Research that never becomes an article is an expensive hobby. This is the process I use to make sure reading turns into something publishable inside a week.
Problem
I used to research until I felt ready, which meant forever. There was no signal for “enough”, so every article stayed in the reading phase and the output depended on mood.
My System
The workflow has four stages, and each stage has a physical artefact:
- Question. One sentence, written before any reading. “Which portable recorder is reliable for interview capture?” is a question. “Voice recorders” is not.
- Capture. Sources go into one plain-text file with a URL and one line on why it is there. No folders, no tags yet.
- Skeleton. Before finishing the reading, I write the headings. An article with headings and gaps is honest about what is still unknown.
- Fill and cut. Each heading gets filled from the capture file. Anything that does not fit a heading is cut, not saved for later.
Tools
- Typora for the skeleton and the draft.
- Zotero for anything that will be cited formally.
- Readwise for highlighting that I will actually revisit.
- Hugo for publishing the result the same day it is finished.
Why It Works
The question stage kills 80 percent of bad projects before they cost anything. The skeleton stage kills scope creep, because a heading is a promise about length. And publishing immediately stops the draft from rotting in a folder waiting for a better second half.
Limitations
This workflow is tuned for pieces between 800 and 2,500 words. Book-length or deeply reported work needs a longer reading phase and a proper outline before any drafting. It also assumes I already know the domain well enough to write plausible headings early, which is not true for genuinely new subjects.
