‘I’m not sure I have enough results for a full thesis’.
That was me, exactly 8 months before my 4-year PhD contract expired and I wasn’t sure if I was going to ‘make it’.
Most of my thesis was composed of half-backed chapters. I was missing a lot of experimental data I needed to get after the Christmas break and I had no idea if the outcomes were going to be good or an epic failure.
This was 2021.
The previous year, I had lost a significant amount of lab time due to COVID-19 shut downs of our research lab.
I had lived the worst case scenario every experimental PhD could think of: not being able to do experiments.
Now, every time a younger PhD student comes to me with the same doubts, I have the perfect fortune cookie advice prepared.
It became my signature advice if you will.
And it must have been pretty darn good advice because I ended up being quoted in another PhD thesis.
(My proudest mentor moment !!!!)
In the face of PhD graduation uncertainty, you got to trust the process.
Obviously this concept is not new and it’s also not proprietary.
But in that specific context, to battle that specific existential uncertainty, I have found it to be true more often than not. I graduated in September 2022. And so did many others that had the same fear.
The whole extent of what I mean when I say trust the process, is much better explained by clinical psychologist Dr Julie Smith. She writes in her book Open When… that:
“Tolerating the uncertainty of not knowing how it will all work out becomes part of the process. (...) Doubt doesn’t get to make your decisions for you.”
The irony?
I feel like I am failing at the very same advice, facing the uncertainty in my creator journey.
Doubt is constantly keeping me paralysed to make my first digital product, share more about the book writing journey and in very general terms, make my first ‘creator money’ (anything unrelated to services I am doing).
So I wrote out this edition as a reminder for you and me. Because I am certain that you will face uncertainty one moment or another. Here are 4 reasons to trust the process:
#1 Others have gone through the exact same thing
As a PhD student, I reminded myself that others have gone through the exact same four years (sometimes three, sometimes five, sometimes a haunted seven) before you.
I have witnessed my housemate going nocturnal and surviving on whiskey and takeout to make his deadline. I know people arriving in flip flops to a chemical lab and by doing so disregarding all safety protocols that made it (it may or may not have been one and the same person). I saw people with questionable skills also make it.
I have yet to see someone that really wanted it completely fail.
And I believe the same to be true for creators.
Chances are, someone else on the internet has already achieved the goal you are setting for yourself. Against all odds, this gives me tremendous peace. But acting under that trust that you will make it, too, is different than it being easy. You have got to trust that you will be able to pull off a very hard thing.
And if it doesn’t work out?
It’s not failure as much as it is learning what is not working, gaining self-awareness of what is working for you, or even pivoting.
I like to think about failure as a type of energy. It doesn’t appear or disappear out of nowhere. It merely transforms.
#2 Even in uncertainty, you are in control of the input
Living constantly with freelance job uncertainty is HARD. Wanting to become an internet creator in the age of AI is insanity. Some days I feel completely lost and wonder what the heck I was thinking.
And the worst part is that there is no manual to overcome this existential anxiety.
Questions I am constantly ruminating about are how do I level up? What content platform will give me the outcome that I seek? When will I finally ‘made it’ building an audience with my writing?
Anne Lamott compares writing to driving at night with headlights: you only see a little ahead, and that’s enough to keep going. The key is to follow point A to point B, and point B to point C.
The content creator journey can take years to bare fruits. The hard part is not knowing exactly how many years it might take. I could hang in there if there is a promise that by the end of year four I will have ‘graduated’ and built a sustainable business.
The only reason I hang in the uncertainty is because I like that I get to create it. There is no waiting for a promotion, no approval steps, there is no one stopping me from sending this newsletter every week. This is my point A.
The fact that the creative growth, subscriber growth, monetary growth are all in my control is frustrating but in the end liberating. I have no one to blame but myself. And I love it.
(not the blaming part, obvs)
#3 Consider the alternative for a moment
Creators and life coaches like to call this exercise: picture the anti-vision.
It consists of describing the exact future (including life, your habits, and working conditions) you dread most.
It’s based on the concept of inversion therapy.
Investor Charlie Munger famously lived by the maxim: "All I want to know is where I'm going to die, so I’ll never go there."
The anti-vision for me would be trusting my professional growth timeline to a manager that has no other motivation than bringing up company revenue. That is my literal nightmare scenario I fled, now more than a year ago.
#4 Whatever you do, do it with conviction
I have the most surreal trust that I am in the right place of my journey and that I’m building towards something with the uncertainty of what exactly it is, but with the conviction that it will be important and it will be great.
Trust and intuition are so hard to combine because they are hard to quantify. As a scientist, I doubt I should even trust intuition as much as I do. But even in science, you don’t always know the outcome.
Uncertainty can be a good thing as an experimentalist. Because you keep going until you have something worth sharing.
Dan Koe describes 3 phases when you are about to level up: dissonance, uncertainty and discovery.
The dissonance phase is when you're tired of your current level, feeling it's repetitive and demotivating.
The uncertainty phase follows, where you feel lost and unsure of what to do next.
The discovery phase leans into experimentation, trying new projects, saying yes to new experiences, and exposing yourself to new information.
In other words, do something audacious.
Trust the process and don't attach yourself to external expectations; pursue what genuinely interests you with conviction.
A few words on certainty
Corporate life, routine administration, and doing the same thing all over again, gave me the worst anxiety I felt in years.
Living with uncertainty is hard.
But for me, living with constant certainty is harder.
Can you relate?
REFERENCES
Writing Advice Every Writer Should Hear (Anne Lamott Interview on How I write)
Dan koe - how to get ahead of 99% of people in 2026 (Open Residency)
Keep up the audacity,
Laura
