Choosing the Appropriate Reading Focus

    I was thinking about a conversation with my thesis advisor when I came to the realization that I'd been spending too much time lately studying basic fundamentals of science, and not enough time studying the outcomes of studies related to problems of interest of mine. I'll admit this is an unusual problem to have. I'd expect that to most graduate students, research methods is just about the least interesting topic one can study. My concern was that my understanding of the fundamentals was way behind that of where I needed it to be, but this concern had caused me to lose track of my development in other areas. Sure, if I studied hard enough and long enough, it is quite possible that I could become an expert in methods of behavioral research, but since I do not intend to ever become a specialist in research methods, focusing so heavily on theory and research as I had been lately was a poor decision. My big takeaway from this insight is that it is important to be aware of where I need to be at, say 5 or 10 years down the road, but also to be aware of maintaining a balance between the different types of expertise necessary for my goals as I develop. This was my mistake.
    Recently I had been reading Rapoport's textbook on mathematical modeling, but I'm going to focus instead on reading more review articles. I just finished my notes on Ploog's 2010 review of stimulus overselectivity research. The downside of this is that although I'm sure these review articles will be quite well written and full of useful information, compared to Rapoport I expect they'll be fairly light and breezy reading. If I never do any difficult, technical reading, then I'll never be very good at difficult, technical reading. So I will need to get back to reading more technical papers eventually. Practice makes perfect as they say. But I believe my main skill deficit area at the moment is the applied behavior analytic literature, so that's where I need to be doing more reading.