My method in college ended up being explicit balance. Study, read, ingest as much knowledge on the topic as I could until I felt I was at either the point of diminishing returns or having sufficiently covered the subject, taking some, but not copious notes. Then just start doing idle things, specifically letting the "background processing" happen in my brain, things like running/hiking, going to dinner, etc. Mostly just waiting for the ideas to form and appear. At that point, I just started rapidly scribbling draft shards, in whatever order the ideas appeared. When that slowed down, it was time to wrangle the shards into a properly organized paper, which usually also included finding a smaller number of new connections among the shards.
The whole key was first feeding selected info in, then allowing — and trusting — my unconscious brain the space to work on it.