I like to begin with things that I can control; things that I don't have to ask permission to do. Now that I am Professor Emeritus my degree of freedom is complete. There is no job review any more.
The first freedom in academic research is in the choice of topic. I can choose any topic that I want, and take any possible approach. I cannot control how interested other people are, or how my work will be received. I can think about things outside of my control, but I cannot change them. My topic happens to be "Lorca and Music," and I am studying the poet's musical activities and posthumous legacy.
After that, one thing under my control is the standards I set for myself. How clear do I want my writing to be? How tightly organized? What amount of knowledge of the raw subject matter is necessary? How granular is my approach? How interesting or original do I want my scholarship to be?
I can also ask more specific questions. Do I want sign-posting, jargon? How do I balance granularity of knowledge with the capacity to communicate to audience who doesn't have that degree of interest in minutiae, while at the same time being rigorously accurate?
Most people will say they want all of this! This is great, but there is a usefulness also in making all of this explicit and intentional. Write it out as a list. Prioritize your goals. For example, some papers will not be as original: they will present interesting synthesis of knowledge already available.
(Probably if your standard is high, then you will get further in the review process for publishing articles. If a journal has a 5% acceptance rate, you want to be in top 10% in quality to give yourself a good chance of getting a "revise and resubmit." You don't hear people complaining about papers because the language is not vague enough, or the organization is too coherent. Usually, reviewers will respond warmly to competence.)
The next freedom is the freedom to live up to your own standards. For example, at one point I taught myself to write better. At another stage, I taught myself to write better again. I did research to improve my granular knowledge of the subject matter. Articles I wrote that were not up to my own standard were rejected. Some were up the standard of the field, in that they were published, but possibly mediocre from my own perspective.
Envisioning the standard is the main step. That will allow you to figure out how to achieve it. Without the standards in place in your mind, though, you will be lost.
