https://fs.blog/2013/07/understanding-our-need-for-novelty-and-change/
Our ability to respond to the new and different is part of what makes us human. We’re interested in creating more of whatever is outside of that status quo. Generally, this interest serves us well. In an evolutionary context it has likely saved us from extinction several times.
At this point in our warp-speed information age, our well-being demands that we understand and control our neophilia lest it control us. We already crunch four times more data — e-mail, tweets, searches, music, video, and traditional media — than we did just thirty years ago, and this deluge shows no signs of slackening. To thrive amid unprecedented amounts of novelty, we must shift from being mere seekers of the new to being connoisseurs of it.
We feel as if consuming more information makes us better off. Yet when the information we consume is novel, we lose track of what’s important.
Information obesity, mental minimalism, mental metabolism, datasnacking, infobinging. FOMO.
Digest, process, synthesise.
Create more to consume better.
We jam too much Just In Case information into our brains. Unfinished thoughts, half baked ideas, undeveloped plans.
We keep snoozing, putting things into the mental backlog, “for later but never“.
if we allocate more time to sit down, ask ourselves “what is important, what is interesting, why is this important, why is this interesting“, and really try to let the answers come no matter how slow and blurry it is in the beginning, we’ll eventually be able to discern better. We’ll see clearer.
Then to actually do something with those answers, give ourselves the permission to follow our curiosity, go down the rabbit hole, to experiment, to embrace the uncertainty, to be OK knowing it might or might not work, and be patient, not let ourselves be distracted that often, we’ll be less overwhelmed. We’ll develop better filters. We’ll notice the abundance and break out of scarcity mindset.
Create more to consume better.
One donut won’t make you fat. One salad won’t make you thin.
Hi there! Almost all activities in life revolve around 1) getting things into our heads, 2) out of our heads, and 3) hopefully across into someone else’s head.
We learn, we think, and we communicate.
How are you managing these activities right now? Are you doing any deliberate practice to get better at them?
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// metadiscourse
I clicked on this article as it resonated with one of my conclusion about human psyche so far: we crave new stuff. we can’t sit still in our perfect life and be grateful. we need novelty. shaken baselines, reframing, vacations, engage our senses in a new way, a break out of the routine. there’s always tension between the unknown and the familiar.
But then it apparently latched onto two other ideas that I’ve also been mulling over:
– I snooze too much of my life away
– Just in Case vs Just in Time living
glad to be able to pull a thread out of this tangled ball of yarn a bit more today.
Also published on Medium.
