Professor X is rigid in his chair, gaze locked on his opponent.
Eyes squint. Veins on temples bulge. The silence booms.
Maybe it’s just Hollywood.
Or maybe, that’s us every day.
The Almanack of Naval Ravikant taught me that your mind is the ultimate leverage point.
Upgrade a belief → create habits liberating more energy and success → invest in upgrading more beliefs.
Learn a better way to do something → use the time saved to learn even more things → save even more time.
Build guardrails for your thinking → think better → use the improved thinking to build better guardrails.
Working smart instead of hard generates time to invest in working smarter, and off the exponentiation rocket blasts.
...assuming, you’re investing that time in working smarter.
In practice, we spend so much free time on brain junkfood: TV, social media, memes, low-value entertainment.
You know this is a waste of time.
But do you think about the fallout after you’ve shut the app?
The celebrity gossip, the ragebait, the politics you can’t do anything about... all spewed across your cerebrum like dopaminergic radiation, occupying your thinking and crowding out the good stuff that drives your life forward?
I began to notice this in myself when observing how a “quick” funny Instagram reel affects me.
Maybe I was having deep, useful thoughts about work. One damn reel reroutes my entire brain.
Say it’s a video of two Brazilian politicians arguing. In a blink I’m twenty minutes deep down a rabbithole on the political history of Brazil. In the worst cases I’m sucked into a black hole of triviality for hours, the previous deep stuff just gone until I rediscover it days later like some lost archaeological treasure.
We say “I need to be more disciplined”
Which is really convenient for companies like Facebook and Netflix and Google.
If the problem is discipline, it’s a you problem. A personal failure.
Yet these companies spend hundreds of millions on psychologists and engineers to construct tech that never sleeps, hunting your attention everywhere you’re online.
This isn’t a personal failure.
It’s a systems failure on a battlefield you’re not even aware you’re on. And you are outmatched.
You are facing an overwhelmingly powerful weapon, and you think you just need to work harder.
They’ve gotten inside your mind.
The modern struggle:
Lone individuals summoning inhuman willpower, fasting, meditating, and exercising…
Up against armies of scientists and statisticians weaponizing abundant food, screens, and medicine into junk food, clickbait news, infinite porn, endless games, and addictive drugs.
— Almanack of Naval Ravikant
The next post will detail what I do to keep my mind safe online. Unsurprisingly, systems are involved.
If this post was useful to you, here’s more of my writing:
I've gone analog for a lot of things. I've taken more paper notes in the past month than in the past year, and read more paper books vs kindle. I've also gotten in the habit of forgetting my phone when I wander around and run errands. The impact is palpable and very positive! Perhaps the best use of willpower for me is keeping my usage of tech within certain time boundaries. Eventually this may prove futile (internet of everything, etc...) but for now it works well. Interested to hear about your systems Kevin!