ABC07 – 90% of everything is crap
Words: 515.
Tala asked if we're closing our loops, to which Hannah provides a clear affirmative with respect to YouTube and other content.
I'm all for decluttering and simplifying and loop-closing, and I have additional thoughts on the topics. This is as much a self-reminder as it is a way to extend the conversation.
Signal-to-noise ratio
First, I think a helpful metaphor can be applied whenever one wants to reduce the "noise" in their life. In science and engineering, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is a way to measure "what we're looking for" versus "what appears to be what we're looking for, but is not." Those are not the technical definitions, but the metaphorical elaboration.
Tala describes the subconscious, low-level anxiety that stems from having open loops: the unresolved tasks that take up memory. (I like her browser tab analogy.) When we live life on auto-pilot, we accrue these open-ended decisions and while they might be manageable on a case-by-case basis, the accumulation eventually becomes overwhelming.
To improve the SNR, one either amplifies the signal or reduces the noise. Doing so improves clarity. This is why Hannah's deletion approach is intriguing: one deliberately chooses to manage the intake of information (i.e., what is consumed) to manage the creation of loops (i.e., the things to get to). Creating airgaps and buffers is a preventative measure, saving time and energy before they get committed.
Sturgeon's law
Take tsundoku, for instance. That's the Japanese term for acquiring reading material and having them pile up instead of being read. Sure, this can mean physical books, but it can also mean digital content (e.g., web bookmarks). Common to both is the sense of collecting content instead of processing it.
Hannah mentions a few different strategies to declutter: as a practice of spirituality or pragmatically through journaling. To these I add Sturgeon's Law: the observation that 90% of everything is crap. Certainly, with the amount of AI slop and bots out there, this is increasingly apparent on the web. As someone who's been exploring music for the past several months, I can appreciate Sturgeon's Law when it comes to finding what's good. When you're familiar with a genre (be it in film or books or music or video games), you develop a sense for quality, and for what's derivative or incomplete or incoherent. Imagine if you had that sensitivity in all domains of life!
Learn to appreciate what you focus on
Ultimately, the idea is to identify what you enjoy in life and to maximize your focus on those things. I say maximize not in the sense of hustle or grind or maxxing, but in the sense of recognizing that life is short so make the most of your time and attention while you have them. And if you aren't sure what to focus on just yet, at least work on eliminating what you know to be noise. Doing so creates space and room to breathe and think so that you can pick up the signals relevant to your life.