One of the things I was doing on my recent sabbatical was asking myself "what the heck am I working on, and why?" I was taking a bit of a breather to more clearly figure out what I want to focus on, and what direction I want to take my life and career.
Today I want to blog about having your own Personal Research Agenda. A Research Agenda is a list of questions to focus on -- they are the destinations you are tacking towards, the organizing principle around which you work. You might not be focusing on all of them all the time, but just formulating a list and putting it down will cause your mind to roll over them in the background like a kind of background thread.