Upon waking up in the morning on any given day, the impulse is to look for my phone on the bedside table and check for any notifications followed by a quick round-up of trending news.

This passive consumption of information has no real benefits, other than making you someone who knows bits and pieces of every topic you read on. You cannot connect dots to comprehend the big picture behind the scattered pieces. Sure, you might say, that one doesn’t care equally about all the topics that they read on. But, then, what is even the point of consuming such information that doesn’t make it to your list of priorities. Time is scarce and is often well spent on things that move the needle for you.

Information Overload

The biggest change to the world of information with the arrival of internet is that there are no gatekeepers between an online publication and its readers. In fairness, social media platforms continue to strengthen their positions as the gatekeepers of the internet, but we are far from a scenario where they can obstruct the spread of information on the internet.

Since there are no significant barriers to entry, we have seen more and more publications sprung online from the likes of Buzzfeed to Vox. Not having gatekeepers is a double edged sword though.

The presence of several online publications which practice click-baity journalism along with the advertising appetite of facebook, twitter and other social media platforms have resulted in a passive consumption of media with shorter attention spans and ever-increasing anxiety and hostility.

Media changes everything. Media drives our expectations, our conversations and our culture. And what drives the media? Ads.

Addiction

From the Wikipedia page on “History of Journalism”:

“Before the printing press was invented, word of mouth was the primary source of news. Returning merchants, sailors and travellers brought news back to the mainland, and this was then picked up by pedlars and travelling players and spread from town to town.”

There is a natural human desire to know more about what is going on in the world that lies beyond the compass of our horizons and our own experience. From returning travellers to the invention of printing press (1450s), from the production of radio and television shows to the present day online publications and video platforms, we have demonstrated an insatiable urge to consume information at a break neck speed.

Thinking for oneself

Now, thinking for oneself is hard. Your time is scarce. You have limited mental bandwidth to apply first principles reasoning to more than a few topics of interest. You have responsibilities to others. You have pop culture influencing your thinking and ambitions. Thinking for oneself becomes even more difficult when your enemy is an army of highly trained PhDs who relentlessly optimize their algorithms and apps to ensure that you stay within the territory of the digital warlords and keep coming back for those instant dopamine kicks.

“The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Palaeolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology”

Again, thinking for oneself is hard. I cannot emphasize this enough

Less is better

In his landmark book, “Thinking, Fast and Slow”, Daniel Kahneman describes two different modes of thinking, System A which is fast, instinctive and emotional, and System B which is slower, more deliberate and more logical. System A takes care of the first things we do when we wake up, and System B comes into the picture when we are presented with a difficult problem at work. What this states is that your ability to solve a difficult problem of any kind, to think clearly about the subject in hand is subject to certain constraints, namely, time, energy and modicum of interest. Sure, you can have wide ranging interests, but you are constrained by time and energy required to achieve any reasonable level of expertise in the given field. So, less is rather better.

Explore but move fast

Now, deciding on what interests you is easier said than done. Buffett has this 5/25 rule where he suggests listing down your top 25 goals and then, selecting the 5 most important. The next step is to focus only on the top 5 and eliminating everything else. No matter what, the bottom 20 things don’t get any attention, unless you’ve succeeded with the top 5.

Selecting the top 5 things to focus on, the 5 things that move the needle for you is difficult. A fair amount of exploration is required before you commit to exploit the top 5 and forget everything else. Most people, even by their mid 20s, haven’t done enough exploration to nail down their top 5 priorities. A lot of interesting ideas have come to people when they have let themselves to be carried away by their indulgences. They followed their curiosity and ended up working on something they thoroughly enjoy. When work becomes fun, good ideas start emerging. So, having a rigid structure where you work only on your top 5 goals might prevent you from these extraordinary moments of discovery. Creativity needs chaos to thrive.

For there to be a remote chance for these serendipitous moments of discovery to occur in our lives, we need a good balance of explore vs exploit in our formative years.

Ending Note

Let’s break the cycle of endless information consumption. Understand our biases to stay informed. Let our indulgences and curiosity navigate us. Explore. Move fast. Explore even more. Then, we will talk about exploiting.

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