Nikolaos Panaousis

Knowledge Management for the Distracted Mind

I have an attention deficit disorder, and I struggle with forming and sustaining elaborate thoughts and ideas. This is especially the case in the realm of intellectual productivity. My ADHD doesn’t allow me to properly externalize my thoughts, and I frequently find myself in shallow cyclical thinking whose only purpose, it seems to me, is […]

Blog
A wandering mind

We were sitting inside a coffee shop at the corner of a block in downtown Manhattan. I can’t remember what time it was, but it was past noon, for the high-rise buildings had eclipsed the sun, casting a refreshing shadow. Two of my friends had invited me to talk about an extra-curricular opportunity, a social impact challenge in collaboration with IBM and my college. I had accepted to meet because I needed experience and the undertaking sounded intriguing. Our goal was to nail down the requirements of the challenge and find a social problem we could address, using IBM’s Watson.

Essays
Getting Fit With Two Novelists

In April of 2020, I was in my last semester of college when I suddenly fell sick, upending my studies and finding myself in a downhill spiral. For weeks, my body resorted to a dormant state, plagued by fatigue and inaction, rendering me incapable of performing even the most mundane of tasks. I had lost […]

Essays
The Anxious Immigrant

Outside the window, the gears of civilization keep grinding, focused on the big themes that move the currents of humanity, maintaining the hegemony. But inside groups, families, and, deeper yet, inside the individual, chaos reigns. Unimaginable pain, anxieties, depression, and distress. It is unnerving to observe our collective inhumanity, oblivious to each other’s anguish, ignorant […]

Writing
A Dark Place

In love. And as you kiss the girl of your dreams, time freezes. Everything stops. Your heart pounds, the world narrows, colors change to gloom, the brilliance of the summer becomes winter. You feel cold. The kiss ends, you look at her, and you smile, reality returning back, slowly. She smiles back at you. Her […]

Writing
From a notecard to your inbox

Hello Friend, Let me start by saying this: I am not a fundamentalist. Nor am I against the wonders of the digital world. I do not live in a cave, and I don’t—usually—read under the candlelight. But I do write in 4×6 index cards as a means of acquiring knowledge, conducting research, and producing essays. My […]

Blog
The end of obscurity and the cover of crowds

Most of our public utterances and interactions quickly fade into obscurity. Chances are that you don’t remember the faces of the people at the grocery store or the license plate number of the last car that passed by you. Thanks to moral codes, human evolutionary limitations, and our imperfect memory, chances are that others don’t […]

Blog, Essays