000_Raison d'être
I am easily distracted. I love to learn, but when self-directed, I take lots of detours. I created this space to add more structure to my personal learning and development. Enough structure for me to build an archive I can look back on, measure progress, and ultimately make something. I don’t know what that thing is yet, but that’s part of the fun.
Why make this public? Easy, accountability. Why am I doing this anonymously? I reason it will allow me to be more vulnerable than I might otherwise be. This Substack is a space to learn, get things wrong, put forward interesting questions, practice my writing and build a personal archive to look back on. I’m sure there’s some flawed logic in there, but I’ve got to start somewhere.
As an occasional social media user who has suffered from imposter syndrome my entire career, I’m not thrilled with this idea of mine. I’m not even sure I’ll make it past the first month. If, however, I can make a habit of chronicling my research and building on what I’ve learned, I hope it can be useful to others who may struggle with the same challenges.
The next step is determining a focus areas for my research. My interests and career have always been in the social sciences. My occupation is brand consulting so I spend a lot of time understanding why people do what they do and then work with writers and designers to create words and symbols with the intention of changing behavior in some way. It sounds nefarious, and it can be, but it depends on the intent. Those changes in behavior could be anything from trying a new grocery delivery service to signing up to get vaccinated.
The research I want to document here falls into three very broad categories within the social sciences: economics, technology and design. Some of my research will result in investment opportunities I see in the market, however I am not an investment advisor nor do I want this to turn into an investment blog. I want this blog to be about knowledge accumulation over time. Knowledge is wealth, not money.
These weekly posts will undoubtedly evolve over time, but to begin I’ll use the following prompts as my guide:
What I researched this week and why.
Adding to the stew. What I can build on from previous week's learnings.
New questions I have as a result of 1 and 2.
What I'm going to research in the upcoming week.
I’m not looking forward to this, but something in the back of my mind is telling me it’s important I do it. If I don’t, I’ll regret not having a record of my learning journey. Worst case scenario, I still hate it after some time but I’ll have learned a bunch in the process. More next week. Thanks all.