Why I renounced short-form consumption
On depth and fulfillment
Yesterday, I listened to the How I Write podcast with Ted Gioia—which I highly, highly recommend listening to.
Among the many things I learned are:
That a successful writer must be an expert in something other than writing. So I must have some sort of something that I pursue other than sitting in a cafe and writing my life away. I think, however, that this necessity can be resolved via point #3 and that I’ll be able to maintain my cherished indulgence.
That I needn’t abide by the short-form cultural standards. At the end of the podcast, Perell asked Gioia something like, “How can writers contend with the grip that short-form content has on creators’ abilities to reach audiences? Is there a way to get around the fact that it’s seemingly impossible to reach audiences without these tools, which you say undermine culture?” Gioia responded by basically saying that, first of all, the culture will soon reverse, that more and more people will come to prefer the true, deep engagement and connection that’s only available via long-form, and second of all, that it’s best to not force yourself, as a writer, to abide by these “standards” because (1) it’s typically most wise not to do what everyone else is doing, and (2) because it’s best not to force a style of creation if the creator doesn’t enjoy it (because it’s then unsustainable).
That I need to consume more high-quality information.
It is this third point I’d like to expand upon the most because it is the one I most need to adjust in accordance with and the one I’ve discovered that most affects both my writing ability and overall quality of life.
The timing of my listening to this podcast seems a little more than coincidental because, just yesterday, I posted about the shallowness and superficiality of our culture directly due to the mass's inability to focus (because you need to apply focused energy in order to dig deep).
Short-form content, a facet of what Gioia calls “dopamine culture,” ruined my life a little bit.
Not only does it deteriorate my focus—an attribute essential for success—but it steals time from engaging deeply with other things AND conditions me to live superficially (because, by nature of short-form, I only ever brush the surface of topics, and so become disconnected from the world because depth forges a stronger connection than surface-level exposure).
I recently decided to delete social media from my phone. I still have YouTube, which I’m going to keep so I can listen to podcasts, so I’ll have to be disciplined with not engaging with it when I needn’t.
But even in the short period of time since deleting some of those apps, I’ve felt far more fulfilled and connected.
Not only have I managed to get off what is, in essence, an addictive drug, but I’ve replaced the time I once used for scrolling with deep engagement. And so naturally (if you think about the words), I am more fulfilled because I am digging deeper.
Side note: isn’t it funny how some words we spew and take for granted, not always truly knowing what we mean when we say them, make perfect sense? I mean, how many times have you heard someone say “superficial” and then intuitively suspect they don’t actually know what they mean?
Isn’t it cool how, when you dig deeper, you’re more fulfilled? And you feel empty when you live a surface-level (think: short-form content) sort of life?
Different inputs = different outputs
I think a lot of symptoms labeled “depression” could be cured with the right information because a lot of it seems to stem from a lack of deep connection—both to other people and to endeavors.
Thinking back about this podcast yesterday and other podcasts and books before, I’ve noticed a hefty difference in the quality of my life following engagement with certain enriching material.
Like, when you look around, and your mind is not filled with the sort of stuff that enriches and deepens, it is very difficult to be invigorated because I don’t know . . . There’s no structure to be invigorated! There’s nothing to be filled with life energy! You don’t understand anything! You aren’t connected in any sense to your surroundings or even to yourself.
There are things that people have learned over the years and shared with generations in these great books and everyone is completely oblivious to it! And so, what’s really happened, is we’ve taken our biological selves—who are more or less the same as those homo sapiens from 200,000 years ago—and thrust ourselves into this highly evolved world, and yet are entirely disinterested in learning about how we got here, and then granted unlimited access to the most addicting shit, so no pleasure may be taken from all that’s natural because it’s simply not as stimulating!
When you think about it like that, you can kind of see from a very broad perspective that education is a way to catch our biological selves up to the age in which we live so we may live purposefully. Because the world today is complex, and if we aren’t skilled enough to deal with its complexity, we are useless and, therefore, purposeless.
What a recipe for disaster! And a disaster it’s been, truly.
I mean, people don’t like to acknowledge it, and it’s not so plainly obvious, but we do live in quite a disastrous time (I guess, though, when do we not?).
Chronic disease and bodily malfunctions due to poor health take the vast majority of lives at ages far too young . . . And a great number of people, especially men, across age brackets, take their own lives.
So yeah, times could be worse, but they have been better by particular measures in very recent times past.
What’s interesting is that I’ve felt for some time that I needed to stop consuming such empty things and start going deep into things, like reading books and listening to podcasts. I’ve known, intuitively, how detrimental my habits were . . . And perhaps it was only because I felt like a phony—being a writer who writes but hardly reads—and knew I needed to make a change.
I knew that I needed to become an expert in something other than writing. I’ve known that all I do is write, that I don’t read or learn or take in good stuff enough, that that would lead to this sort of emptiness in my writing and life, and that I should start engaging in particular facets of life.
It did feel like my life became monotonous and that if I continued that way of life, the way I’ve been living throughout college, I wouldn’t move very far. And it is quite true that part of this is my lack of deep engagement with my surroundings. It’s true that I have been in Charleston for nearly five years and do not know very much about the city’s history.
This is very interesting, actually, because one of my chief internal complaints of these past several years is that I don’t feel entrenched . . . I don’t feel a part of anything, and perhaps that’s because I’ve not engaged deeply with anything.
This is a profound realization.
I’ve been under the impression that I’m not in a place where I can become entrenched and deeply connect, but it seems that’s because I’ve not been taking the initiative to become entrenched . . .
I find more and more as I get older that every time I complain about something out there in the world, it is usually a reflection of some shortcoming within, and that no matter what place I move to—even though changing environments does help break bad habits—the feeling will not be resolved until I resolve within whatever is driving it.