Monthly Mulling💡

Wisdom Over Speed: Leveraging Duration, Attention, and Slow Thinking for a Better Life

Hi👋 Tapan here.

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Happy Sunday y’all!

Summer's here in full force in London, and with the good weather, I'm finding myself outside more and writing and reading a bit less. Here's a picture of St. Paul's from a recent outing.

A clear blue sky in London is rare.

📖 Currently, I am reading: How India Sees The World by Shyam Saran

In this book, Shyam Saran, who once served as India's Foreign Secretary, shares a close look at key moments and changes in India's foreign policy. The book explores how India's relationships with other countries have evolved since it gained independence.

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⌛️ The Power of Pausing: Insights from the Duration Effect

I don’t like the news. The current news cycle doesn’t even last 24 hours. In an era of a perpetually evolving news cycle, our brains are often deluged with a ceaseless stream of information.

This phenomenon, termed the "Noise Bottleneck" by Taleb, illustrates that as data consumption increases, so does the noise-to-signal ratio. This means that you may find yourself less informed about actual events as the volume of information increases.

The News Paradox by Sahil Bloom

In her book, "You Are What You Read," Jodie delves into how news headlines employ sensationalism to garner attention and attract viewers. However, the effectiveness of this tactic dwindles over time. Hearing about tragedy, crisis, and violence regularly can normalize such events, consequently diminishing their shock value.

This process, known as adaptation in psychology, is a reduction in sensitivity following continuous exposure to a particular stimulus.

Ironically, this prompts media outlets to further sensationalize the news, hoping to keep us stimulated.

As a result, we find ourselves unwittingly entrapped in a paradox of overstimulation.

So, what’s the solution?

🧠 The Duration Effect: The concept that allowing sufficient time between exposures to a stimulus (like news) can enhance our understanding and response to it, instead of becoming overwhelmed by constant exposure.

The Duration Effect

🪴 Imagine a garden where you water the flowers incessantly. They'd drown from too much water, right? That's like bombarding yourself with constant news. But if you give the garden time to absorb and utilize the water, it thrives.

By letting a significant duration of time pass before reacting, you can read about the world's issues less frequently, but with greater depth.

This approach was famously employed by the legendary investor Sir John Templeton. He moved from New York City to the Bahamas, where his copies of The Wall Street Journal arrived several days late. Templeton claimed, "By reading the news a week later, I could put it in perspective and prevent myself from overreacting."

💡 That’s all cool but how do we apply the Duration Effect in our personal life?

✋🏽You don’t have to know everything, everywhere, all the time.

🧐 Be Selective with Content: Find content curators that prioritize quality over quantity (for example, those who share one thoroughly-researched article per week instead of 24/7 updates).

📆 Set Information Intake Windows: Rather than constantly checking the news or social media feeds throughout the day, schedule specific times for these activities. Use tools such as Notion (or Notes) to list content that you can read or watch during these windows.

📚 Engage in Deep Dives: Instead of only skimming through headlines or summaries, take the time to read full articles or reports during your information intake windows. This will allow you to understand the nuances of the news better.

🪒 Adopt the "News Razor" Strategy: Ask yourself, "Will I still care about this news a year from now?" when consuming content.

The incumbent tactic of churning out more news content with even bigger doses of excitement can lead us to believe that the problems being reported are increasing at an accelerated pace.

But take a breath - in most cases, they aren’t (😮‍💨).

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🧭 Navigating the Knowledge Maze: Focused Attention

Building on insights from the Duration Effect, a quote from Peter Bevelin's book "A Few Lessons from Sherlock Holmes" resonated with me.

I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose.

A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it.

- Sherlock Holmes, A Study in Scarlet

Interestingly, this quote also appears in Morgan Housel’s article "Paying Attention".

Deciding what to pay attention to is hard, overlooked, and most important, it’s a negative skill – it’s about what you willfully ignore as much as what you actively seek out.

I have explained this in my Knowledge Pipeline article which discusses how to convert data into useful information. The idea is to have a wide funnel and a tight filter.

The Knowledge Pipeline has 4 components - collection, filtration, conversion, and creation.

There are two types of knowledge.
🫠 Expiring knowledge encompasses news, quarterly earnings, election polls, market data, and politics. It often demands more attention than it warrants due to its abundant availability and our anxiety to extract insights before it becomes obsolete.

🧘🏽‍♂️ Permanent knowledge, on the other hand, consists of principles and frameworks that provide context to the transient information.

Think about a book you read in 2015. It's likely you remember the narrative or at least the key points. Now, try recalling a news article from the same year - challenging, isn't it? (😬).

💡 Asking how long you’ll care about the information you read pushes you to focus on permanent things and care little about temporary things – a great mindset for long-term thinking.

As I have mentioned previously in The Stupidest Reading Advise, not every piece of content you read requires the same level of attention or focus.

Memorize stories, highlight facts, and skip the fluff. Instead of getting overwhelmed by every word, aim to retain a few impactful stories and lines from your reading. Avoid getting stuck in forgettable details and move on to the next book.

It all boils down to being selective with the 'furniture' we add to our mental 'attics'. Sherlock would say,

Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools [mental models] which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order.

It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent.

Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.

- Sherlock Holmes, A Study in Scarlet

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🔮 Unraveling the Power of Slow Thinking

Derek Sivers in his article, I’m A Very Slow Thinker, says,

When a friend says something interesting to me, I usually don’t have a reaction until much later.

When someone asks me a deep question, I say, “Hmm. I don’t know.” The next day, I have an answer.

I’m a disappointing person to try to debate or attack. I just have nothing to say in the moment, except maybe, “Good point.” Then a few days later, after thinking about it a lot, I have a response.

🤔 Like Derek, many of us benefit from taking time to process information, reflect upon it, and then form a response.

People say that your first reaction is the most honest, but I disagree. Your first reaction is usually outdated. Either it’s an answer you came up with long ago and now use instead of thinking, or it’s a knee-jerk emotional response to something in your past.

One strategy I've found immensely helpful is preemptively preparing for meetings where I know a decision will be required. Setting aside time to review the agenda and process the information allows me to arrive better equipped with a response.

Additionally, writing frequently facilitates connections between the information I've already consumed, fostering more thoughtful responses.

When you’re less impulsive and more deliberate like this, it can be a little inconvenient for other people, but that’s OK. Someone asks you a question. You don’t need to answer.

You can say, “I don’t know, [let me get back to you]” and take your time to answer after thinking. Things happen.

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