When conducting research, it is a good idea to write down your ideas and discoveries. This is so because doing so will make for a more efficient writing process. As you research, write down key topics you discover as this will help you to vet your sources necessary for your paper/topic. As you write your ideas and discoveries down, your discoveries, naturally, will be summations of the findings within a particular source that you may use when reviewing your gathered information and save you time by not having to review all your research a second time. Too, by writing down your ideas, this will help you narrow down your topic (or even find a new one) so that you may be able to provide the most targeted/specific paper possible because the more a paper covers, the more general (and potentially vague) it tends to be.