Commitment to start

Nassim Taleb talks about people not being able to step back into their own shoes from the past and see events that have happened in the same way as when they experienced them. They have already experienced things later down the road. Consequently, the only way to really have inside of how things develop is to keep track of thoughts, events, decisions as they happen.

To maximize my learning from this experience (as I think I’ll be starting out PhD studies only once) I decided to commit to recording what is happening in my head, as it happens. I know that this is going to be extremely difficult — there is very little time for anything extra already now. But this might be a precious experience.

Thus, for the first 100 days of my doctoral studies I’m committing to keep adding new posts to this series. My intention is to write at least 100 words a day. I’ll be covering not only things related to the overall experience of starting the studies, but also different reflections related to the topic of my studies (which I’ll try to keep to minimum).

Another thing is that academic career is also a lot about writing. Therefore, I treat this experiment as a way to develop my efficiency in writing (not necessarily quality though). This means that I can be experimenting with different formats, approaches and techniques. And let’s see what happens.