Heuristics: traps to avoid
1. Perhaps, one of the ways to test whether your search is taking you in the right direction is by seeing whether it solves a well-known paradox, or explicates it in a novel way. If after research, your hypothesis leads you to a well-known discussion in theology (but lacks the latter’s sophistication), then you could be on an uninteresting track.
2. In certain phases of thinking, unbridled speculations have a serious contribution to make. After some time, it teaches one that there is a very interesting difference between disciplined speculations and speculations of other sorts and that one has to learn the former. However, the only way to learn the former is through the latter.