I think that we are being overwhelmed and it hurts us in more ways than our creativity. We are moving through the world in constant distraction.
Until recently, when I was doing something around the house, no matter what, I was listening to music, podcasts, or books.
I found that it seemed like it was taking for ever for me to do the simplest tasks. After a while... I figured that I must be going slower because I was always doing two things at once. After a few weeks of doing the dishes without ear buds in, I don't think I'll ever go back. I am not able to focus better and get things done.
If you are like I was, and you are always inundated with some distraction, try moving through the world without it.
The obvious other side of that coin: of the two things we're doing at once, one of them is neither fun nor engaging. Making it the thing to 100% focus on will also mean it it's now a stronger candidate to procrastination, and just won't be done at all.
Sure, you always have the choice between changing yourself or changing the experience.
If you're the kind of person that can change themselves to appreciate everything in life, good for you. Otherwise changing the experience (including multitasking) is a more simple approach.
And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out.
I heard that speech when I was much younger and didn't understand it. Now, going through life in my mid-30s, not finding much "greater meaning" and trying to get through things, it's a really good reminder.
Thank you
“the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.” gets me every time.
from Auden:
“Not to lose time, not to get caught, Not to be left behind, not, please! to resemble The beasts who repeat themselves, or a thing like water Or stone whose conduct can be predicted, these Are our common prayer, whose greatest comfort is music Which can be made anywhere, is invisible, And does not smell.”
That quote might be half flying above my head, and it feels a lot like a caricature to me. I got through the original speech and it still doesn't resonate, but I'm also not a Kenyon graduate and don't share any of that background.
But I appreciate having been exposed to that corner of culture.
he’s being quite genuine. perhaps tragically so, considering.
being an american undergraduate has very little to do with it, or to my original point, which is that finding the transcendent in the mundane is a good idea.
This is good advice, if doing dishes is boring, procrastination won't help it'll only make it worse. Taking pride in a dish well washed and a clean kitchen/living space makes the task worth it.
Also, doing boring necessary things are a bit like walking. It gives your mind space to think while keeping your body busy.
Unless of course, you can't live with your thoughts.
Who are the people who deserve this task? This reminds me of the Tim Ferris mentality, in which he simply hires low-wage workers to do every task he thinks is unworthy of his attention. Obviously not everyone can have this luxury— at some point somebody still has to do the grunt work.
Where does "deserving" enter the picture? People do work for pay, not based on whatever they deserve to do such work or not (except in the sense that they have the skills to do it).
It's not like a housecleaner or a burger flipper "deserve" to be doing what they do. A paid task is not an award or a punishment, it's something people do in exchange for money, because they have the skills for it and not for other stuff, or because they like it, or because for whatever reasons they can't find other line of work.
Besides, "it shouldn't have been done or added to our plate in the first place" doesn't necessarily mean it must be done by someone else. Perhaps it's just busywork, or we can just not do it and make do without whatever it was supposed to give us. Or find a way to achieve our existing goals without it.
I can’t agree with this any more. If you find yourself always thinking “I’ll do the laundry, let me just find a good podcast first” you are in trouble. It’s so easy just to have constant input these days
Maybe I can suggest a middle-ground that is sort of best of both worlds: put on a podcast that isn't one that you're certain you want to be focused on?
I listen to The Daily and variety of others when I do dishes. When I'm certain I want to really ingest a podcast, I listen during dedicated time.
So, I think we're just conflating a bit - ok to have something in your ear while, in reality, you focus on just one thing - dishes. Just remember that you're not going to remember the thing in your ear all that much.
I think it’s not unlike other addictions. You end up using constant external stimulus to not have to deal with whatever is actually bothering you in your life.
The concept I was missing basically since smartphones become a thing was this thing called “solitude”
I think this is part of it; aside from basic system 1 stuff (like breathing) we're actually flipping between 2 or more things constantly. Sure I can listen to music while I go for a walk, but I spend 2 minutes getting set up before I start, and I slow down whenever I need to change anything.
there has been research that suggests that people who say they are good at multi tasking are actually worse at it (or task switching) than people who say they are bad at multitasking.
I keep having this argument about multitasking not being a real thing but I'd love some concrete research to back it up. I get the sense that people just feel more productive when "multitasking" Rather than recognizing the true cost of constant context switching.
I live in an old house without a dishwater. The 5-10 minutes spent doing the dishes are moments of deep thoughts, not dissimilar of the ones under the shower; maybe it’s the water…
I recently moved out of a house without a dishwasher. I'm less depressed now, because it's so much easier to keep my smaller apartment clean with an automatic dishwasher. I feel like I can cook without it being a four or five hour affair.
If it works for you, that's great, but I don't miss doing dishes manually.
It's personal. For me I have multiple conversations happening in my head most of the time, not quite simultaneously. Listening to something like a podcast occupies that part of my brain so it's less chatty - and I can move forwards more quickly with a simpler task (e.g. now the lawn).
White noise is very distracting for me. Can't sleep with it on. It actually "hurts" as well - as in it feels like there's something pushing on my hearing constantly. I understand it helps some people but not me and if someone suggests using it to drown out other stuff that does not work for me. It does not make things better. Just bad differently. I need silence.
The different "colors" of noise correspond to the altered frequency amplitudes of the random frequencies that make up the noise. White noise should be totally flat with an equal contribution of all frequencies. Brown noise has some of the highs rolled off. There's other colors like pink which have different characters.
The nature of the sound is still noise. To an untrained ear it might be hard to detect the different frequency reasponses and it is highly dependent on the quality of speaker you're listening to it on as each speaker imposes a frequency response curve on top of the noise itself.
If you want to detect the difference i'd recommend wearing headphones and switching back and forth between the two. There, you should be able to hear a difference assuming it's actual brown noise.
I use a website called mynoise.net which allows you to select from a variety of noises, one of which is white noise. The key to mynoise.net is that it includes an equalizer that allows you to "tune" your noise to the environment. When working in a loud library i will sit there with my headphones and mynoise.net on white rain and pull each equalizer knob up and down until it perfectly covers the noise around me. I do that for the entire frequency table and I've got a perfectly tuned white noise/sound blocker for the people's voices around me. It's honestly amazing
Yes, the emphasis on hurting our creativity is a red herring.
It first and foremost hurts our ability to focus, work, live our private life, pay attention to our partners, family, and friends, be aware politically, and so on.
I agree with the title, but I wish the solution was less about a second brain and more about giving ourselves space.
The past week I've been getting burned in meetings, and just a whole lot of "to-do". And I'm just not as creative anymore because I don't have the room to be bored and ponder (which I like)
I'm bored everyday at work and it never motivates me. Boredom drives me towards the easy things just to kill time. The outcome is usually waiting for the cause of boredom to end. (Work)
I myself do a bad job of being bored, even when freedom is provided. My reaction is reinforced due to how often I am compelled to deal with boredom without freedom.
I second this very much so. Even if I have the extra time due to working from home, I usually don't feel free enough during work hours to get engrossed in a hobby or side project. I just seek escape in the form of cheap temporary entertainment.
Freedom is debatable. Too much of it and you just get overwhelmed with possibilities.
I'd submit that it's boredom plus constraints that equal creativity. You're forced to think around your obstacles.
It's why bands and authors suck once they make it big. Once they have tons of time and money, output suffers and they stop delivering. The threat of starvation no longer forces them to make something that works on their broken keyboard.
I think contextually art is one thing that can be made great utilizing creative restraints, but it's less likely a person will be willing to jump around obstacles if they are too great or not specifically related to the creative pursuit. Many times a creative pursuit doesn't seem like an option BECAUSE of the constraints.
I think the content of the article is totally orthogonal to the problem the title supposedly addresses. I was immediately excited to read this but then found no relation to what the article talks about. Content curation? Really? We're not overwhelmed with content, we're overwhelmed with noise.
With noise AND with actual content too. I have 1850 bookmarks in my browser. And that's after I basically deleted previous 2000-3000 batch a few years ago, with the intention not to do it again. I have caught myself multiple times scrolling through the My List on Netflix for minuted unable to pick anything. Same with my Steam library. And other similar examples.
All of those items are presumably not noise, because I have consciously picked them to watch or read later. I'm just like a hamster in wheel, constantly seeing new good things and storing them in an infinite cycle, never to revisit.
It feels like most content streams have anti-curration based designs. To use HN as an example, here's no way to say "I want to see rust and python content but not JS" or "I want to see JS and rust content but not python". You write your own custom chrome/firefox extension or you just deal with it. Basically all known social media websites have orders of magnitudes worse versions of this.
As perhaps with some other HNers, I'm in specialized, technical line of work (robotics) and the SNR for most of content sources is absurdly low. There's just no way for me to put in a reasonable amount of curation effort for subject matters involving my field _at the degree of specialization I need it_ and get meaningful insights back.
Maybe later when my focus or responsibilities have changed, but that runs the risk of keeping a library of curated content that I can't validate at the time I capture it (_because I will have to validate that content later when it aligns with whatever-later-task-is-relevant_).
And this says nothing about the creativity that's sapped by the organizational inefficiency, the clumsy handoffs, the incomplete understanding of what is truly wanted and/or needed at the end of a creative endeavor, and all of the other things that are the sources of hundreds or thousands of cuts at your psyche.
These posts pop up every now and then. Too much rationalism in this approach for sense. But I get it, it's difficult to sell letters when you're warning people against reading letters.
As a lay student of Buddhism, there's a much more simple and effective route.
Meditate.
A clean, crisp, quiet break into your own internal fortress of solitude. Curating as a means of establishing a creative sandbox makes sense to me, when the creative process opens. But concentration and focus is a skill and it can be developed. Trying to develop it through consumption is very difficult and counter-intuitive.
Your own internal world can surpass any notebook. Have you heard of the Method of Loci? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci It's applied meditational creative construction, it's been used by Grand Master memory champions, and it's all inside. Even if you do not apply the projector in your mind to such purposes, simply meditating can make much of this process subconscious. You do less, think less and yet remember and "receive" more.
Meditating is much easier if you do it before opening your browser to find out about hospitals being bombed 4000km from your place, though. I'd still advocate for limiting consumption first...
Creativity requires space. Can't remember who said it (paraphrasing): dedicate at least 4 hours to the process, you might end up being creative for only 10 minutes of that time.
I'm sure it's been said many times, but John Cleese did provide a memorable talk on it [1] and particularly touched on the relation to stress. And if anyone feels like they have troubles with stress/anxiety, Robert Sapolsky provides some great insight into how and why it affects health overall [2]. I'm not sure if Sapolsky's material will help reduce stress, but it was pretty entertaining along the way.
Two great speeches that it would be a shame to lose. Now, what was that about keeping up with digital clutter?
Generally I find boredom or challenge is a prerequisite for my creativity to start percolating - but overdosing on boredom yields more creativity (to stave it off), while overdosing on challenges generally leads me to burnout.
That's a good observation. I tend to over-index on challenges and often end up distracting myself for long enough to completely drain myself of all energy to be creative.
and few paragraphs later the post becomes another marketing content with affiliate links and so on.
The web is getting flooded with this type of spam content and this post is part of the overwhelming. I came to HN to avoid being spammed with unwanted marketing things about this app or that app and I find this article as #1 in the homepage. Marketing camouflaged as cultural content.
It reads like borderline marketing spam, something from the 2012-2016 era when productivity apps and gurus were all the rave , like Tim Ferris and Neil Patel and such
This 1000 times. Why is it that we don’t optimize for brain power? The brain lacking sleep and under stress is designed to survive, not thrive. Our strongest muscle is weakest when we need it most to prioritize survival.
>Why is it that we don’t optimize for brain power?
who is "we"? how many people do you know who are informed on the matter? how can you expect society to revolve around this if it's still mostly overlooked?
Fair question: if the world is already overloaded with compelling content, do we still need to be creative?
Maybe the core issue is not (directly, at least) the creativity loss, but rather the struggle against FOMO.
Are you assuming that the goal for being creative is to produce content? Because often being creative is just a nice way to spend time while being alive, regardless of whether it produces any output.
You know all the huge scientists and mathematicians etc from ye olden days?
They spent years on that stuff, mostly just meandering around the world or their country, letting their brain ruminate on the issue at hand slowly. They had actual hobbies that weren't related to their craft and a bunch of free time.
Very rarely were major discoveries done by working long days and just forcing it.
Da vinci used to stare at a wall for hours to aid his creative process. Our brains are full of information, but we don't spend enough time processing it.
Sorta off-topic, but the submitted Substack link only got a single 'like' on Substack an a single comment despite being viral here, top of front page of HN with 107 points. If that is good enough for only a single 'like', what does it take to get dozens of likes, as I often see on other Substack blogs? or many comments? A huge PR campaign? Being famous? What hope does anyone have to make money or success at writing when virality leads to no readers?
I think it has to do with the fact that you can't like if you're not a substack user. Also, I don't think it reached the top because most people agreed with it, maybe the opposite.
So they might be reading (i got around 7k views on it) but not liking it haha
wow, didn't realise tiktok is 50x youtube... should I sign up and catch up on any things I've been missing on that platform
> The sheer volume of content is overwhelming
> The mental effort required to evaluate and choose between many options can be exhausting
> Saving these links in a digital vault where they’ll most likely be forgotten forever
The diagnosis seems correct. We all experience this digital overabundance. Abundance is in principle a good thing. But obviously there is gross mismatch with the tools we have to manage this flow. You can overwater your plants and drown them.
But I am underwhelmed by the remedies proposed. My gut feeling is that nothing less than a ground-up reworking of the personal computing infrastructure will be required to restore an equilibrium that accomodates the nature of our information processing capacities.
We need to go back to the Engelbartian concepts of augmentation but drastically updated for the vast knowledge we have acquired in the meantime.
And of course this has to be done in a context that is seriously human centric. The people that will build this infrastructure need to somehow have their incentives and interests aligned with the average person. They should not see the dazed and confused online masses as product to be trapped and exploited.
That seems like an overstatement. Foremost? Johnson said that a writer may turn over half a library to make one book, but this article doesn't talk about doing anything with your collection after you've curated it. The creative act referred to in this article seems to be the curating itself. That's fine as far as it goes; curation is a form of creativity. But I'd say creators, broadly, are first and foremost people who make stuff, not people who curate other stuff. If you're too overwhelmed by stuff to make anything yourself, you've probably seen plenty already. Maybe shut off the firehose and try working on something before deciding lack of curation is the problem you face. This feels a bit like the impulse that tells you the reason you can't get any writing done is because you need to clean your office first.
Curation is only the first step of the framework i'm building called The Creative Flywheel. So you're right. It is not enough.
But the sentence you highlight means creators are very good curators. They learn from other creators and carefully select their sources of inspiration, then they ideate on their own, and finally create.
The cycle goes Curation > Ideation > Creation > Distribution.
That article is only dedicated to the first step. But I have another talking about the blueprint of creativity where I go over the 4 in less detail.
- "But the single most effective thing you can do to ensure the value of your feeds, is to start blocking the content you don’t align with."
Then you risk of closing yourself into bubble. I prefer to not use any kind of feeds manipulated by algorithms. No social networks at all. Instead use RSS.
Thankfully we have HN that could kill your attention OR narrow your attention to fewer items.
Beyond the focus issue there is a subset: the mesmerizing issue. There is an overwhelming incredible stuff on Internet that is enough to spend your lifetime. It would be easier if the information available was only for trivial distraction.
This seems like nonsense. The author claims that we're overwhelmed by the volume of content we consume and that's why we can't be creative. So the suggested solution is to do more work to consume content? That doesn't make any sense to me.
Agreed, these people who write about productivity make everything so complicated. We don't need books or systems for this. Just read and watch what interests you and ignore everything else.
This was my impression as well. I think people actually feeling burnt out creatively might read this and get a forlorn feeling that what is required is more work, and then go straight back to mindlessly scrolling
Exactly right, this article wrongly imagines we can treat the problem by exercising the problem. Learn to sit still and give your deep mind a chance to be present, this might lead to actual creativity.
Also the recommendation to block content to curate your feed and not just scroll past it. Does he even realize what he is suggesting? That the user curates the social media feed to be more tailored and thus addictive. It won’t shorten just because you block stuff.
The actual cure to that crap is to fill your day with healthier activities so that you’ll end up surprising yourself you hadn’t browsed Instagram today.
> Also the recommendation to block content to curate your feed and not just scroll past it. Does he even realize what he is suggesting? That the user curates the social media feed to be more tailored and thus addictive. It won’t shorten just because you block stuff.
I find that it does shorten. Of course infinite scroll still happens but with a ruthlessly curated feed, it seems like after about 5-10 minutes of browsing there's a tipping point where relevance drops off a cliff. That's when I know to close the app.
My point is that there's also good that can come out of social media. Completely disregarding any social media as useless and a waste of time is wrong, in my opinion.
My point is to start blocking so that you can turn whatever social media of your choosing into an enriching experience, rather than a doom scrolling one.
But of course, even if you do so, we should all keep a limit on our internet consumption as a whole.
Having enlightening experiences of learning requires effort. Anybody who wants to learn and thrive on any topic needs to make an effort to curate the sources he's consuming. That's not new. It certainly isn't an internet thing.
We've always paid to be entertained and educated. And money is earned with effort. When content wasn't as abundant, you needed to be selective with what you wanted to consume. You developed a taste, and continued to consume that type of content, hence basically becoming a curator of whatever your interest was.
The problem now, with all content being free, is that we pay with our time. And time is our most valuable currency.
So yes. Even though there's an initial effort curve to build a Second brain (or any other system you like), the end result is a much better internet experience.
I don't see a contradiction in that. Books are knowledge. If you want to learn how to do something better - reading a book is one way to do it. Could be a video, or a longer article, but the point is the same.
Another good way to develop a healthier relationship with our content consumption habits is to meditate. It's not contradictory to suggest to read a book on the benefits of meditation.
At some point you have to come to grips with the fact that you aren’t as motivated, creative, or smart as you think you are. And it isn’t burnout, add, or any other reason stopping you.
Until recently, when I was doing something around the house, no matter what, I was listening to music, podcasts, or books.
I found that it seemed like it was taking for ever for me to do the simplest tasks. After a while... I figured that I must be going slower because I was always doing two things at once. After a few weeks of doing the dishes without ear buds in, I don't think I'll ever go back. I am not able to focus better and get things done.
If you are like I was, and you are always inundated with some distraction, try moving through the world without it.