======= Date Modified 14 53 2009 07:53:41 =======
hi there..

how do you deal with blind alleys, or rather, with certain side tracks
which possibly lead you to find something substantial for your main question, but which equally might turn out to be completely irrelevant or not helpful. I would think that a certain amount of blind alleys are necessarily part of research -- but nevertheless I'm a bit worried about the attached risk of losing time and track/focus.

I'm making quite specific plans about the steps to take in my research at the moment, but while completing task A it often seems that I can't continue with task B unless I've thoroughly looked into A.1 which often then leads to other subpaths.. it's making me a bit anxious that I can't know beforehand whether or not it will be relevant in the end, and it's delaying the transition to main tasks often quite a bit. (Making me sound like a control freak, but it's not like that.)

How do you deal with these issues (if you have them in the first place)?

Focus on the ones you want to explore and that have a bearing on your overall objective. You just have to be selective about what you look into.

I'd agree with Hypothesis. I found that going off on tangents sometimes sparked off my interest in related ideas and got me excited about my research again, when I was in a rut with it. It felt like an elaborate form of procrastination sometimes, but by the end all the tangents, or blind alleys as you call them, had either fallen into place in my overall thesis or given me ideas and material for post-doc projects or got used up in teaching, so none of it was wasted.

The only possibly problem with spending too much time on these things depends on where you are with your timetable. If you're writing up then it's probably not a great idea to go off in too many new directions or you'll never get the thing submitted. If you've got the time, I'd go down as many blind alleys as you want, it's unexpectedly exciting sometimes!