Thanks for writing this, I found it helpful and really clearly written!
One reaction: if you’re testing research as a career (rather than having committed and now aiming to maximise your chances of success), your goal isn’t exactly to succeed as an early stage researcher. It might be that trying your best to succeed is approximately the best way to test your fit—but it seems like there are a few differences:
“Going where there’s supervision” might be especially important, since a supervisor who comes to know you very well is a big and reliable source of information about your fit for research—which seems esp. important given that feedback in the form of “how much other people like your ideas” is often biased (e.g. because most of your early ideas are bad) or noisy (e.g. because some factors that influence the success of your research aren’t under your control).
It might be important to test your fit for different fields or flavours (e.g. quantitative vs qualitative, empircal vs theoretical) of research. This can come apart from the goal of trying to succeed as an early-stage researcher—since moving into unfamiliar territory might mean your outputs are less good in the short term.
Relatedly, it might be important to select at least some of your projects based on the skills or knowledge gaps they help you fill. Again, this goal might come apart from short term success (e.g. you pick a forecasting project to improve those skills, despite not expecting it to generate interesting findings)
Probably you want to spend less energy marketing your work, except to the extent that it’s helpful in getting more people to give you feedback on your fit for a research career.
[most uncertain] “Someone senior tells you what to work on” might actually not be the ideal solution to your problem 1. If the skills of research execution and research planning are importantly different, then you might fail to get enough info about your competence/enjoyment/fit for research planning skills (but I’m pretty uncertain if they are importantly different).
I’d be curious how much you agree with any of these points :)
Thanks for writing this, I found it helpful and really clearly written!
One reaction: if you’re testing research as a career (rather than having committed and now aiming to maximise your chances of success), your goal isn’t exactly to succeed as an early stage researcher. It might be that trying your best to succeed is approximately the best way to test your fit—but it seems like there are a few differences:
“Going where there’s supervision” might be especially important, since a supervisor who comes to know you very well is a big and reliable source of information about your fit for research—which seems esp. important given that feedback in the form of “how much other people like your ideas” is often biased (e.g. because most of your early ideas are bad) or noisy (e.g. because some factors that influence the success of your research aren’t under your control).
It might be important to test your fit for different fields or flavours (e.g. quantitative vs qualitative, empircal vs theoretical) of research. This can come apart from the goal of trying to succeed as an early-stage researcher—since moving into unfamiliar territory might mean your outputs are less good in the short term.
Relatedly, it might be important to select at least some of your projects based on the skills or knowledge gaps they help you fill. Again, this goal might come apart from short term success (e.g. you pick a forecasting project to improve those skills, despite not expecting it to generate interesting findings)
Probably you want to spend less energy marketing your work, except to the extent that it’s helpful in getting more people to give you feedback on your fit for a research career.
[most uncertain] “Someone senior tells you what to work on” might actually not be the ideal solution to your problem 1. If the skills of research execution and research planning are importantly different, then you might fail to get enough info about your competence/enjoyment/fit for research planning skills (but I’m pretty uncertain if they are importantly different).
I’d be curious how much you agree with any of these points :)