We live in a never-ending now. It’s true; if you are on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, god forbid, TikTok, you consume content that is produced today.
Even Google is giving you a recency bias. Instead of giving you the best, they give you the best from the past couple of months, maximum year.
Marc Andreessen reads either the very new (Twitter) or books that are super old and stand the time.
That’s why, in my own opinion, and many I hear on podcasts, they learn from books. Books that are older, that are still read today, are the best. The Bible is one of the oldest books, but it’s heavily read today. If there hadn’t been so much wisdom, nobody would have read it today.
Try to find old books; even newer books might have a recency bias. But books are already better than just right-now.
# How do I get out of the never ending now?
For me, it’s been using a Second Brain, where I capture interesting thoughts, insights I read from a book, or interesting conversations for a later time. I constantly discover old thoughts of myself in my Obsidian vault, which I connect to new and old. I generate my own thoughts and ideas to only to share on my website to get the feedback loop going.
Origin: LinkedIn by David Perell
References: Digital Minimalism
Created 2024-02-09
