Mitigating mental overload

Just like a very long journey, your project will be too complex to try to keep every turn, every place, every path in your mind at the same time. You will be aware of certain impressions, of critical decisions, but there will also be long passages of literature or data analysis that you cannot keep in mind. You will encounter seemingly brand-new ideas that you will, discouragingly, rediscover in your old notebooks and find you simply forgot them.

Consequently, try not to require yourself to become fully aware of your entire project before you can work on it. Sure, get a sense of the whole journey to retain a sense of orientation, but then train and use your ability to more and more quickly focus on individual packages—theory, data acquisition, analysis, discussion, etc.—of your work. Learning to switch from scene to scene, zooming out to your project overview to see the relations among all components, and zooming in to fine-tune decisions is one of those hidden mental capabilities trained by the thesis.

Research, to a degree, also means training the agility of your mind to ‘pan and zoom’ in, out, and around your project. At no time will you be able to have your entire project in your mind in full detail, but your mind will adapt to zoom into individual passages quickly, switch between them, provide detail and overview—just not everything at once.

(This is a preview section. The full chapter on this topic continues with the sections “Rough coordinates”, “Train of thought”, “In essence”, “To reflect”, “Two travellers’ tales”, “Devil’s advocate”, and “How to tackle”.)