Doing the lit review last Regarding the lit review issue, Jane, my chair also advised me not to do the lit review until after my analysis was done. He said that I already had a good enough sense of the literature to begin the analysis, and if I did the analysis first it would help to set boundaries for the lit review. I thought he was crazy at first, but you know what? He was exactly right! In the past when I've tried to cover the literature first, I've gotten lost in the library and ended up reading and taking notes on things that were only marginally related to my topic. This was a gigantic waste of time. By doing the analysis first and then focusing on the literature that directly addressed the issues raised in the analysis, I was able to constrain myself to the matter at hand and avoid going off on tangents. My lit review still ended up being over 75 pages long and involving over 130 sources, but imagine what it would have been if I hadn't followed his advice. I'd still be working on it, I'm sure!