We start our intellectual endeavors with preconceptions that can be transformed during further inquiries and can serve as a starting point for following endeavors. This is also called a Hermeneutic Circle.
By focusing on what is interesting and writing down your own intellectual development, topics, questions and arguments will emerge from the material without force.
Once we see a critical mass of notes and clusters emerging from those notes, we see topics that can be built upon, but also topics we have already worked on.