Trunk and branch

“Finding papers can be daunting, especially if you’re in a very crowded discipline because basically, you’re trying to drink from a fire hose. And of course there are new papers being published every day. So, you’ve decades worth of papers to try to wrap your head around while also keeping up with current developments. It can be overwhelming. One useful tactic is to find others who have done an outstanding job of reading through that theory and attempt to use them as a starting-point. So instead of just diving into the deep end, you start with others who have plumbed those depths a lot, and use those as entry points. This way you can get your head around some of the initial ideas and topics. Textbook chapters are helpful for this kind of thing. And then you just go from there. And that way you’re starting off at the most important parts and then branching out into the rest of the material. Just like a tree: you start with the trunk, and then you branch out, instead of just trying to take it all in at once.”

(Matt Farmer)