Prepare, Purpose, Mindset and Personal Charter

I noticed that when I drafted a message to my mentor about whether my dissertation framework was strong enough, I was actually seeking validation rather than genuine input. I caught myself assuming his silence would mean approval, and I was impatient to lock in the direction rather than stay open to alternatives. What I realized is that I was treating my own preliminary judgment as fact and asking him to confirm it—not asking him to actually challenge it. I never gave him the chance to push back on whether a different framework might work better, or to surface execution problems other students had hit. I don't actually know what he would have said if I'd asked an open question instead. Moving forward, I'm going to rephrase those seeking-confirmation questions into ones that genuinely ask for risk assessment and pushback. I'm also planning to track every input question I send, then review them before major decisions to check whether I'm asking yes/no questions or truly open ones. If I catch myself sending a confirmation-seeking message, I'll follow up asking directly for honest pushback to reopen the conversation.