A key question for any researcher is what to work on. Integral to answering is the method of search for an idea that might become a good paper. This is particularly an issue for many students starting on their theses, particularly after a period without a successful start. When I talk with these students, I spell out multiple ways of getting started that I have used, rather than presenting a dry, abstract list of approaches. Generally, students coming to me are trying to write theory papers, and it is my experience with getting started on theory papers that I relate in this essay.

A key part of that strategic process, and also of the tactics of completing and presenting papers, is trying to figure out how interesting an actual result or a conjectured result might be. My movements across different research areas and between basic applied theory and policy analyses have taught me the ongoing importance of strategic planning. This essay reports my memory of how I have proceeded strategically over the past fifty years, both before and after recognizing a need to think directly about these choices. Over time I have become aware of the diversity of research approaches that work at different times and for different people and the uneven quality of advice I have given on this issue. So this is one researcher’s story, not one researcher’s advice, a potted history from my memory of early conscious and not conscious choices.