A Plain Hill Chronicle

History, often, is portrayed as a mystery, a puzzle to solve. Running with the puzzle analogy, imposing order upon miscellaneous historical documents by means of cataloguing data in a spreadsheet would be unto finding all the edge pieces of a puzzle. Tedious, perhaps, yet necessary.

The mystery begins once you’ve catalogued the simple stuff; reading the documents, discovering the patterns that relate the apparent miscellany – this is when the fun begins.

But what if it’s not fun? What if we find ourselves uninvested detectives? The latter enables some degree of objectivity – the former just proves a problem.

Problems yearn for solutions. Let’s find one, then, shall we?

First, and perhaps most obvious by this point: actively make a narrative out of what you find. Regale yourself with a captivating beginning, and make the middle interesting enough to make you wish to seek out the end.

Another strategy: pretend your subject relates to you in some way. I don’t want to spoil your imagination with suggestions as to the how, so I’ll leave it at that.

Have you ever read an inductive non-fiction book, that begins with a life earning their living through the most mundane means, and ends with a metaphorical conquering of the cosmos? Assume what you’re doing will end like that; it probably won’t, but at least you’ll find it out either way (and have a laugh at yourself for thinking it would).

Add some external motivation – find out the basics of the mystery, explain them to a friend as impartially as possible, then make a wager on how you think it will resolve. I recommend making the wager on Opposite Day, so when you inevitably try really hard to make the evidence agree with your wagered outcome, yet still fail, you’ll have done a right rigorous job of puzzling out the mystery and will still collect the spoils of your wager!*

*This last strategy is offered facetiously, in part. Don’t fall prey to confirmation bias; wagers are powerful motivators.