Habit of constant surveying and reflecting

It's challenging but also simple to come up with research ideas, all you have to do is to survey and think constantly.

Upon studying 2 papers in related topics every week, one would have read nearly 50 papers after 6 months, while research ideas would naturally form, and materials for the reference analysis section in your thesis would also be ready by then.

P.S. One should also keep the habit of studing papers even at work, atleast for the ones who are in charge of tackling new technical issues, else what happens if there's no one to go to when encountering new problems? Reference databases and your own brain would be the only two sources of insipration you can rely on.