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by dredmorbius 2515 days ago
Oddly enough, that's not been my problem for some sime now. Note that I largely read nonfiction....

1. Find a topic of interest.

2. Start reading at some arbitrary entry point, though generally favour texts with references.

3. Branch from there.

- Find the authors you most respect / who most make you think, and read their publications, and track down their sources and references, or where they're cited. Notes, footnotes, references, bibliographies, and citation indices are gold.

- Find the topics, questions, ideas, methods within the topic that you're most interested in and drill down on those.

- If you find yourself needing new skills in the course of explorations, pick up on those.

- Don't hesitate to ask for recommendations.

- If there's a concept that seems unclear, chase that down to its origins, and trace variants as the concept evolves

- Incidental histories and biographies can often provide further illumination.

- Eventually you should start constructing your ow structure or modle of the field or space (or subsets / components of it/them). This can further drive your exploration.