Doing a PhD is like exploring a jungle

I am at the beginning stages of the PhD right now. I am reading here and there, trying to get a sense of the territory. I feel like I just arrived on an island and there's this big jungle before me. As I slowly walk into the jungle, I am seeing a little plant here, a little rock there, and it is only sufficient for me to make a mark on my blank sheet of paper. But my goal is to create a map of the whole place.

So I have been making tiny marks, little scratches on my paper, but I still have little idea what this jungle is like. There are some parts that I know better than other, but most of the island and jungle remain unknown to me.

So this is how it feels like...

I'm doing my best to read up as much as I can, whatever others who have come before me have recorded about islands and jungles in general and particular that I think are similar to the one I'm on, hoping it can shed some clue on my particular island and give me some guidance which paths to take down the jungle.

So this is what stage I'm in now...

Making little scratches on my notebook so that later on I can put them all together into some sort of a research proposal, before I go ahead and conduct my research.