Ben Casnocha: The Blog

Book Review and Essay: Create Your Own Economy and Internet Info Culture

I have ~4,000 word essay up at the American Enterprise Institute reviewing Tyler Cowen's new book Create Your Own Economy and presenting my perspective on the ongoing debates around internet information culture, whether we are more distracted, whether bits from blogs cohere into knowledge, the importance of un-focus to creativity, and related issues. It is also the most detailed explanation yet of how I think about my information diet at a high level.

Do read the whole thing.

On the intellectual and emotional stimulation we experience by assembling a custom stream of bits:

Cowen refers to this process as the “daily self-assembly of synthetic experiences.” My inputs appear a chaotic jumble of scattered information but to me they touch all my interest points. When I consume them as a blend, I see all-important connections between the different intellectual narratives I follow -- a business idea (entrepreneurship) in the airplane space (travel), for example. Because building the blend is a social exercise real communities and friendships form around certain topics my social life and intellectual life intersect more intensely than before. And I engage in ongoing self-discovery by reflecting upon my interests, finding new bits to add to my stream, and thinking about how it all fits together.

Cowen maintains that these benefits enhance your internal mental existence; how you order information in your head and how you use this information to conceive of your identity and life aspirations affects your internal well-being. Because a personal blend reflects a diverse set of media (think hyper-specific niche news outlets in lieu of a nightly news broadcast that everyone watches on one of three networks), and because each person constructs their own stories to link their inputs together, the benefits are unique to the individual. They are also invisible. It is impossible to see what stories someone is crafting internally to make sense of their stream; it is impossible to appreciate the personal coherence of it.

On self-education in the era of the web:

Within my online information diet, it is exhilarating to follow narratives, read the latest controversy (seasteading, anyone?), add my own two cents to the debate, and stitch together all that I have learned. Self-education has gone from being like a loner sitting in a bar sparsely populated with hazily attractive women to being in the center of a packed, rocking night club where the women are wearing mini-skirts and the guys’ shirts open up several buttons down. As Cowen puts it, “The emotional power of our blends is potent, and they make work, and learning, a lot more fun.” When a topic gets filtered through a two-way, fast-moving, personal bit stream, it commands my attention in a way the static, one-way, black-and-white version of the topic never could.

On whether we're turning our brains into mush by our online info consumption habits:

The draconian bottom line for these people is as follows. The human brain is a famously plastic organ: how we use it shapes what it can do and what it becomes. If we spend all our mental cycles getting quick hits from blogs and our BlackBerries, our brains will optimize around this deployment of attention. Reading complicated books will become a hell of a chore and enduring long stretches of reflective solitude will become nearly unbearable. The bastions of intellectual culture are preparing to weep.

In praise of un-focus:

The glorification of “focus” is the second problem with the criticisms of bit-consumption and technology use in general. While some amount of focus is necessary, it is not the case that sitting alone in a quiet white walled room with no beeps or buzzes is the ultimate day-to-day environment for deep, creative thinking. Sam Anderson in New York Magazine summarized research that says un-focus is actually an important part of creativity—random meanderings and conversations can trigger important creative insights. Excessive conscious attention on one particular point can come at the cost of the free-associative brainstorms that just might lead to the next big thing. A University of Amsterdam study showed participants who were distracted from making a decision, and forced to consciously focus on something else, devoted valuable unconscious thought to the issue and ultimately made a better decision when they returned to the task.

To my knowledge this is the first published review of Cowen's book. A few additional footnotes:

1. It is more about autism than my review would suggest. The book opens and closes with exploring the autistic cognitive style, and it comes up in almost every chapter in-between.

2. The autistic cognitive style description personally resonated with me. I collect and organize information to an intense degree. I have tagged and labeled almost 6,000 web pages. A lifelong goal has been to take a bar code scanner and scan all the books my family owns and put them into a database. And I synthesize diverse bits of information faster than most.

3. I make a claim that is more negative than Cowen: that many people have not and will not read the great books, and for many people on many topics it's the bits or nothing. We both arrive in praise of bits but I get there in part via a more cynical path. I'm not sure if Cowen agrees with me here but I do think it's this truth which makes his positive vision work.

(Thanks to Kevin Arnovitz, Arnold Kling, Jesse Berrett, Cal Newport, David Casnocha, and Stan James for offering feedback on this piece, and my editor Nick Schulz.)

Keep Your Door Open at the Office

In his talk titled "You and Your Research," Richard Hamming implores researchers and scientists to pick hard problems to work on. Along the way he says the following:

I noticed the following facts about people who work with the door open or the door closed. I notice that if you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you don't know quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard work you do is sort of tangential in importance. He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important. Now I cannot prove the cause and effect sequence because you might say, "The closed door is symbolic of a closed mind." I don't know. But I can say there is a pretty good correlation between those who work with the doors open and those who ultimately do important things, although people who work with doors closed often work harder. Somehow they seem to work on slightly the wrong thing - not much, but enough that they miss fame.

It's important, in other words, to have one eye looking down at the work on your desk and one eye scanning the horizon to make sure what you're doing is still relevant and important.

Thus the thorny challenge: How to create a work environment with the optimal amount of distraction?

Store Thoughts in the Appropriate Place as Soon as You Have Them

I have learned one thing from productivity expert David Allen: write down thoughts, ideas, questions, or tasks as soon as you have them.

Many people focus on organizing their information and data. But first you need to collect and store your own new thoughts and ideas. You need to be disciplined about capturing them as soon as they come to mind. It's easy to create folders and wikis on your computer. It's harder to pause a conversation or meeting, or lean over to your bedside table when only half-awake, so you can jot down a thought you may need to remember.

I have pads of paper on my bedside table, on my desk, in my briefcase, and am always scribbling things down on my PDA.

Buried in a Wired article Allen summarizes this philosophy clearly:

One of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned in my quasi-scientific approach to sustained laziness is the value of storing thoughts in appropriate places, as soon as I have them. That means parking them where I will later evaluate their merit (or lack thereof) and dispose of them accordingly. Having a thought once is what the mind is for; having the same thought twice, in the same way, for the same reason, is a waste of time and energy. I also found out that having a place for good ideas produced more of them, and more often.

That last sentence is true, too. In my book I talk about how most business ideas sprout forth from your "fringe thoughts" list.

Bottom Line: If you're thinking the same thought twice, in the same way, for the same reason, you're wasting time and energy. Store your thoughts / tasks as you soon as you think them.

Don't Hold Back or Water Down Your Thoughts

This comic below is sheer awesomeness and worth showing to anyone who is fearful of how their online content might affect future career or political prospects, one of the most overblown concerns. Click to enlarge.

(hat tip xkcd via Colin Marshall)

Underground World of Neuroenhancing Drugs

Margaret Talbot wrote a long, comprehensive, and insightful article in the New Yorker about the underground world of neuroenhancing drugs such as Adderall. Anyone who's been to college recently knows that the use of these drugs on campuses is rampant and that everyone and their brother seems to be obtaining A.D.D. diagnoses in order to snag the latest thing which will help them focus and work more productively. Therefore the piece should have particular resonance for people under 30.

What makes this topic tricky -- and Talbot does a good job at conveying as much -- is that neuroenhancers are not categorically bad. For some people they're essential to being a functioning person. Plus it's hypocritical to dismiss the whole lot. Coffee is a neuroenahncer, and we don't seem to have any problems it. What makes coffee okay, but the next rung up not okay?

I have never taken these drugs. (Nor have I ever had a cup of coffee!) They "facilitate a pinched, unromantic, grindingly efficient form of productivity," in Talbot's words. They do not spur creative sparks; in fact, I suspect they might even blunt creative verve, or in some other way have a flattening effect. Hence I've stayed away from the pill-popping bonanza, even if I'm as keen on improving my focus as anyone.

As I wrote two years ago in my post about performance enhancing drugs for the mind, I think neuroenhancers and the larger domain of cognitive improvement raise ethical questions that are more important and broadly impactful than doping in baseball or cycling.

Links from Around the Web

Assorted links...

1. Roger Ebert reflects on death and mortality. He says he memorized this quote:

I respect kindness in human beings first of all, and kindness to animals. I don't respect the law; I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer.

2. An old interview with Virginia Postrel that captures her worldview nicely. For example:

There are two competing visions of knowledge. In the book, I talk about them as trees: Stasists see knowledge as a tall, spindly palm tree—one long trunk with a few fronds on top. Dynamists, by contrast, envision knowledge as a spreading elm tree—lots of dispersed knowledge, communicated through complex channels, often at a great distance. We benefit from things other people know that we don't. And a lot of knowledge is hidden.

3. Is tendency for entrepreneurship genetic? Nurture once again fails to rear its hopeful head.

4. Is there an education bubble? By the number of AP tests being taken, yes. "A simple but powerful way to determine whether or not there's a irrational bubble is to look for a lot of people who are participating in a trend who have no business doing so."

5. William Saletan rounds up recent discussion on race, genes, bias, and fairness. Count on Steve Sailer to challenge conventional wisdom.

6. The always worthwhile Laura Miller reviews the new books on concentration and focus in the age of Twitter. We are wired to like the shiny.

7. Should you keep your goals to yourself if you want to achieve them? "A series of experiments shows that when others take notice of our plans, performance is compromised because we gain a premature sense of completeness about the goal."

My Information Diet

I maintain a large information diet. I've gotten questions about information diet at least a dozen times over the past few months so I thought I'd detail how I think about this part of my life.

I'm a fast reader and quick at processing and synthesizing information, so I do a lot of original sourcing of articles. What I read and how much time I devote to it depends on what I'm doing day-to-day. A friend of mine likes to say you can either "keep up with stuff" or you can "do stuff" -- while I don't think the two are as mutually exclusive as this implies, it is true that if you're in production mode you necessarily have to downshift on consumption.

Regardless of my mode I hold some principles dear.

First, I never try to keep up with breaking news. I don't care if I hear about something a couple days after everyone else. Besides, when you find out about something a few days after it happened you get to read an analysis versus a mere summary.

Second, I think actively about how I'm consuming my news and information and implement systems and processes accordingly. I never log onto a news web site and randomly surf. Nor do I pick up random magazines to flip through or buy books at airports. Instead, I think about what sources of information consistently provide the highest quality content and when in my schedule it makes sense to consume the content. For example I've found reading my RSS reader when cooling down from a work-out or while eating lunch at my desk is a perfect match of activity and physical location. With books, I am selective about what I read and am always armed with a book of my choosing when faced with downtime.

Third, I use meta-filters to pick up stuff that falls outside of my "intentional zone." Instead of reading all the various book review newspaper sections, I read the Amazon book blog which each Monday does a summation of Sunday’s book reviews. Instead of sifting through all the newspapers each day or trying to keep up with the best magazines, Slate does a daily round-up of what's in the major U.S. newspapers and a weekly round-up of what's in the major U.S. magazines. Arts & Letters Daily and Bookforum are two other terrific meta sources of smart articles. I also use friends. One friend reads Tucker Max's delicious feed and tags the best from it (and I read his feed). Another friend reads Forbes and sends me relevant stuff. And so forth.

Here are the key channels through which information flows for me:

RSS

60 feeds in high priority folder, such as:

• Marginal Revolution - Daily links and thoughts on economics, arts, education, and life.
• Feld Thoughts - Entrepreneurship and life from a VC's perspective
• Overcoming Bias - Cognitive biases that distort our quest for truth!
• The Happiness Project -Thoughtful insights on the pursuit of happiness.
• Infectious Greed - Daily takes from Paul K. on finance, business, entrepreneurship, and media.
• Marty Nemko - Good career advice and other provocative musings

50 feeds in medium priority, such as:

• Amazon Book Blog - Roundup of book and publishing industry news
• EconLog - Excellent economic and libertarian commentary.
• James Follows - Commentary on world affairs from the longtime Atlantic Monthly reporter.
• George Packer - Commentary on world affairs and politics from the New Yorker reporter
• Venture Hacks - Tips for entrepreneurs
• Slate - All new Slate articles, which I love.
• Neurolearning - Research at the intersection of cog science and learning.

40 feeds in low priority, such as:

• Justine Musk - Well written reflections on the writerly, recently-divorced life
• Lessons Learned - Entrepreneurship deep thoughts by Eric Ries
• Aguanomics - All things water and economics.
• Cognitive Daily - Regular postings about cognitive science and research.
• Gulliver - The Economist's blog on business travel and travel industry in general.

I’ll look at my high priority once a day. Medium and low usually about 4 times a week and I scan the headlines and read maybe 40% of the posts.

Twitter

I follow about 150 people who update. I’ll check Twitter a couple times a day usually on my phone while on the go. This is mainly a stay-in-touch mechanism and it’s not a super high priority – I miss stuff. And I still encourage people to email me rather than send DMs or @replies if they want a response. Some of my favorite people to follow on Twitter:

• Auren Hoffman
• Steve Silberman
• Andy McKenzie
• Colin Marshall
• TwitterLit
• John Byrne
• Max Marmer
• Penelope Trunk
• Chris Sacca
• David Weekly
• Jeff Nolan
• Mark Nolan

Print magazines

I get The Economist and the Atlantic Monthly in the mail and I frequently buy the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Wired, Harper's, and others at airports. I frequently read individual articles from the New Republic, National Review, Columbia Journalism Review, National Geographic, Business Week, and others.

Books

Books have the highest wisdom density of any medium. Here's my post How I Think About Books. Here are my favorite books from the past few years. The number of books I read depends on how much traveling I'm doing -- the more time I spend on airplanes, the more books I read. I also have a Kindle 2 which I'm getting used to. For long drives I'll download an audiobook off iTunes.

Friends / Blog Readers

People send me articles, news, and provocative emails. For example, four people sent me the widely-circulated NYT op/ed last week on the follies of graduate school education. I don't like depending on other peope but it is a helpful overlay.

Enhancing Our Truth Orientation

Why people hold opinions:

People will hold an opinion because they want to keep the company of others who share the opinion, or because they think it is the respectable opinion, or because they have publicly expressed the opinion in the past and would be embarrassed by a “U-turn,” or because the world would suit them better if the opinion were true (Whyte, 2004).

That's a quote that leads off Robin Hanson's paper called Enhancing Our Truth Orientation (pdf). If you're interested in issues of bias, truth, and particularly self-deception, it's required reading.

The opening sentence: "Humans lie and deceive themselves, and often choose beliefs for reasons other than how closely those beliefs approximate truth. This is mainly why we disagree. Three future trends may reduce these epistemic vices."

One trend that may reduce these epistemic vices is increased documentation and surveillance. It will soon be very inexpensive to video and audio record everything that happens in our lives. It is harder to lie or self-deceive when every word you have ever uttered has been recorded and time stamped.

Many bloggers voluntarily document their beliefs in a medium (the internet) that is public and permanent. A large repository of documented beliefs over time reduces the blogger's ability to self-deceive, and contradictions or hypocrisies are more easily exposed.

For example, a couple weeks ago I expressed my displeasure with the label "Spiritual but not religious." I described why I think it is a phrase too fuzzy for its own good. And yet, 3.5 years ago on this blog, I claimed the "spiritual but not religious" label for myself! I am forced to admit I've changed my mind.

Sure, disclosing your beliefs as you form them can leave you vulnerable, perhaps requiring embarassing about-faces, but ulitmately I think "intellectual transparency" of this sort leads to more honest living.

I Believe in Overcommunication

The other day a friend told me, "I didn't send you the article because I didn't want to overwhelm your email inbox." I replied, "You can never send me too much email!"

For people I know, there's no such thing as sending me too much email. The marginal cost of each additional email is minimal and I have gotten proficient at handling large volumes of it. For a slightly smaller circle of folks I apply the same principle for phone calls or text messages.

If I'm overwhelmed or don't have time, let me make that call and reply to say as much.

This is my approach for two reasons. First, I genuinely enjoy talking, brainstorming, and catching up with friends. Second, I think communication is really hard. Miscommunications happen all the time. Relationships end over miscommunications. While improving the quality and clarity of correspondence helps, I think increasing the raw quantity helps, too.

Even very busy CEOs maintain a "proactive open door" policy when it comes to email. Marc Benioff, CEO of salesforce.com, plasters his email address everywhere and regularly encourages employees, customers, and partners to email him anytime.

Bottom Line: I believe in overcommunication. As my friends know, my parting line on the phone or in-person is almost always, "Stay in touch."

(thanks to Brad Feld for teaching me this concept.)

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Join Ramit Sethi of IWillTeachYouToBeRich and me for a free, one-hour live video webcast this Saturday, May 2nd at 12 noon pacific time. We'll be talking about entrepreneurship, writing, careers, blogging, and answering your questions! Here are details.

Most Natural "You" Emerges When Masks Collapse

When presenting ourselves to the world, we wear different masks depending on who's around. To our high school friends we'll act one way, to family we'll act a slightly different way, to our boss at work we'll act slightly different still.

Historically the most common distinction made between types of masks has been "personal" and "professional." It wasn't too long ago when once you left the office, work stopped. Now work follows you wherever you go. Telecommuting, etc. So knowledge workers find themselves wearing personal and professional hats at the same time, 24/7, from the office and from home.

In other words, technology is collapsing the masks we wear, making it harder to project different versions of our identity depending on the audience.

My theory: The most natural "you" is the version that gets presented when masks collapse. For example, host a dinner party with your mom, best friend from school, your boss from work, and a woman/man you're interested in dating. How do you act? What comes most naturally?

A public blog is another experiment in voice-synthesis and mask-collapse. I write one blog and all sorts of people read it, people with whom I would customize my presentation if we met in the real world. I slightly customize my vocabulary and personality if I meet a client versus my best friend from childhood. But I write only one blog, and even if I intend for it to be read by a particular constituency, I must remember that both my boss and friend can read it. Thus, the "you" that emerges on a personal blog represents a regression-to-the-mean synthesis, which may represent the most natural version of yourself.

(thanks to Stan James for helping generate this theory)

Oldies But Goodies From the Archives

New reader to this blog? Check out the Best of Ben page for some of my favorite posts from the past few years. You can also browse this blog by category:

Books || Business || Current Affairs || Entrepreneurship || Globalization || Health / Fitness || Life || Philosophy || Random || Religion / Spirituality || School / Education || Sports || Travel || Web/Tech || Writing || Humor || Relationships || Quotes

A handful of oldies but goodies from the archives:

• What Does Society Overcomplicate? Just because something is hard doesn't mean it's complicated.
• Do Only Negative Emotions Count for Depth? Does going through a grieving process contribute more to your emotional depth than going through a period of intense joy? Does sadness stretch you more than happiness? 
• How Friendships Evolve Over Time and the Quest for Platonic Intimacy. Your friendships and philosophy of friendships change as you get older. My theory on how.
• Is original thinking orthogonal to cognitive speed? - Would you rather be a swift but derivative thinker or a slow but original thinker?
• Thanks Mom and Dad - A thank-you to my parents.
• The stability/stimulation tradeoff - The most stimulating jobs are also the least stable
• Can a best friend be a composite? - Can a best friend be pieces of several different people?
• Reflections on 3 months of international travel - A roundup of my international travel from a couple years ago.
• Three Things to Unlearn From School - The importance of opinion, the importance of solving given problems, the importance of earning the approval of others.
• Organizing the Rhetoric Around Why to Go to College - The reasons for college are always scattered. They fit in three main categories: knowledge, connections, and credential.
• Can Companies Accelerate the Adoption Curve? - It's harder to do this than to execute well.
• What separates a talker and doer? - I outline what doers do that talkers don't.
• Remembering David Foster Wallace - My personal reflection on DFW's death.
• 18th birthday responses - Dozens of friends tell me what they regret not doing when they were 18
• Are We More Self-Absorbed These Days? Are people - especially young people - more narcissistic and self-obsessed than before? If so, why?
• To Find Good, Underrated People De-Emphasize Popular Filters. Women seek out short men, men seek out women with small breasts, everyone seek out those who lack charisma.
• Getting to the Point of "I Can Do This!". Before you can embark on a new project, you need to believe you can do it. In order to believe you can do it, you need have to some self-confidence. In order to have self-confidence, I think you need to do one or both of the following.
• Who's Benefiting from National Service? My commentary for Marketplace on the dangers of national service programs.
• Six Habits of Highly Effective Mentees. Everyone talks about the importance of mentors. But how do you be a good mentee?
• Does a Guilty Sense of Privilege Inspire Positive Action? Or does action out of action out of guilt contain hidden costs?
• H1-B Visa Issue in America. A brief analysis.
• What Does "Mature" Mean? Taking a pass at defining emotional and intellectual maturity.

Here's an RSS feed to subscribe to my blog. You can also get posts emailed to you.

And thanks. Thanks for reading and commenting and emailing and helping me grow these past five years, and growing with me. I appreciate it more than you know. It's a privilege, as Seth Godin has put it.

Inaugural Video Blog Post

I'm trying something new today: a video blog post. I recorded a five minute message and uploaded it to YouTube. Here's the link to the video on YouTube. I've also pasted it below though the embed version is less good because the width gets messed up. In it I talk about five upcoming blog posts I'm going to write / ideas I'm thinking about.

I'm doing this mainly to test the format of recording and uploading videos. Do you like this format? Should I do more? Quality seems ok though the colors faded a bit with my built-in camera.

Evisceration Quarterly

Aaron Swartz lists the blogs he wished existed, and includes this:

Evisceration Quarterly: A daily selection of the finest in insults, takedowns, and general argumentative evisceration. The motto: teaching you how to think by showing you how not to. And, to not be entirely negative, the occasional model of clarity. With special blogging consultant, Brad DeLong.

I agree this would be a hilarious and perhaps educational read. Someone should take up the task. We can't, for example, let gems from Lee Siegel fade into the abyss.

Passive vs. Active Questions

When seeking information from busy people via email the little things matter. Quick, minor tip: use a question mark if you're asking a question. Compare the following cases:

Case A: Do you have any feedback for me on this point?

Case B: I would be interested in hearing your feedback on this point.

The question mark in A will yield a higher response than the passive Case B. Another example I learned when doing sales:

Case A: Will you be in town on Nov 5th for a meeting?

Case B: If you're in town on Nov 5th, I would love to meet.

Again, I think the question mark yields a higher response. When I receive an email from someone I don't know, I immediately search for the question mark.

Bottom Line: If you want a response, use question marks. Present active not passive questions!

Trusting Your Friends vs. "The Authority"

You're trying to decide what computer to buy. Who do you ask for advice -- your tech friend who knows your particular tastes or The Authority (CNet reviews for example)?

You're trying to decide what restaurant to eat at. Who do you trust more -- your friend who has historical insight into other restaurants you like or The Authority (Yelp.com aggregated reviews)?

You're trying to decide what movie to watch. Do you ask your friend or check IMDB to tap the wisdom of crowds?

Many web 2.0 products hype the "social graph" -- all the things you can do when you're intimately connected to what your friends are doing, buying, recommending, etc. in real time.

When pondering the potential applications of these products, it's often assumed that we will rely more and more on people who actually know us since we will be connected to them in a regular and comprehensive way. But I'm not so sure.

People are deferential to authority. We glorify experts. There's no doubt that I want to hang out with my friends on the weekend rather than The Expert on Having a Good Time on the Weekend. But when it comes to buying a computer, or finding the best political commentary online, or any number of other transactional goals, I prefer to tap into a larger, anonymous sphere called The Google or the collected wisdom of qualified strangers.

Bottom Line: Just because the web can make us more connected with our friends this doesn't mean we will necessarily want to rely on their personal opinions more.

[Related Post: Advice on Giving Advice. When you seek advice, should you consult the domain expert or someone who knows you best? Your mother may know you best but she may not know the industry you're considering going in to.]