HELP! I still don't have a PHD topic!!

I am part of TISS's 2018 combined 5 year M-Phil-PhD batch. Which means effectively that in 2020 I have finished my MPhil, and my PhD should get over by 2023. And it is 2022. And I do not have a topic yet.

Month after month, week after week this has been my to-do point number 1. Freeze on the topic. And I am still where I was 6 months back. Still thinking. 

MPhil got over in March 2020 and the viva got over instead of April, much later that year. So it was expected of our batch that in 2021 we should have published at least one paper from our MPhil dissertation and settled more or less on the topic for the PhD. 

Some have. Most of them I see working on the same topics, a logical up-step from their M Phil theses. That makes complete sense. Your literature is more or less ready. You just need to figure out where to go as the next step and start the research. I wished to do so too. But boredom had set in. I could not think of anything I wanted to do in employee voice any more. I was dragging my feet so much that it came as a relief when my guide said- look at something else.

I have been looking at that something else for the last 6 months, and I have a vague idea what I want to do. I know I want to work on careers. Something to do with that. But I dont know what.

How does one settle on a PhD topic. 

1. It has to interest me. I have to work on it for the next two years. This may be my life's work. This may be where I will work for the next innings of my career. This may be what I get famous for, who knows!! So I need to really really like the topic. 'Employee voice' is a topic I like, I can speak on it, but I dont know if I can keep at it for a lengthy sustained period of time.

2. It has to be current. It does not make sense if I work on something which was hot 20 years back. The topic has to be currently interesting to what will potentially be my reading audience. Because a thesis cannot exist in a vacuum. A work will be successful if it appeals to my audience, where I would like to be read, to be discussed, to make a difference to.

3. It has to be evergreen. Like, it cannot be todays fad diet! It has to appeal to academics and to the industry for a long long time. Like employee voice- it is current, and it is evergreen. As long as there are employees there voicing will be a problem to deal with. Similarly, careers. 

4. It has to have both academic and practical implications. This is what every single guide will tell you. Whether you want to get back to corporate life, or want to get into the consulting life (as the practical PhD-s do) or to be totally in academics (as the non-practical PhD-s do), your work will be published if the takeaway gives a solid something to the industry, to practitioners. And as every single PHD in the world knows, if you are not published, you don't exist. (I still don't exist, by the way!)

5. It has to be a workable problem. Yes, apparently there are problems that are not practicably workable. Like stuff which do not have much literature. When I wanted to work on gamification in HR two years back, it was such a fledgeling topic, I did not see my work taking shape in the way I would like to. I am not a techie, and I am not part of core HR. As an outsider to both fields, the topic is not practical or workable for me. Similarly, something which is too old, which has too much literature, to find a niche there becomes a problem. My guide used to say- research has to be on that cutting edge- new but not too new. 

So, careers- right. This is where I'm at. Its new enough- work has been going on in the field for 20 odd years. New theory is being built every year. So much work is going on, new models, new paths... it is exciting, it is practical, it has great implications for organizations and individuals. 

Now I am reading literature to try and get a gap in recent literature.