Inspiration, Grinding, and Timing: The Story of My Senior Thesis

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Writing my senior thesis was a transformative experience in terms of learning about the roles of inspiration and grinding in getting something done. To graduate Princeton University, every senior is required to write a 100-page-plus thesis.

Idea Marination

I struggled to come up with my chapter structure, and then one day, while just walking down Prospect Avenue, it came to me. I pulled out a book, grabbed a pen, and on the inside cover, I wrote the outline for the thesis. I ended up tearing out that page and hanging it atop the study carrel where I wrote my entire thesis. It worked perfectly, and I never deviated from that outline that I wrote on the street.

This experience taught me the power of idea marination. Sometimes you just need an idea to kick around in your head for a while. If you can't make a decision, sometimes it works to just sleep (or walk around) on it.

Grinding

I then set about writing the thesis like it was a job. Each morning, I would write for about three hours. Some of the writing was good, some of it I threw out, but I kept to a steady pace and just grinded. This has been a key of my work style since that day — steady plugging away day in and day out to make incremental progress that eventually becomes big progress.

I think this is common of many writers, who keep to a schedule, or eat the same thing for lunch every day to avoid clouding their thoughts.

Timing

My thesis was about how the Internet could be a force for political and civic engagement. At the time I wrote it, the Internet was modestly interesting to most people and very interesting to me.

Fourteen years later, the topic seems more relevant than ever, especially looking at the role that Facebook and Twitter have played in elections and movements. Things sometimes come around with timings that are unanticipated. Facebook didn't even exist when I wrote this paper; Twitter would not be founded for seven years.

And this paper being untouched since 1999, after a long period of irrelevancy, it now seems highly relevant. Your timing and the timing of the world don't always line up, but it's amazing when they eventually do.

And so inspiration, grinding, and timing are what I learned from writing my thesis. And these are forces I respect and influence me daily.

Photo: Working on my senior thesis, I think, in 1999/Jon Steinberg