“How do you not get stuck researching for hours?”
“How do I research without going so deep into it, that I am no longer even looking at what I was originally wanting the answer to?”
“Is there a faster way to find information without googling it?”
Research can be a taxing and long process. It is so easy for us as entrepreneurs to get lost in the educational step as we pursue our dreams of building and growing a business we can work from home.
I spent nearly 5 years educating myself on freelancing, copywriting, and building a business from home. The amount of research I did, I honestly feel I could have a Ph.D. on the subject.
I don’t want you to get stuck in the educational process of your business. I want you to be able to take action and move forward. Now that I do research as apart of my service offerings I have had to learn to scale back my research method and make it efficient in order to quickly bring back the information to my clients. Sometimes in as little time as 30 minutes.
I have become a Google Ninja as a result. If you want to streamline your research process and avoid going down the Google rabbit hole follow these 4 simple steps when you conduct research, and I promise you will see an increase in your research speed.
Step 1:
Know your purpose for the research and know what question you are wanting to be answered.
When you sit down to research something consider your goal. Is the research you are conducting for a blog post, live video, or some other form of content in your business?
Perhaps you are looking to learn more about how a certain system works or should be set up?
Are you looking to get to know your customer/client base better?
Why are you sitting down to research this topic?
Once you know why you are doing the research consider the question you are asking.
What specifically do you want to know? Try and break your question down so it is as specific as possible.
Ex. I decide to sit down and do research for a blog post I am wanting to write. My purpose for doing research is to write a blog post. Now I think about what the main topic of the post is and what I want to know more about before I sit down to write it. Let’s say this blog post is for a client, and I want to know more about macros in terms of nutrition because they have requested an article about counting macros vs counting calories.
At this point, I have nailed down my purpose as well as my main question/research topic. My main question is what are macros in terms of nutrition?
Step 2:
Before you open google to begin your research with that one question you already know is liable to lead to a zillion others once you type it into google, I want you to ask yourself a second question: “What do you already know about XYZ? And in the case of our example question what do you already know about Macros?”
When I look at this question, I already know that macros are somehow similar to calories, both because of the way my clients’ article request is worded, plus my own personal life experience of coming across the term amongst my many health nut friends and network connections.
However, while I may know macros are similar to calories I am not sure in what way. This creates a few questions for me to begin cursory research since I am beginning with a small amount of known information.
Once you have reviewed your own knowledge write down what it is you know about the topic even if it is small like how I knew macros were similar to calories.
Step 3:
Write down the new questions that form as you consider what you already know. When I thought about what I knew regarding macros I also realized I did not know in what way macros were similar to calories. This creates a second question for me to put on my list of questions I need to make sure I answer for myself before I write this blog post for my client.
Sometimes you will have a lot of questions that come up and sometimes you don’t know enough to come up with more than one or two. This is perfectly ok. Ultimately however if you want to avoid the rabbit hole, you do not want to write down more than 10 questions. (Honestly, ten questions is pushing it I recommend sticking closer to 3 to 5 questions when you have a large number of questions pouring out of you regarding the same subject.)
Step 4:
Begin your research, enter your questions into google, as you locate your answers to your questions write them down or copy and paste into a document with links to the source. Once you have answered all of your questions and you have answered the maximum ten mentioned in the third step, stop.
If you find new questions arising that the articles where you are finding answers to your original question are not providing you write down the new questions. (See step 3 and repeat.)
When conducting research you also want to make sure you are using appropriate sources, when it comes to subjects that are scientific or law related I highly recommend utilizing sources such as scholarly articles (google scholar has a lot of free resources you can access), university websites, and government-sanctioned sites. For subjects with more of a creative or philosophical connection, I recommend not just using Google as your main source but also looking into Pinterest.
Pinterest is an amazing search engine when it comes to blogs geared toward creativity. I myself will use Pinterest as a search engine not just to learn more about a subject, but also to see what is available on a subject. Pinterest is growing and while you may not be able to find posts on all subjects or things, new material is constantly being published and pinned to Pinterest.
There are four simple steps to streamlining your research process and avoiding the google rabbit hole. Know your purpose and your main question. Check your current knowledge so you can avoid looking at what you already know and begin figuring out exactly what it is you do not know. Write down your questions based on what you know. Avoid researching more than ten questions at one time. Keep track of each question you answer and note the source.
Thank you so much for reading today’s post. If you would like to be kept in the loop on all posts and new events taking place here at Leeann Minton Virtual Assistance in the New Year please follow me on any of my social media sites or sign up for my newsletter.