11 – Cal Newport’s Study Hacks Blog: In Defense of Thinking

Today, we’re not nearly as comfortable with this most fundamental of activities [of taking time to think]. We talk a lot more about information — how we can get more of it, how we can spread it faster — than we do its processing.

I feel that the ideas around getting and spreading information seem tied to the world of social media. Facebook, for example, allows people to pay for their content to be optimized for engagement. This means more people will share, comment on, and react to something you post. I’ve experimented with sharing links, optimized for engagement. What happened? About six percent of people that “engaged” with reactions, shares, and comments actually clicked on the link to see what it was about.

I have a strong feeling this happens quite often on social media, and why many people are quick to comment about articles based on the title, without ever having read it.

This article also made me think of the Zettelkasten approach to note taking, where we condense learned information of value into notes that we later may use as a basis to spark new content and connections. The initial notes are there as reminders to assist with future processing, and in the creation of new content born out of the time we’ve spent thinking or learning from other resources.

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