How to consume what is useful to you not what algorithms serves you

A 101 guide on how to search for originals in a diluted environment and learn one of the most important skills of current era "How to Search"

So we all have the experience of searching something online and then we either go in a different direction or end up consuming something that we did not wanted. You might have never thought why does this actually happened but let me throw some light on it today. The platforms that are used for consuming content is Google, Youtube and for audio format Spotify, think what’s common between all of them, you have guessed it right they all are free to use and these companies aren’t NPOs they are for profit companies.

Now lets put ourselves in their shoes and think what will be profitable for them, serving the content that you will watch for the highest time or serving the content that’s gonna to help you the most. Although Youtube and Spotify have paid plans but their large chunk of revenue come form ads and whenever a company run ads on any platform they want their conversion should be high and they get a higher return from what they have spent so Google, Youtube and Spotify always try to perfect their algorithms.

In case you are wondering why does a good algorithm works so let’s understand through some examples. Suppose I am the marketing lead of a budding fintech startup that wants more app downloads and my target audience is 18-24 yrs and the primary countries my startup is trying to target is Australia so I decide to run some fb ads. Let’s assume one more thing to make it more interesting that I am working remotely from Itlay.

Now let’s consider two scenario where in first scenario Fb gives me basic segmentation through which I can run adds and in second scenario where Fb allows me more pin point targeting like I can target wether the user is searching for some financial services or not. You might have understood that from the marketer point of view the second option is much better but how does fb knows this data about you, well they track your activity across all other apps and try to make you spend most of the time on their platform so that they can understand you better and give marketers option to do much better targeted advertising and this is common across all big social network and companies like Google and Youtube.

The issue with this sort of problem is that doesn’t matter what your mood is or what you are searching you will always be served the most engaging content not the most relevant content. You might be thinking that these platforms are just money making machines and none of the platform had tried to show you useful content.

Well this is not the truth in early days of streaming Netflix gave their users to fill a form for what sort of movies and documentaries they want to see. Users filled the form but actually didn’t see what they fill in the form, then Netflix started to recommend based on content diet of user not on their preferences and boom their growth skyrocketed. The reason for this is that filling a form is a boring task and users fill the form with wishful thinking just like a new year resolution where people think of changing but after 1-2 days they are back to their real self, they fill what they want to see not what they will see. Don’t trust what they say, trust what they do. Now let’s understand how to solve this well their is no absolute solution to this but their are some layered form of solutions.

The easiest way to solve it is to increase the barriers to your consumption and more concrete form is the Lindy method. Let’s discuss in detail about both of them. Whenever a app is getting built designers always try to design the app in such a way that its very easy for the user because if the user gets confused in the app, they generally drift away. Human brains are designed in such a way that it always try to save power. So if we make our consumption tougher then we can improve the quality of content that we consume. One thing that works pretty well is to setup a alarm.

Suppose you had gone on Youtube to search for some astrophysics stuff an you have a habit of getting in a loop of watching stand up comedy videos and you end up wasting many hours on it. One basic thing you can do is to setup a Alarm of 1 hour and once that alarm rings stop watching Youtube and try to write what you have done in past 1 hour on a piece of paper. Once you cross question yourself after a point of time, accountability is getting built. One more cool thing you can do is to create two separate accounts one for creative stuff and other for time pass. The only law you have to follow is not to mix these two. 

These are patches that you can do to increase the quality of the content to a certain level not to a pretty cool level. The way to do that is all Lindy. Lindy is basically is that the relevance of content increase as time passes. Nassim Taleb made this term popular through his book Antifragile. I remember listening to Eugen Wei in a podcast where he distinguish b/w News and entertainment as News is something that changes your behaviour while entertainment is just it. Most of the content on internet is just diluted form or rip-off of some form of original content.

Although today’s world changes very fast but their are few fundamental things that work even today. Like game theory concepts, evolutionary biology etc. So suppose you want to read about evolution you can go with a newly published book like Behave by Robert Sapolsky or you can read a pretty fundamental book like origin of species by Charles Darwin. Most of the Youtube videos are just a curated overlook of best SEO optimized and algorithm optimized content. The highest quality content that I consumed are mostly recommended by someone and close to nothing from the algorithm.(More on this in some other post)

Let me give you some frameworks that has helped me most to consume quality content.

Less is More

This is something that I try to remind myself every day. Social Media is full of motivational content that you should consume as much as you want. There are videos and posts like you should read 100 books per year. Well we are not running in a competition where the more the no of books you read or the more the content you consume is the smarter you become. What matters more is how much information you can use practically and can recall certain things when it’s needed.

How Hard is to take Notes

One of the good framework that I follow to improve my quality of content consumption is to take notes and on every next time I try to consume something that is tougher for me to take notes on. Let’s understand this with an example Suppose if I were to read the 80/20 principle book it can be summarized pretty easily, but If I try to take notes of a book like Thinking Fast and Slow, it will be difficult to take notes on.

Is the content worth consuming again and again

One more framework while consuming a piece of content is that is it worth consuming again. Suppose I watch a basic video on how to Negotiate vs a How to negotiate by Naval Ravikant, I would re-consume the second content but less likely will do the first based on this framework only you can build your Lindy Library that is curate the top 0.01% of the top content you have consumed and keep on having a look on it every once in a while .

Before I end this essay just remember to never forget the wisdom of imposter of the vent. 

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