Some advice on lit review

The problem of reading and writing for your study comes up again and again. I found a good webpage that talks about lit review. Below is a short excerpt on the balance of reading and writing. You can go here for a full reading.

Excerpt:

When you read for your literature review, you are actually doing two things at the same time (which makes things more difficult for you!):

1. you are trying to define your research problem: finding a gap, asking a question, continuing previous research, counter-claiming (see the introductions page);
2. you are trying to read every source relevant to your research problem.

Naturally, until you have defined your problem, you will find that there are hundreds of sources that seem relevant. However, you cannot define your problem until you read around your research area. This seems a vicious circle, but what should happen is that as you read you define your problem, and as you define your problem you will more easily be able to decide what to read and what to ignore.