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The Trick to Knowing When You’re Done With Research

The ‘Saturation Theory’ helps me figure out when to stop researching and start writing

Clive Thompson
Creators Hub

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Photo via Libreshot

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I’m a long-form journalist, so I’ll spend many weeks — typically months — working on a big magazine feature. One of the trickiest things is figuring out: When am I done with research?

When do I know a subject well enough to write about it?

In my early years of journalism, this was devilishly hard to deduce. The tech/science subjects I covered were diverse and complex — microchip lithography, computational linguistics, the mysteries of managing startups, trends in digital art, marine biology. It felt like drinking from a firehose every time I tried to orient myself on a new subject.

I had trouble telling when I knew enough to write.

So I’d keep on doing more and more and more research — reading more academic papers, interviewing more experts. Eventually, I’d drift toward writing, sometimes just because the clock was ticking and I’d piss off an editor if I didn’t get a draft in soon.

Noticing a pattern

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