Quality over quantity all day every day. Except Saturday. That's my guilt-free, read-whatever-the-heck-I-want-to day.
Note that "links" is used as a catch-all for any type of text content: blogs, essays, articles, scientific papers, etc.
I read a lot on the internet—3600 links and counting over six years. I'm around the 95th percentile of curiosity, so finding all these interesting, unique, fun, weird, awesome links is an easy, free, and fun way to satisfy that urge.
Documenting them also feels great. Like I'm making progress on something. Like I'm building out and growing my second brain. Like I'm becoming smarter and more interesting and more well-read. And so I document everything to satisfy that urge.
I started out including both descriptions/thoughts and tags on each link. The former was to help me prove my comprehension and think about the piece, the latter so I could quickly reference a topic. It was around 2021 and 2022 that my descriptions and thoughts began to wane, becoming more succinct and factual than explanatory and opinionated. And in late 2022 I stopped the descriptions altogether, telling myself that they weren't adding that much value and sheer volume was more important. After all, even if you can't remember the meals you've eaten, they've made you.
Turns out removing descriptions and thoughts was useless and harmful. Damn you, Ralph, for sounding so wise and cool and making me believe that shit. (Or maybe I just read it in a motivated way that was convenient for me and others know they have to actively engage with the text for it to become part of them.)
My links practice has been a net negative for my life in the following ways:
I'm less inclined to read longer or more challenging links because they're a much larger investment for the same payout, i.e., a line in the links file. Why spend 30 minutes reading something when I can spend 5 or even 1? (I tried to get Claude to analyze the lengths of posts to see if it decreased over time, but the script wasn't good enough, so I'm just going off vibes.)
I'm more likely to speed read through the piece to maximize my links per time metric. I no longer engage with the piece or any of the ideas around it as much as I should; my eyes simply glaze over the words as I feign understanding and pat myself on the back for reading a bunch. To test this hypothesis, I randomly chose 10 links and only remember the content of 5 of them. 50% seems pretty low!
Was this reading really all for naught? Did I gain anything? What would I have been doing otherwise? Browsing social media? Or writing or exercising? I'm confident that I would have been doing something more productive than just reading words that went in one eye and out the other.
My thinking and analytical skills have slightly decreased over time, and I suspect my links practice is a contributor. The brain is a muscle and must be trained regularly, including engaging with new ideas. Instead I practiced speed "reading" (skimming?) and trained that skill.
In my effort to be a good citizen of the internet, I'm implementing a new rule for myself: I can only add a link to my links page if I've thoroughly engaged with it as measured by—you guessed it—vibes. I'll also post any thoughts to the link's comment section, if present.
And to pre-register my predictions on what will happen, I think that:
I'll revisit this in January 2027 (three months after writing) and see what the results are.
(Shoutout to Daily Links who I think does links the best way. Text only, part commentary, part summary, part opinion, part reflection, no fluff.)
This naturally prompts the question: Where else am I doing something that feels and looks and seems good, but is pernicious and detrimental to long-term progress and development?
While nothing immediately jumps out at me, here are some potential areas:
So often people do things because...wait, why are they doing that? Do they have a goal, even if it's poorly defined? Set the goal first, then figure out what to do to achieve it.
Engage with everything. Friends. Family. Text. Music. Video. Photographs. Complex systems. Machines. Weather. Food. Drink. Physical touch. Nature.
Ask questions! Make connections! Write down thoughts! Make predictions! Dig into the research or content! Explore!