Personally, I started with a few subjects that I knew would sustain my interest, that I would not get bored with, and that I felt I could honestly make a real contribution to. I then tried to connect them all together!
At first the connections looked very forced and unlikely to yield anything more than a handful of curiosities. I gave myself a time limit to try out explorations to test some ideas, full aware that I may need to backtrack and start again in a new direction.
After some searching around indeed the connections were there in a way that was unexpected and gave way to research that led to my dissertation, another students dissertation which continued work in that area, and a good number of papers.
Maybe the short summary is: give yourself a “writing prompt” of given these things I like and want to research how might they be connected and what do those connections mean?
At first the connections looked very forced and unlikely to yield anything more than a handful of curiosities. I gave myself a time limit to try out explorations to test some ideas, full aware that I may need to backtrack and start again in a new direction.
After some searching around indeed the connections were there in a way that was unexpected and gave way to research that led to my dissertation, another students dissertation which continued work in that area, and a good number of papers.
Maybe the short summary is: give yourself a “writing prompt” of given these things I like and want to research how might they be connected and what do those connections mean?