her effort will be invested in next one year.
• Plan ahead. Track deadlines. Avoid distractions. Keep margin for unavoidable circumstances, e.g., illness, wedding, children, etc.
Good communication skills help researchers to convey his/her ideas with supervisor and other researchers. It is a key skill, if you want to establish collaboration with other researchers. A very basic requirement of good communication is to have it on regular interval. Having many meetings in few weeks and then getting out of scene another month will result in communication gap. This is very important if you are in supervisor/student or collaboration relationship. Communication using write-up is more effective for long-term research collaborations. A to-the-point self-contained write-up on regular interval presenting the progress-made will always convey the ideas and progress efficiently.
• Communicate regularly with your supervisor and co-researchers.
Composing deliverable takes the major effort and time for good research work. Successful researchers often invest around 40% of their time in write-ups. They often do write-ups in revision separated by small durations of in-activity. Furthermore, they will always get their work reviewed by other co-researchers as well as readers not directly associated with their research. And they will always complete their research manuscript well ahead of final submission to avoid immature type errors.
• Start writing early. Keep improving the text. Get your text reviewed. Finalize the deliverable well ahead of submission.
Presentation is all about selling your product. A good researcher always knows the strength of his/her research; time to convince the audience, and the type of audience. Furthermore, the feedback of presentation is the most important asset for any researchers. Good researchers do use feedback and improve their research work accordingly. This helps them to understand the missing ingredients of his/her research and presentation. They do come back with a better recipe to sell their product in future.
• Present your strength. Know the audience and take them with you during presentation. Use feedback for future.
It happens very often that researchers do not build up on their existing research work efficiently. Instead they get in search for new interesting problems. This is also good to search and work on new interesting problems, but to follow-up your own research and get your future work done is highly valuable. It expresses the seriousness of a researcher in topic and increases the maturity of future results.
• Get your future work done.
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