Consuming Ideas Won't Internalize Them

I recently heard a podcast discussion about a man who uses AI tools to summarize 36 podcasts at a time, extract key insights, and then kickstart blog posts for him which are trained on his existing blog style.

In the past, this idea would have hooked me. My instinct is to hoard information, if I can only collect enough wisdom fast enough it will make me smart & prepared for every eventuality. In what feels like a similar vein, I used to use an app called Blinkist that had ~4 minute summaries of many popular books. It feels like the draw to these tools is that if we can increase the efficiency at which we bombard ourselves with information, make it denser and faster, then we’ll experience personal growth at the same rate.

Is increasing efficiency the answer? 🔗︎

It’s really easy to speed-read a Twitter thread of hard-won insights & mental razors, but how much of it are you able to actually apply to your life in a meaningful way? I used to collect the contents of those threads & book summaries in the hope that I’d always have the right one for every situation, but I end up with a digital hoard I never reference.

A lesson that took me a long time to learn is that only skimming a list of key ideas isn’t going to internalize them for you. It might work well enough when cramming for a test at school, but if you are hoping they will be absorbed into your day-to-day experience, I have bad news for you.

In fact, sometimes it feels like we should spend LONGER with each idea.

Going slow, to go better 🔗︎

Some books get bullied because they are a simple idea stretched out until it hits book-length. I’ll admit, in some cases it’s warranted. Personally, though, I’ve had multiple instances where an idea wouldn’t take root in my conscience until I had sat with it in the extended reflection period that reading a book offers. My brain needed time to notice relevant areas of my life, and let those connections bubble to the surface.

Part of this is also learning to let go. It’s impossible to consume even a fraction of the content of the world which would be useful for me to understand. I have to internalize that idea (oy! already an ouroboros!) and choose to deeply understand a small number of useful ideas, vs having a collection 100k deep I don’t understand. Consuming an idea doesn’t matter unless it’s able to inform decisions & actions of my life.