By Dave Harris

When we notice egocentrism, it is usually a bad thing: who likes the know-it-all who thinks only of themself? But lack of egocentrism is also bad: we need to know where we stand on issues; we need to trust our own knowledge enough to commit to projects and tasks, and to commit to words on the page. I want to emphasize the importance of egocentrism in reading as a crucial factor in using the research literature effectively, and how writing is an effective tool for building the right kind of egocentrism.

This essay picks up some threads from the September 2024 TAA Conversation Circle on developing good writing habits, Prof. Christine Tulley’s October 2024 webinar “Getting Your Reading into Your Writing”, and a blog post I previously contributed in response to the August 2024 TAA Conversation Circle on productivity.

During the September Conversation Circle on habits (at approx. 42:00min), responding to a participant talking about “reading to write,” I suggested ”writing to read” to highlight the impact that writing has on our perspective as readers. I want to tie those two ideas together into the idea of egocentric reading.

This essay is particularly aimed at people who struggle with self-doubt and/or impostor syndrome, and for whom the literature becomes an ocean in which they drown.  It’s aimed at anyone who is putting off developing their own research plans/programmes/projects because they haven’t done enough reading yet.

You can take specific, concrete steps that support the desirable egocentrism, as discussed below.

“Getting Your Reading into Your Writing” (TAA webinar, October 11, 2024 by Prof. Christine Tulley)

Tulley’s webinar exemplifies the kind of self-confidence/egocentrism that I want to encourage—a self-confidence in which your own plans permeate your perspective.

Throughout the seminar, Tulley repeatedly emphasized that her suggestions depended on knowing one’s own project and larger research agenda.

• After beginning the webinar by inviting questions, Tulley says “All these [questions] go to your project’s purpose” (at about 5:58 in the video), and “Always know what purposes [reading] is serving” (at about 7:40).
• In response to concerns about how much to cite (how many citations to include), Tulley suggests looking at publications from the desired venue, whether a journal or book (from about 22:00).  This strategy only works if you have an idea of where you want to publish, and that requires at least some sense of what you want to publish.
• In demonstrating “write backs,” examples (at 40:00 and 44:50) include the relationship between the reading and a specific project.
• Later, Tulley argues that we need to prioritize readings, including how to decide which ones aren’t important enough to read (at about 46:30). She specifically discusses reading an article for which she had not yet identified a specific use, but she decided it was worth reading. I like that example as demonstrating confidence in her larger agenda—as if she’s saying “I get to do some exploration as a researcher because I know I’ll have more projects in the future, and I’m not worried about spending an hour or three on this interesting article, even if I haven’t got a specific need for it today.”

All Tulley’s suggestions depend on knowing your research agenda, both current projects and potential future projects. But there are a lot of people—self-doubters, especially—who, lacking confidence, do not have a clear enough idea of any specific project, nor any more than a general sense of their larger agenda, and thus struggle to use suggestions like Tulley’s. The desirable research-agenda-focused egocentrism can be developed and supported by specific concrete steps.

Defining your project

There is a huge gap between knowing you have to do a research project and knowing what the research project will be.  Doubt stops many from advancing their projects, but an academic career depends on completing a lot of different projects. At the large scale, there are efforts to understand some specific area (e.g., an analysis of a genre/author/era in literature; to understand a specific condition in psychology; to understand the behavior of a material in specific conditions in engineering; etc.), which may involve multiple distinct data-gathering efforts, each of which may involve several writing projects (e.g., a project proposal, funding requests, IRB approval and participant communications, project progress reports, communications with experts for help, not to mention the final publication(s) that hopefully arise).

Exercise #1: Even if you’re not confident, you can begin to define your project—you can put words on the page describing the specific research effort you want to carry out. It’s never too early to try to define your project. Spend 10 minutes describing a research project—what’s its purpose? What methods? What data gathered? What kinds of analysis? What do you expect to find? Treat this as an exploratory exercise: try a variety of different possibilities. Repeat this exercise several times a week, looking to identify more specific projects to which you’d like to commit. After each iteration, look at an article that you’ve read in the past, and see how your perception of it has shifted with respect to your newest project definition.

Writing alters your perspective, and thus your reading of (or listening to) a source.

As you begin to define your project, you will start to read differently (and start to see the world differently). To exemplify this process, I offer my experience writing this essay, and how it changed my perspective of Tulley’s webinar.

Initially, I watched the webinar to see what Tulley had to say on a subject I’ve given considerable thought (including writing a book, Literature Review and Research Design). I was thinking about the Conversation Circle participant who talked about “reading to write” and my “writing to read” response. I had a notion that I might write a response for the TAA blog, but no clear idea of what. Watching the webinar gave me some ideas, including the general sense that some people need more focus on their own project.

Then I began writing with a focus on “Getting your Writing into your Reading,” thus inverting Tulley’s title.  Drafting the essay refined my focus and my framing, and I came to the idea of egocentric reading because I wanted to highlight the emotional and intellectual dimensions. In that process, I remembered certain episodes in the webinar as exemplifying what I was talking about, which sent me back to the webinar so that I didn’t mis-represent Tulley.

In light of the clearer sense of purpose that came from writing, I saw far more examples of the good egocentrism that I wanted to promote than I had remembered, and I saw those examples in a new perspective.  Comments and suggestions Tulley had made that I had remarked during the live webinar now appeared slightly different in the context of my own essay.

Developing your own vision: Know what you know; know what you believe

For publication, there is a presumption of originality—research, of course, presents new results or new analyses; textbooks offer new pedagogical approaches and incorporate new material. For many, originality seems intimidating, but originality is almost inevitable for someone who actively develops their own way of understanding the world, and is confident enough to apply that perspective.

In addition to trying to define your project, it can be a useful exercise to define what you already know or believe, and to identify literature that supports those ideas.  It’s entirely reasonable to think that you don’t know enough—none of us know everything—but this ignorance should not mask all that you do know. If you’re a graduate student who is writing a dissertation, you didn’t arrive at that point without years of schooling as well as exams and/or applications to demonstrate your relevant knowledge, skills, and abilities.  These are your foundations—the more clearly you see those foundations, the more effectively you can use them.

Exercise #2: What do you believe? And what literature, if any, supports that idea? Pick an idea relevant to your research—something that you think is true—describe it briefly in writing. If you’re a psychologist, for example, how does a specific psychological state/condition arise? If you’re a literary critic, how does a piece of writing exemplify/demonstrate an issue? If a historian, how does a specific causal event matter? Explain why you believe it, and especially what sources support that belief.  Did you learn that idea in some lecture years ago? Did it come from a friend, colleague or family member? Start from your own ideas, and see how the literature supports those ideas. What theories and literature that you know support that idea? Spend 10 – 30 minutes on an idea. Try this for different ideas over time, especially, try it for different ideas related to your project definition.  You can do exercises 1 and 2 on alternating days: on day 1, try to define a project; on day 2 pick an idea in the project proposal, explain your reasoning, and see what literature supports your reasoning.

Conversing with others: the research discourse

The research literature in any field is basically a long-running formalized conversation between (often egotistical) researchers who work in the field.  In some cases, the conversation is direct and made explicit, as with John Searle’s famous “Minds, Brains, and Programs,” which is often re-published with several responses from other philosophers, and Searle’s responses to those philosophers.

Usually the “conversation” is indirect and hidden with formal language, especially the formalism of citation. My response to Tulley is indirect in the sense that my response is directed at people who struggle with the literature and with self-doubt, not Tulley herself. Still, what I say is a response to what she said (and there’s a non-zero chance she’ll see this essay that discusses her webinar). To a great extent what I’m saying is building on her foundation: “Tulley makes great points; I want to add a little perspective that might be useful for some people.”

To engage in that conversation, you need the confidence to speak, and you need to know what you want to say. To move in that direction, practice the two exercises I suggested above.  They’re exercises to explore and practice—not things to do once and finish. With practice, you’ll start to feel more confident about things that you could contribute to the scholarly discourse.

Note: If you’re trying to use your reading time more effectively, Tulley’s webinar is worth a watch; it covers very different ideas from what I have discussed.

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Dave Harris, Ph.D., editor, writing coach, and dissertation coach, helps writers develop effective writing practices, express their ideas clearly, and finish their projects. He is author of Getting the Best of Your Dissertation (Thought Clearing, 2015), Literature Review and Research Design: A Guide to Effective Research Practice (Routledge, 2020) and second author with Jean-Pierre Protzen of The Universe of Design: Horst Rittel’s Theories of Design and Planning (Routledge, 2010).Dave can be found on the web at www.thoughtclearing.com