New stuff isn’t necessarily better
I agree, old software has value. One of Cal Newport’s books puts forward the idea that we automatically view any new technology as good, he contrasts this with the Amish who evaluate the utility of a technology in helping them maintain the way of life they want to have. This leads to communities where there is one car shared amongst the community, so that you continue to interact with each other instead of doing everything solo.
I think that we should stick with what works instead of constantly looking for something new. In the task manager space people go for the latest fad tool all the time, in part because they have a terrible system and hope that some new tool will fix their huge task list overflowing with stuff they’re not going to do.
What really happens is they finally say no to all the stuff they were never going to do in the first place. One of the strong benefits of an analogue system is that it defaults to no in that if you don’t move a task forward it’s not on your list. Contrast this with digital systems which make it effortless to always bring your tasks with you.
All this to confirm, that I still use Obsidian for my notes. I keep a paper notebook for reading because if an idea feels like too much work to write down, it’s probably not worth recording. I value friction because it shows what matters.
As I’ve said many times, when you switch to a new tool it’s most often because your process was broken and that new tool isn’t going to fix the process.
Social Attention and performance
The social media combination of mass fame and [[mass surveillance]] increasingly channels our most basic impulses – toward loving and being loved, caring for and being cared for, getting our friends to laugh at our jokes – into the project of impressing strangers, a project that cannot by definition, sate our desires but feels close enough to real human connection that we cannot but pursue it in ever more compulsive ways. [[The Sirens’ Call – Chris Hayes#^a2567e]] Pg 105
While the quote above is from this month’s book I couldn’t help but think of it as I read this article from Joan on the art of not sharing. Joan’s solution is to create a journal and when you feel like sharing something, write it down instead. Experience the moment instead of working to broadcast it in some hope that you’ll get social validation from others, then record your feelings about it privately.
99.9% of online connection is not real. It’s people passing by and giving you a thumbs up/like and then sharing their own thing in the hopes that random internet people will then give them the same shallow interaction.
In a world where people share almost everything, the subversive thing to do is to not share.
Recapturing Intention
I spend much of my day sitting at my desk writing and listening to music. For a number of years I’ve fallen into the habit of finding some playlist on Apple Music or more recently YouTube Music1 and then hitting play without worrying much about what would come across my speaker. More recently I’ve been far more intentional with what I’m listening to.
I pulled out my CD’s and made sure I had high quality copies of everything then setup Roon to play my music via an amp and speakers2. Most of my listening over the last 6 months has been to music I own where I get up and change the album I’m listening to every 30 – 45 minutes depending on the length of my album choice.
As Tracy points out, I now have a physical transition between reading and listening instead of doing everything one a single device. I stand up and walk across my office to my stereo and choose the next album before returning to my desk and getting back to work.
During these last months I’ve revisited many of my first albums and, due to the higher quality of my speakers, heard things I never heard when I was a teenager. I’ve sat and played my favourite songs and albums without doing other things at the same time, simply listening to the music for enjoyment.
I’ve been hard at work at resetting the pace of my consumption. Yes I still feel the frenetic pace of things, often in fact. But making choices to slow parts of my life down has helped calm everything down.
- I find YouTube to have a much better recommendation engine that has brought me many new artists I enjoy ↩︎
- Started with Klipsch RP-600 and now have a set of Paradigm 9s towers I bought while traveling from someone offloading stereo equipment. ↩︎