1, #13 - The Never-Ending Now
On the timeless vs. the timely—Estimated Read Time: 49 seconds.
How much of what you’ve read today was written more than 24 hours ago? Not much, right? From social media timelines to text message threads to email inboxes, our digital lives revolve around the latest thing that pops into our feed. We scroll back in time, but not much. Internet writing savant David Perell calls this the “Never-Ending Now.” He elaborates: “The structure of our social media feeds blinds us to history, as it causes us to live in an endless cycle of ephemeral content consumption. The structure of the Internet pulls people away from age-old wisdom.” The Eisenhower Matrix—a grid of urgency vs. importance—is a common tool for assessing projects at work. But consider applying it to your information diet: Is this content actually important? Or is it just urgent? Ernest Hemingway once advised a young writer: “Never compete with living writers. You don’t know whether they’re good or not. Compete with the dead ones you know are good.” Applying the same principle: Are you consuming good ideas or just new ones?
Insight inspired by: David Perell. Between reading his 50 Ideas That Changed My Life (where this insight came from) and his 28 pieces of life advice, this week was the hardest 1 selection process I’ve done, yet. Plus, Eisenhower for his matrix and Hemingway for his quote (via this article).