Why I started this site

September 25, 2023 11-minute read

In short:

To act as a serendipity vehicle. To find people interested in the same things I am, find good suggestions for reading and research, and hopefully meet some interesting people.
To act as a catalogue of my interests and achievements. For people interested in me, and to act as inspiration or provide direction for others.
To have a testament to my skills and beliefs. It’s quite easy to try and fit in the boxes job applications or other people expect you to be in. Having a place on the internet that helps state who I am works to prevent this.
To improve my writing. Writing is one of the main way we communicate our ideas. It is a skill, so it makes sense to improve it. After all, what is the point of having good ideas if you can’t share them effectively?
Because sharing knowledge is important. I have learnt a lot from the internet, and now that I have knowledge to share I want to continue building the trend.

That’s all the basics. If you want to hear more exposition and background on the creation of this site, continue reading.

Who knows? Maybe this will inspire you to start your own website too.

I’ve been thinking (and procrastinating) about how to answer this question for a couple days. I think it comes down to the reasons I summarised above. But here are the thoughts I had before I could summarise them.

In fact, I started this site in the summer of 2021, just before I started university. The reaosn why I started one then was probably for a couple simple reasons

It seemed cool! Who doesn’t want to have their own little corner of the internet
I had gained some extra income from working
I wanted to learn how to make websites. Potentially so I could use the skill for other people. (I think I worked on The Odin Project for a week. Free code camp is another good resource too for learning website creation)
(I had also heard some of the above reasons from people I admired.)

I’ve now come back to this in the summer before my third year to update it properly (somewhat).

If you want to track back to the root cause, the core reason I created this site is because some people I admired gave the advice to start your own blog/platform. My earliest recollection of this is from Ali Abdaal talking about Austin Kleon’s novel Show Your Work!, and in particular how taking the advice of “showing his work” completely changed his life.

I found this very inspiring, and there are some other people I found who also gave similar advice e.g. Alexey Guzy. I think I found this idea particularly impactful when I was just starting university, and the idea of networking seemed icky to me and I wasn’t sure how I wanted to present myself to the world. I’ve become a bit better at this now, but I still feel like I have a decent amount to learn. Possibly another benefit of working on this site.

In short, a lot of people who seem to have somewhat similar backgrounds/world views to mine seem to have some sort of platform. From PhD students to more public figures. Hence, why shouldn’t I try emulate my inspirations. I’m not even really sure what I want to do with my life completely, and I think having this platform will at least help me think about it in a more concrete way.

Now do I think I will be amazing at this in the beginning? Probably not

I don’t have that much experience writing (most of it is from school). The last two years in university (the majority of my life) I’ve probably spent more time looking at equations rather than words. So there will be a learning curve (and I apologise if you are one of the first readers of this blog and are lucky enough to witness my ugly growth stage as a writer).

But anyway, when you start anything truly new, you will not be good at it to start. And I think getting over that fear of starting and the “ugly” bits of porgress are important. I think we have an expectation to be perfect, particularly because we don’t see other people’s progress - just the finished product.

(At the very least, I will aim to avoid comma splices as my english teachers have grilled into me.)

Now time to expand on my original points

To act as a serendipity vehicle

(I first heard of the term from Ali Abdaal by David Perell. Ben Kahn also has a post on a similar theme)

This means creating your own luck and exposing yourself to possibilities which might prove very fruitful. I am a big believer in creating your own “luck” and have seen multiple people do it around me. By sharing my ideas here hopefully I can find more people who are interested in the similar ideas and fields.

From Jake Seliger’s blog he references a quote from Derek Sivers' novel “Anything You Want” saying “the coolest people I meet are the ones who find me through something I’ve written.”

So if I meet one interesting person through this website, I think it’ll be worth it.

Even finding suggestions for good books to read or interesting areas to research would be useful outcomes of this site. One of the reasons I started reading less as a kid was because I couldn’t really find stuff that interested me anymore. So finding resources to fuel my learning curiosity by sharing my interests would be great!

2. To have a testament to my skills and beliefs

I think it’s quite easy to fall into the boxes that the world sets out for us. Be that in careers, socially etc. One thing I’m trying to focus on is what are my interests, priorities and skills and how I can find a career and life that matches that -instead of trying to match my identity/skills to some corportate job.

Plus whenever i get the feeling of imposter syndrome, this is a nice place to check back on that has some detail on who I am.

This also helps me have confidence in my new ideas. If I want to make a career pivot or learn more about a different field it can be a bit intimidating, especially to established individuals, to be like “I want to be a THING”. Insert entrepeneur, CEO, neuroscientist etc. for THING. However, if I have it written on the internet, it takes away some of the burden of “proof” of my interests. And also it makes it so that I can’t reduce myself into trying to fit into what people expect of me. Becuase if I’ve shared something then it has to have some truth, right?

3. To improve my writing

This has many benefits:

I will be substantially faster, more eloquent and precise any time I need to write in the future (which will probably come quite often).
I will get better at sharing my ideas. This involves being able to consolidate them and package them in a way that’s effective. It’s all swell having ideas in your head, but this is much different from fleshing them out in the real world (as a side note-this is one of the most important things in engineering).

Being able to share your ideas effectively and fluently seems to be a component for success and successful leadership. I think writing this blog will help me a lot with that goal.

This doesn’t mean I don’t need to practise things like public speaking still, but it adds to the overall package. Practising writing (as well as speaking) is one of the best ways to become a better communicator. Additionally, in the process of become better at writing I think you usually become more well-read too.

I find one of the things engineers sometimes struggle with (even though it’s incredibly vital) is communication. And in particular how to storytell (very important) and put emotions (pathos) into stories.

This is a very important skill. After all, if it were just as simple as saying “racism is bad”, why would we need our Malcolm X’s or Martin Luther King Jrs?

Story telling is another key part of the human existence and it forms a significant amount of our communication (try paying attention next time you have a conversation). However, I think people rarely do much to cultivate the skill and it’s even harder because there is no specific formula for a good story. I think a lot of people practice it by intuition. The difficulty and skill in telling a good story is one of the reasons I respect creatives so much. In trying to cover the more lacking parts of my education, I think effective story telling is a very useful thing I could improve on.

I’ve been reading a lot of interesting blogs/internet information recently while thinking about starting this site. See some in the appendix.

It always impresses me how some very useful information is just tucked away sometimes, like David Perell on how to start a podcast or Nadia Eghbal’s list of microgrants- found from here.

And the more I’ve thought about it, the more I realise how much I’ve learnt from blogs. Be that personal or technical. If I have a very niche question where I can’t find an answer easily, be that an alternative perspective on special relativity or some advice for preparing for university entrance exams, the internet and blogs have been there to provide a lot of them.

If you extend that whole idea to what I’ve learned from the internet, from Stack Exchange to internet forums to Youtube. That list is practically endless. There are so many educational resources out there on almost every topic. I wouldn’t know half of the things I know today if it wasn’t for them. Be that about breakdancing, socialising or programming.

I view these self-publised creators as an important part of our learning ecosystem and knowledge sharing. While a lot of knowledge now may be in books or shared through word of mouth, I think this type of content has an important place in this area, particularly for sharing new ideas and research. I think it’s one of the best ways to make use of the capablities of the internet.

And I think part of the reason of starting this site now, is that I feel I have something I can contribute. I’ve recently realised I also have a decent amount of experience and valuable attriburates that I can share my knowledge on. (Much more after I started university.)

I’m not saying I have all the answers or that I will completely change anyones life. But I think I have a unique perspective and set of experiences that some people might find insightful. For example, I am studying (and got accepted into) one of the best universities in the world. I grew up in a multi-cultural household and I can speak 3 languages. I am very sporty. I am a fast learner. I am quite social/good at meeting people. I have experienced xenophobia/racism. I love travelling and meeting new cultures (Korea and Morocco recently have been a highlight)-I have also done a bit of solo travel.

An additional note: On applications for various scholarships etc. I feel like I repeat myself sometimes answering questions along the lines of “who am I”. So I felt like I might as well have a place to collate some of that experience together.

Another interesting point about having a platform is creating a community/audience. It’s very interesting for me to see how communities engage with “authors” and also each other. Hopefully, I can create a space for more fruitful discussions if I ever reach the point of having an audience.

I have a lot of things I don’t know, that I want to learn more about and other things I’m unsure about. For example, how to approach my career or networking. I also know some things. Maybe I can use this site to help close that knowledge gap.

Other random things I would be interested in writing about: languages, engineering/physics, computational neuroscience, AI, travel, culture, martial arts

Other thoughts

This also gives me a useful project to do when I feel like I’ve got nothing on. Which is rare recently during university, but sometimes still happens.
There’s also not much downside to starting this website (the main thing is the time I invest). So in the worst case I can view this as a healthy experiment that will at least improve my writing.
The more I’ve thought about starting a personal website, the more it seems like a good idea. Most decisions where I’ve had this feeling turned out to be good ones. So hopefully this is another one!

(I also don’t want to fall into the trap of commodotising myself as a personal brand)

Also how I built this website:

I used Hugo and Netlify. If you want to know more details, let me know! Also, you don’t need much money (if any) to host a website of your own.
Some good advice by Mark Manson on starting a blog.

Appendix:

Some interesting blogs I found while reading about blogging:

17/10/2023 Post-post comment Paul Graham also has some interesting words about why it’s useful to write here

31/12/2024 Extra comment If you want to make a website like this, I used Hugo and Netlify.