Reading the “Late Night Thoughts on Reading Scientology” article is like looking into a mirror. It’s almost painful.
Why does my bedroom contain 343 books? (I counted just now.) Some of them I know and love, but many are on topics I have only mild interest in, contain only mediocre writing, and will probably never be read beyond the introduction – and this after throwing out half my collection once a year or so when I move.
Why does my hard drive contain thousands more books as PDFs, and my Kindle several hundred? Why do I have a hundred news feeds inundating me with thousands of blog posts, videos, and news stories a week, when only ten or so feeds really excite me? Why have I bookmarked hundreds of essays online in my “interesting, but I’ll get to this later” folder?
Why do I have ten or fifteen different hobbies I occasionally fantasize about pursuing, when one or two would be plenty to provide a social outlet and fill my idle hours? Why do I have a list of more than a hundred projects that would be “good to do some day”, none of which I’ve completed?
It’s definitely a common error in explore vs exploit. I’ve consciously tried to finish things and go through books/papers or admit it’s just not going to happen & delete them. (Painful, because it’s so similar to admitting failure. ‘No, I’m not going to work through that category theory textbook if I haven’t in the past 7 years. No, I’m probably not going to learn Prolog if I’ve had that text + source sitting around for 5 years.’ Even though they would all be good to know or read...)
Why do I have a hundred news feeds inundating me with thousands of blog posts, videos, and news stories a week, when only ten or so feeds really excite me?
Rereading, I have to object to this one.
Books, essays, and hobbies are consistent. If you enjoy your first few classes of fencing, you’ll enjoy the rest. Very few books will be wretched for the first few chapters and then abruptly become fantastic. And so, going through my book backlog, if I throw out the worst or most off-topic ones, I have lost little, and I have restored focus to my collection, avoiding distractions, and coming to terms with the limits of my ambition or interests.
But with news feeds, heterogeneity is the norm; I don’t have hundreds of news feeds of which only 10 are good, I have hundreds of news feeds among which are randomly distributed 10 good items today. At best, a particular news feed may have a higher probability of spitting out something I will benefit from that day, but if I delete all but the 10 best news feeds, I’ll wind up deleting many or most of the good future items. Reading LW or Reddit or HN does help, but I still wind up finding far too many interesting and relevant things only through having a few hundred RSS feeds.
Reading the “Late Night Thoughts on Reading Scientology” article is like looking into a mirror. It’s almost painful.
It’s definitely a common error in explore vs exploit. I’ve consciously tried to finish things and go through books/papers or admit it’s just not going to happen & delete them. (Painful, because it’s so similar to admitting failure. ‘No, I’m not going to work through that category theory textbook if I haven’t in the past 7 years. No, I’m probably not going to learn Prolog if I’ve had that text + source sitting around for 5 years.’ Even though they would all be good to know or read...)
Rereading, I have to object to this one.
Books, essays, and hobbies are consistent. If you enjoy your first few classes of fencing, you’ll enjoy the rest. Very few books will be wretched for the first few chapters and then abruptly become fantastic. And so, going through my book backlog, if I throw out the worst or most off-topic ones, I have lost little, and I have restored focus to my collection, avoiding distractions, and coming to terms with the limits of my ambition or interests.
But with news feeds, heterogeneity is the norm; I don’t have hundreds of news feeds of which only 10 are good, I have hundreds of news feeds among which are randomly distributed 10 good items today. At best, a particular news feed may have a higher probability of spitting out something I will benefit from that day, but if I delete all but the 10 best news feeds, I’ll wind up deleting many or most of the good future items. Reading LW or Reddit or HN does help, but I still wind up finding far too many interesting and relevant things only through having a few hundred RSS feeds.
I, for one, only put a book on a shelf once I’ve read it and lend out books from my collection on a regular basis...