Medium - overwhelming info on the internet and being unique

Few days back, I stumbled upon Medium.
I liked the stories. Most were 3 min or 5 min reads. Since yday I am just hooked onto Medium, reading one story after another. The whole world has stories to tell. Storytelling has taken off in a huuuuge way, I say. If all the billion or more people on the planet just started talking and telling stories, who would listen?

I, who loves to read stories, got choked beyond a point.
I know that my blog is choke--y. But, this is a diary - to journal what I read and see a pattern of interest. This is not what I want to share with the world. There are just a handful of original writings in here, which are mine, which are share worthy. Given that the entry barriers to writing have disappeared, almost all of us can write. There is twitter, FB, blogs, Medium - so much to share!
Think of the readers.. yes, we all use filters and follow only a few people, but when days like this happen, when I stumble on a good site and try to keep up, I am overwhelmed.
Even the extremely talented Maria Popova, overwhelms me with her writing. She writes so much! I have to devote like a couple of hours on a certain day, every week to cover 70 or 80% of what she writes! Else, I lag behind her. I can never catch up.
We all seem to be writing so much and reading a little too! I donno if reading has taken a beating because of this insane flurry of writing.

There is an overwhelming amount of info on the web. We all wanted easy access to info but what we got is a torrential downpour, which is destroying the small hut that we call home. Were we better off when there were fewer authors and fewer books to read and fewer things to do and even fewer things to say? I am getting nostalgic. Last year, I spent in silence. I did not read a thing. I was not this overwhelmed. The Internet and this deluge of info is overwhelming me. I feel that I am missing out the next big story if I do not keep pace. I shall perish, I feel!

Yesterday, very aptly, one of the DNA's writers wrote about the same thing.
http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/1891230/column-united-in-mediocrity-in-the-flat-world-of-information
I am happy that many of us are in this together. In an effort to make the world simple, we have made it complex. In an effort to help us with apps, we created millions of apps. In an effort to promote literacy and writing we ended up creating piles of books which we can hardly read. In an effort to earn money and stay in the rat race, we do work that we least enjoy and work long hours. We're choking ourselves in every possible way. We're also choking the planet. We may all sink together at this pace.

Sometimes, when I go to a place like Hampi I cannot understand how a whole city died. Only the buildings remain? Why has the culture of that area changed beyond recognition? Didn't anyone survive from that time and propagate the culture? Were they all invaded by aliens who changed their basic DNA? We are all invaded today - by the West. There is not much Indianness left, I feel. In most cities we dress and act like the Western world. We were unwillingly subject to English colonies in 1600. Now, we willingly submit to Americanization in the 21st century. In our quest to appear special and different all of us have created designer homes which actually look alike. We are all alike in our struggles in life, but we think we're all special and different. We all have special hobbies, which is why 200 of us do the same special hobby. Today, everyone owns a DSLR. Everyone I know, is a photographer or trekker or runner or cyclist or storyteller or fitness enthusiast or traveller or couch potato or addicted video gamer or a foodie or a cook or a baker or a blogger or a writer. Given the propensity we have for following trends, how do we call ourselves unique? So much for being unique. I thought I was the only crazy one to leave an IT job to pursue the unknown. Reading Medium I see even more bizarre cases. Everyone is leaving jobs to pursue the unknown. That, is the trend now. Not that I am being judgmental. I am just noting the patterns, the repeptitive patterns across lives across continents! It's amazing that someone deep in SF, thinks the same way like me!
Look around you - everyone is looking for meaning and purpose in life. Everyone is doing yoga and meditation. Everyone reads a lot to keep pace. Everyone runs nowadays. That makes everyone so unique! Just when I thought that I could look at early child education, I see that some 50 people are already doing it! Does it make sense to collaborate and attack a big pie or break up in small groups and target small population? I don't know.. I am confused and overwhelmed like the 'unique' rest of us.


https://medium.com/collections

How to stay focussed even when you're bored: (MUST READ)
https://medium.com/architecting-a-life/6ff0a0bc0dc8

Becoming a master at your craft: (MUST READ)
http://jamesclear.com/deliberate-practice 


Why I left Google (it's an amazing read - very authentic and it echoes what's going on with me):
https://medium.com/this-happened-to-me/c02f1ff471c6

Awesome writeup on why different kinds of women should be invited into technology:
https://medium.com/women-and-work/1023a2e973dd

Living an unlived life:
https://medium.com/what-i-learned-today/360b8276adf2

What do you do and who you are:
https://medium.com/architecting-a-life/cd0156212f3
“Work is alright in proportion: but one wants to have a certain richness and satisfaction in oneself, which is more than anything produced. One wants to be.

Improving your productivity:
https://medium.com/career-pathing/a67a9ede28e9

Retiring?
https://medium.com/architecting-a-life/174f8f966045

Everything is interesting:
https://medium.com/career-pathing/f27c692f267a

10 years of exploring new things after quitting a hi-fi valley job:
https://medium.com/career-pathing/a1ba4aec950

Interesting article - Techie teaches coding to solve homeless issue:
https://medium.com/architecting-a-life/fee8f3ee97a0

Storing your hunches and re-examining them to get useful ideas!
https://medium.com/architecting-a-life/8d6e7df7ae58

Twitter Vs Facebook (good perspective):
https://medium.com/architecting-a-life/52a20d7a17de

A little more awareness (https://medium.com/architecting-a-life/4454abf4884b):
I think observing life around you is important. I think seeing and interacting (if even quietly) with humanity around you connects you better. Makes you more human, in fact. It allows you to contribute, if even in a small way.

[I think it makes you more creative too. But that’s an essay for another day…]

This isn’t just about being rude because you are unaware, such as the gentleman who blasted our ears with his car horn.

This is about not going through life oblivious to the world around you. I think it makes us better human beings when are are paying attention.

So yeah, I am asking you to pay a little more attention to what is going on around you. Use your head, open your eyes, listen to things that happen around you. Use the glorious senses we were blessed with.

The world would be so much better if we are all a little more aware…

https://medium.com/advice-to-graduates/21ffa9c0a327
Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American poet and essayist had something to say about this in his great essay “Self-Reliance”:

A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.

Be true to yourself, believe in your ideas and respect them and give them a big opportunity to win.

Computers can make your brain lazy. Use them when you execute, but always do all your thinking in your brain.

There is a theory that writers write better on typewriters because you can’t just backspace backspace backspace backspace. They spend more time composing in their heads so when they commit to paper, the words are better. The same is true for film cameras. Because film is expensive, you think more about the composition of a shot. If you’re just going to shoot 2000 images and choose one, where is the fun in that?

Computers are incredible tools. But like any powerful tool, it can cause you to lose a thumb. Or a brain. So get to know how to use them.

Oh. One more thing. Be brief.

To lookup:
Codecademy, Khan Academy, Scratch, Quora.

Information diet and information curation

While we spoke abt filters, here's some more.

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2013/08/101signals/

http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/magazine/17-08/by_media_diet

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/10/11/as-we-may-think-1945/

conversations about information overload, filtering, and our restless “FOMO” — fear of missing out, for anyone who did miss out on the memetic catchphrase — amidst the incessant influx. Bush worries about the impossibility of ever completely catching up and the unfavorable signal-to-noise ratio:

Those who conscientiously attempt to keep abreast of current thought, even in restricted fields, by close and continuous reading might well shy away from an examination calculated to show how much of the previous month’s efforts could be produced on call.

Mendel’s concept of the laws of genetics was lost to the world for a generation because his publication did not reach the few who were capable of grasping and extending it; and this sort of catastrophe is undoubtedly being repeated all about us, as truly significant attainments become lost in the mass of the inconsequential.
More than half a century before blogging, Instagramming, tweeting, and the rest of today’s ever-lowering barriers of entry for publishing content, Bush laments the unmanageable scale of the recorded “human experience”:

 

The challenge of transmuting information into wisdom given the scale of what’s available — a scale that has grown by an incomprehensibly enormous magnitude since 1945. He stresses, as many of us believe today, that mechanization — or, algorithms in the contemporary equivalent — will never be a proper substitute for human judgment and creative thought in the filtration process:

With one item in its grasp, it snaps instantly to the next that is suggested by the association of thoughts, in accordance with some intricate web of trails carried by the cells of the brain. It has other characteristics, of course; trails that are not frequently followed are prone to fade, items are not fully permanent, memory is transitory. Yet the speed of action, the intricacy of trails, the detail of mental pictures, is awe-inspiring beyond all else in nature.

“information curation”:

There is a new profession of trail blazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record. The inheritance from the master becomes, not only his additions to the world’s record, but for his disciples the entire scaffolding by which they were erected.

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/03/16/percolate-curation/ 

“curation” - a drive to find the interesting, meaningful, and relevant amidst the vast maze of overabundant information, creating a framework for what matters in the world and why — is an increasingly valuable form of creative and intellectual labor, a form of authorship that warrants thought.

People really respond to other people’s enthusiasm about things.” ~ Edith Zimmerman

Ideas are the most valuable thing. Good ones make all the difference; bad ones can hold us back, maybe even destroy us. If we can focus on finding the right ones, helping distill them, and transfer them as quickly as possible, we can get more of that. Curation is that means to the end.” ~ Peter Hopkins

 

All this information overload is definitely not without side effects. We have no silence inside. We constantly worry about missing out info. We fear that we'll be left behind. Thing is,  everyone is going to get left behind! No one can curate so much info. What is the use of all this info that we blog about or put up on the internet? Is someone listening? My own blog is just an archive of the things I read. I read here and there and forget things. Just to have a place to go back to, I am kind of archiving my reads.. and my thoughts..so that SEARCHING the blog is easy and fool proof compared to searching my memory. So this blog is my working memory and my external hard disk.

Mental Bandwith

“Before internet connectivity poured from the sky, I was able to get on a train, plug in my Mac and have nothing to do for four hours but write. And so I wrote. I once bought a round trip ticket to nowhere just to eliminate every possible alternative… pure, unadulterated mental bandwidth.”

Fear is the enemy of creativity and innovation and of starting things. The resistance hates those things—they are risky, they might not work, so the resistance pushes us not to do them.
On the other hand, it loves the notion of to-do lists and favors and multi-tasking and yes, continual partial attention, because those are perfect hiding places, perfect places to avoid the scary work but still be able to point to a day's work, well done.

But if you have nothing else due, nothing else to do, no other measurable output but that thing you've promised yourself, if all your mental bandwidth is focused on this one and this only, then yep, you can bet that you will get more brave.

Before internet connectivity poured from the sky, I was able to get on a train, plug in my Mac and have nothing to do for four hours but write. And so I wrote. I once bought a round trip ticket to nowhere just to eliminate every possible alternative... pure, unadulterated mental bandwidth.
Plenty of places to run, plenty of places to hide. None of them are as important as shipping your best work today.