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Saving Information Is Stupid: Here’s What to Do Instead
I’ve never taken hard drugs, but this addiction was strong.
I’m an information junkie. And saving information was my heroine.
As a naturally curious person, I love to learn. Constantly. And one of my problems was being on a constant treadmill to save information. As a result, I was clogging my note-taking apps with information I barely used. My note-taking apps grew to thousands of notes that I barely used.
Today, I wanted to introduce you to the mind-shift that saved my mental sanity (and made me a better note-taker in the process)
Saving is toxic
My operating system for years looked like this: I encountered something interesting, and then what? I saved it.
The reason? Well, we all know the reason.
It’s because this specific snippet of information might be useful in the future!
This is the lie we tell ourselves.
After amassing a library of notes, I found that the supposedly useful information wasn’t that useful. In fact, I started to realize that saving was nothing else than a stupid dopamine addition. I had this good feeling when I was merely saving. It gave me a sense of progress. I knew that since all the information was in a safe place, I could retrieve it on demand. It was a relieving shot.
It flushed my short-term memory and kept me on the treadmill to earn (and save) even more.
Saving is not only tempting, but it’s a toxic behavior because it keeps you on the treadmill to gather more.
Saving makes you a selfish jerk
This is a tough one.
You don’t grow and don’t become smarter by clipping and saving information. Information only becomes valuable when it helps you create something in the real world. Yet, most people collect information and don’t make any use of it.
Here’s a saying that I borrowed from old-school monotheist scholars:
“Money grows by saving, but knowledge grows by sharing”.
