The pressure to produce, the devaluation of research, and naming your giants
Thereās a pressure to produce in the Personal Knowledge Management / Tools for Thought field.
For example, Tiago Forteās āCODEā structure ā Capture, Organise, Distill, Express ā emphasises the importance of producing as an end goal. He writes in Building a Second Brain, āWhat is the point of knowledge if it doesnāt help anyone or produce anything?ā1 Similarly, Sƶnke Ahrens in How to Take Smart Notes writes, āAn idea kept private is as good as one you never had.ā2
I disagree with the concept that knowledge is worthless unless it has an application; after all, you can learn things for the sheer hell of it, and a solid 75% of my knowledge falls into the category of āI enjoyed learning it and now itās fun trivia nobody else is interested inā. Maybe one day itāll be useful, but it probably wonāt.
It's made me wonder, however, why it is that I disagree with this message in a more broader sense. Over the past few months I've been mulling over this, and this post is the end result (ironically).
Research is hard and time-intensive, but we should still do it properly
I sometimes think that people should have spent a little longer researching a subject before writing about it. Not to pick on Tiago, but one of the most glaring examples for me was the brief section in BASB referring to commonplace books, starting on page 19. It was poor, to put it bluntly, and lacked understanding of the historical subject. A little more research would have made a significant difference. Whilst it didnāt ruin the book by any means, it did make me more skeptical about what I then read.
I fell into a similar trap myself when I succumbed to the internalised pressure to keep up a regular blogging pattern and posted Leonardo Syndrome before Iād finished reading Walter Issacsonās biography on him; it transpires there were a few aspects of his life and works Iād misunderstood due to going solely on Peter Burkeās book and a handful of articles. A few more weeks of research and the post would have been stronger for it.
This is a major risk in the drive to produce ā people skim lightly over the research, as proper researching is hard and invisible, whereas production is visible and laudable. In a world where we fear the Collectorās Fallacy and promote Information Diets, spending time reading and researching can seem a dangerous thing.
Yet itās the meat on the bones for any product.
āStudies showā¦ā
Iāve regularly mentioned on twitter how much I loathe people quoting or telling anecdotes without sources ā āBenjamin Franklin once saidā¦ā ā or, worse, making claims that āstudies showā. How is somebody meant to use your work as a springboard to go off and learn more things themselves? Iāve spent a depressingly large amount of time googling, trying to find the original sources for things mentioned in articles or youtube videos. All too often I come up short, or find that the context is different or itās actually a myth in the first place.
As a result, I now check for references, links, citations, further reading, bibliographies etc before I settle down to read anything. If I can see that the article is densely populated with quotes, anecdotes, mentions of āstudiesā ā but thereās a shocking lack of sources ā then I close it without reading it.3 If the youtube video is an hour long but has no links or references in the description/a pinned comment, I wonāt watch.4
Sorry, but Iām not wasting my time with that.
I think thereās two reasons people skimp on references.
- They didnāt note them down.
- They want to look like they have something original to say, rather than rehashing other peopleās work.
The truth is that we are all just rehashing other peopleās work, to a greater or lesser degree, and adding our own commentary to the mix. Thereās a reason the phrase āstanding on the shoulders of giantsā5 is so common and important in academia. The important thing to remember is that youāre standing on a different selection of giants to another person, and consequently youāll have a different perspective. Donāt be afraid to name your giants.
A voice of authority
One of the problems is that when somebody produces an article, youtube documentary, or a book (especially a book!), there is an inherent sense of authority to it. Misinformation is a dangerous thing, as Iām sure most of us would agree.
Certainly there is a risk that a dense-peppering of references can make a work seem more authoritative than it actually is. You can overwhelm somebody with so many references that they assume that your sources are high quality and youāre representing them correctly ā thereās too many for them to check. They let down their guard and assume you know what youāre talking about.
This is a risk, certainly, but itās one that should stand up to scrutiny. Youāre āshowing your workings outā, in a way. Somebody can go away and check your sources and, in an ideal world where they want to know more about the subject, they will.
Adding to information overload
āInformation overloadā is a whole different subject ā for not just one but multiple blog posts as a starting point ā but itās a valid consideration when it comes to production of content.
I think there is one question content creators should ask themselves:
Does the value of this justify adding yet another thing into the info-mire for people to have to wade through?
We talk about needing information diets, curating what we consume, selecting for quality over quantity ā and yet the cultural encouragement is to produce, produce, produce. Why? There are valid reasons, which Iāll cover next, but as a general rule the motivation seems to be production as an end in itself.
So why and when to produce?
My stance in this post so far might seem quite anti-production. Yet Iām writing this blog, arenāt I?
Quite simply it helps me to clarify my thoughts, and to test how effective and comprehensive my note-taking has been.
Dann Berg wrote a blogpost that really clicked for me. All of it was good, although heās yet another to talk about input/output ratios, but one paragraph stood out:
āWriting helps pinpoint the exact weaknesses in your understanding of a concept. Start writing and youāll quickly discover which parts of a topic you donāt know as well as you thought you did.ā
Similarly, in Writing to Learn, William Zinsser succinctly states:
āWriting is thinking on paper. Anyone who thinks clearly should be able to write clearly ā about any subject at all.ā6
I currently have seven blog drafts sat waiting to be finished or at least significantly reworked. Several of them I started writing with an idea but wildly insufficient research. Those topics arenāt the main focus of my current research, however, so theyāre on the backburner. Others I started writing only to realise I canāt articulate the ideas properly yet, so need to digest the content a little longer before I rework them.
This could be done in private, though, so why do I need to publish it on the internet?
This is where Iām a little selfish. I love teaching people and sharing with other people the interesting new things that Iāve learnt. At work I have the reputation of āthe one who writes and shares how-to guidesā. My desire for this blog is for people to think, āHuh, thatās interesting.ā Maybe to then mention it as trivia to a friend at some point in the future.
Trinkets of knowledge, if you will.
I donāt need to change the world. I donāt need to revolutionise anything. I donāt need to monetise anything. I have no intention of setting up a course or patreon. I just want to share a little part of the joy I find in learning for the sake of it, and to be a voice that encourages that approach to knowledge. I think that justifies adding more content to the world, but I may be horrifically wrong!
Conclusions
- You can research and learn for the pleasure of it. Production is not the only good.
- Donāt skimp on the research to rush the production.
- Name your giants and cite your damn references.
- Write because it aids in clarity of thought.
- Share if you think it adds value to others.
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Naming my giants
Tiago Forte, Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organise Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential (Profile Books, 2022), p. 42ā47. Sidenote: the etymology of āproductivityā in the footnote for this quote is incorrect. (For once, my Latin degree is useful!)ā©
S. Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking (Sƶnke Ahrens, 2022), p. 46. I agree with the overwhelming majority of what Sƶnke writes in this book, but this is the one thing that made me raise my eyebrow doubtfully.ā©
Ryan Holiday and Robert Greene are eternal frustrations of mine. Their books are filled with interesting anecdotes and they have lengthy bibliographies, but rarely do they link the two. I want book and page references, damn it!ā©
The one exception to this is content from History Hit and associated channels since theyāre, yāknow, produced by verified historians.ā©
The specific phrase is from Isaac Newton, āLetter to Robert Hooke, 1675ā, 5 February 1675 https://digitallibrary.hsp.org/index.php/Detail/objects/9792 [accessed 16 October 2022]; the concept pre-dates Newton, however.ā©
William Zinsser, Writing to Learn: How to Write - and Think - Clearly About Any Subject at All (New York: Harper Paperbacks, 2013), p. 12.ā©