2.8: Chart Your Road Map (Lit Review Steps)

As we discussed, one of the most overwhelming aspects to research is feeling like there's no road map and needing to find a path without receiving enough direction. So here are some guideposts to help you create your own road map.

Your Step-by-Step Literature Review Road Map:

Below are the basic steps to doing a literature review. This workbook's chapters correspond to these steps. Notice that you'll still be adjusting your topic, even after finding sources! We'll talk a lot about that throughout the workbook, but developing your topic is a large component of doing the literature review.

1. Develop your topic
   1. Brainstorm and visualize as a Venn diagram
   2. Quick search for citations
   3. Revise your topic based on the search
2. Find sources
   1. Evaluate your citations
   2. Refine your topic
3. Find patterns
   1. Scan sources
   2. Read your sources
   3. Take notes and identify patterns
4. Dive deeper
   1. Refine your topic
   2. Revisit the literature
   3. Join the Conversation
5. Write
   1. Outline
   2. Write

Activity: Deadlines \(\PageIndex{1}\)

If your faculty has given you any specific tasks, list all of them below. If not, list each of the steps from the brief outline above. List the final deadline you have from your faculty for when the literature review is due. If you do not have specific deadlines for each step, leave those dates blank for now until you have a better sense of how long to expect each task to take you.

Click "Table" below.

Table

Deadline for tasks

Task	Deadline

Activity: Roadblocks \(\PageIndex{1}\)

Next, consider any external stops, roadblocks, or scenery that might distract or delay you along the way (holidays, vacations, other major assignments for other classes, family, etc.). Is anyone journeying with you? Who are your supports at school, home, etc.

I encourage you to create a visual to remember your journey. This could be a collage vision board, or perhaps entering all the upcoming deadlines & distractions into a calendar. Or you might draw a visualization of this research, perhaps as a journey, or however you're envisioning it, complete with the roadblocks, pit stops, but also your supports along with you or joining you along the way. If you're using a tablet or computer, you might consider using Canva, Pinterest, Milanote, Notion, Google Slides or PPT.

1. Consider first your distraction - are they time based? Can you chart out when they'll stop you?

2. Distractions are inevitable to every journey. They can actually be helpful in helping you clear your mind. Consider how much time to allot yourself for each so you can use the stops to rejuvenate and clear your mind. And then mark on your calendar when you'll want to pick the research back up after the break from it. Whenever you come back, keep your motivation at the top of your mind.

3. Write down your supports - consider friends, family, and all the supports at school (faculty, staff, librarians).

Identify Your Research Support System:

Along the way, I’ll point out good times to check in with your faculty, your librarians, etc. and provide prompts for the conversation. Think of how these people might be journeying with you. These supports will be crucial for your research experience (Droog, et al., 2024).

Before moving on to Unit 2, one piece of advice is that at the end of each session where you work on your research, jot quick notes about what you did, and give yourself a next step. If you don’t know what the next step is, then your next step is to schedule a meeting with your professor and/or a librarian!

In addition to people in your life, how can you support yourself? Self-care is often just a meaningless buzz word, especially when it’s seen as a luxury you can’t afford when you don’t have time for adequate sleep and are inhaling food on the go. Rather than thinking of indulgent activities, such as taking long baths or eating indulgent sweets, it might help to consider what you can do to help yourself stay in the process.

Consider your time:

You can’t create extra time, and imagining someday you’ll have more time once x or y are finished is probably a fantasy.

Instead, take a minute now to consider what works best for you to manage your time.

• What time of day are you naturally more alert or creative? Morning, afternoon, evening?
• What pitfalls do you run into when working on long projects?
  • Are there ways you can manage the pitfalls or cope around them?
  • Perhaps carving out short blocks daily, or maybe a long session weekly, works for you.
• How will you hold yourself accountable?
  • Study partner?
  • Setting deadlines for certain steps, or by prioritizing the blocks you set aside for research?
  • Setting dates to check in with your faculty or a friend?

This workbook is not about time management, but if learning more about it interests you, consider spending some time exploring videos online, blogs, or books on this subject to get ideas.

Consider your space:

The physical space you use for research might matter to you.

• Are there certain places (your home, a coffee shop, a library, etc.) that work better for you to focus on research?
• Can you do anything to increase your ability to work in these spaces? (Headphones? Noise cancelling apps?)

Consider how you focus:

• Meditation: Studies show that meditation can help increase focus. You could consider a short meditation session every time you start working on research, to help you switch gears from anything else in your life to focusing on your research.
• Pomodoro: Some people find it helpful to use the Pomodoro method of working for 25 minutes, taking a 5-minute break, and then working for another 25 minutes. Or even just taking occasional stretch/meditation breaks to continue to stay in the flow.
• Quality sleep: Perhaps you know you need quality sleep to focus well.
• Prioritizing a healthy diet promotes brain activity for you.
• Minimize distractions. If your phone distracts you, can you add a Research focus to your phone that does not allow alerts other than emergencies? Or perhaps you could even turn off your phone and leave it in a separate room, so you're not tempted to look at it. You could download Hank Green's Bean Friend app to minimize phone use.

Celebrate small wins:

Don't wait until you finish the full project to celebrate. Find ways to congratulate yourself for small victories. I like to make a tiny fist bump in the air when I check a small item off my list. For bigger steps, I throw myself a dance party in my kitchen by putting my favorite happy jams on a playlist.

Jot down a few notes about when, where, and how you'll do this work.

Next steps:

Now that you've considered how your background impacts your research and you've grounded yourself with your motivation and support system, we can move to the first step in any research project: refining your topic. While the next unit is titled Develop Your Topic, you'll actually continue to refine your topic throughout the next two units.