In my Utopian world, there would be a mandatory qualification to appear for job interviews in college.
You should have been writing at least thrice a week since you got into college. Minimum. This writing should be freely accessible online. Without this writing, you don’t get to sit for job interviews.
What, you might ask, should you be writing about?
Here’s one way to think about it: what are you most curious about? What broad subject, topic or concept do you wish to learn about the most? Write about that. Then write about the an aspect, a nuance, an offshoot that you thought about while writing that first post. Trust me, there is no way for you to write about something – anything – without having thought about something else to write about. I guarantee it.
And continue writing. As I said, at least thrice a week.
Writing often happens in bunches. By that I mean that it is possible that you will write three posts all in one day, and then not write for a week. That’s fine – in fact, that’s great. At the end of the month, you should have 12 posts up, at a minimum.
If you have questions about the length of the post, which blogging service to use, which template to use for your blog – and other questions of this nature, you are procrastinating. And that’s fine too. Nobody procrastinates better than me. But at some point of time you’ll have to acknowledge to yourself that you are procrastinating – and as Seth Godin puts it, you’ll have to start shipping.
Does it have to be in English, you ask? Dear god, no. Any language will do. It just has to be thrice a week.
Your first few posts will be horrible. They will be long drawn, rambling posts that show confused thinking, an unclear grasp of concepts and a hesitancy to call a spade a spade. That’s fine. It’s like the first few weeks at the gym. You can’t help but stare in wonder at the regulars and the effortless ease with which they get through their gym routine.
But just like in the case of going to the gym, stick at it long enough, and things will start to get better.
Your sentences will get shorter. Your grasp of concepts will become clearer. How could it not? Once you realize, through your writing, what you do not know, you can’t help but want to change the status quo.
And once you are sure footed in terms of a grasp on the concepts, you will begin to call a spade a spade too.
The bad news? All this doesn’t happen without showing up regularly.
The good news? Stick to it, and you have a body of work that allow you to sail through your interview.
Write.
Please, write.
EconForEverybody 
Sir, this is true not only for writing and gym routine but for many activities. How do you keep yourself motivated for things like these ?
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I wish I knew the answer to that question, Aswath! It gets easier as you develop the habit – but the trick, of course, is to stick with it long enough to develop the habit in the first place 🙂
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Sir I have a question on a different topic. My question is “Is doing a Phd still Worth it ?”.
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Sir, while writing I face two major difficulties
1) How and from whom to get feedback. It is difficult to ask to people to review your writing because it is a time consuming process.
2) Writing, especially academic writing, depends on thorough analysis with supporting data points. Now what comes before? data points and then a thesis statement or beginning with a hypothesis and then finding data points that agree or disagree with the thesis.
The first approach is results in making the search too broad, the second has the risk of not finding contrary evidence which contradict the thesis. This becomes especially hard when the subjects is not quantitative in nature like economics but has more to do with literature review such as law and philosophy.
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