I can’t believe I’m actually saying this, but my parents were right about video games ruining my brain.
Ironically, social media is ruining theirs, and yours.
When you send a message, someone reads it, then they send you something back. Not only are you adding to the shallow content that person has to respond to, but you are guaranteeing they will do the same thing to you.
Social media is a game-ified and simplified version of social interaction. We love stories. With social media, we’ll only listen to stories that are around 0:30. Because that timeframe is so short, the only things that can communicate that quickly are emotional pornography, fear, and real pornography.
People read and enjoy content without actually clicking a button to show that they did (❤.) Yet, we assume the opposite, lowering our self esteem by judging our social worth on that terrible metric every day. We even unconsciously change our behaviors based on ephemeral metrics. This goes out to you Instagram cute-face-making-girls.
There’s a really exciting story from a book I like. The CEO needed money for more filing cabinets to store the increasing amount of paperwork the company had to deal with (they needed more money to buy more stuff.) They couldn’t find money in the budget (they didn’t have the money.) Then, the CEO asked, “Why do we keep all of this paperwork around anyways? ” (He said, why do we need more stuff.) He reduced the paperwork to the essentials. What was left only filled one cabinet. Then they sold the leftover cabinets (they sold the stuff they didn’t need for money, instead of paying for more stuff they didn’t need.)
My greatest disappointment with American culture is that most of it has been co-opted by marketing companies. Our culture is an over-simplified, emotionalized appeal to “common sense.” Some folk stories are completely fabricated to give you an emotional attachment to an idea. This idea is then used to create tension which the product being advertised resolves.
The worst part is that everyone I’ve ever met says “Yeah, but I hate marketing and it doesn’t work on me.” Marketing’s most insidious victory is that the logic it uses is not cerebral. It’s emotional. Next time you see any kind of product placement, take a moment to note your emotional experience, not your logical experience.
This is the greatest failure of the great American economy. We over-produce so we can afford to consume as much as we are expected or entitled to. Consumption is used to relieve stress. Most people don’t notice this, because the day to day consumption choices are unnoticeable small things, like buying a bag of cookies on display in the grocery store, because “yum cookies.” You know you didn’t want those cookies, or the guilt that comes with eating the whole bag at once.
Okay, but why are you talking about sociology when you said you were going to talk about jobs?
Being part of a consumer culture means that your life is full of clutter that was accumulated due to a series of snap decisions. Part of becoming more productive is clearing the clutter.
Most of the progress I’ve made the past few weeks is because I’ve increased my ability to be focused, and my ability to spend time thinking deeply about things I normally would have glazed over. A majority of that focus came quickly when I used less digital devices and social media. Another part of that focus came from using my newfound time to write about my goals, why I had them, at what progress I was making.
I have these moments where I hop on the computer and 30 minutes later, I’m watching cat videos. I look at 5 tabs I currently have open, realize that none of them are actually interesting to me and can’t remember why I jumped on the computer in the first place. Those moments make me happy that I spend most of my day offline.
Because I’m using digital devices as little as possible, I have to plan how I use them. I initially feared I couldn’t to do it. There were so many people I’d have to talk to, and job boards I’d have to be attend to 24/7.
The answer to that fear was no. A fair amount of job applicants don’t accurately respond to the requirements or duties put forth on a job listing. I could get a leg up on the competition by focusing on accurately responding to a job posting.
Job postings are really fucking boring. They suck to read and they all look the same, even though the words on them are completely different and should be treated differently.
I would read through them and think “The skills I have kind of match what they’re looking for.” I’d write a cover letter that explained me a little bit, and then expect the HR manager to connect the dots.
Of course I got a bunch of rejections.
Less is more.
Instead of spending all day on the internet, I could spend an hour or two identifying jobs that looked like they were worth applying to. I could print out the listings I chose, and read them at a cafe. Instead of expecting HR managers to foot the extra work of “connecting the dots,” I identified jobs that were actually interesting to me, and made sure the information I gave them matched what they were asking for.
Now that I was focused on interesting jobs instead of any job. I was forced to think about what mattered to me. Was it in a city I actually wanted to move to? Were the duties something I could do or learn to do, or were they way outside of my skillset? Were they something I would enjoy? Was the organization interesting enough that I would take a less interesting job, just to be exposed to the environment?
Some boring jobs became interesting the more I read about them.
I put each statement the job posting had into a list. I wrote about any personal experiences or skills that connected with what they were looking for.
Through this writing, I learned I actually do have a lot of experiences and capabilities I wasn’t initially aware of. I was also taking the application more seriously. Both of these things were a huge boost to my self-confidence, which is nice and will help when I actually show up for an interview.
This week, the course I’m going through, asked me to take a reading hiatus. My entire week would be spent sitting around in my room being bored until I could come up with something to do. I literally freaked out. It’s impossible to apply for jobs without reading. Most people communicate using text or email. I already don’t use the internet very much. How the hell was I going to get anything done?
I realized I had two goals: music, and job applications. I picked four jobs I wanted to focus on this week. I printed them out. The only reading I’ve been doing is the essays, my resume, and those four posting. I did binge and watch a few episodes of Narcos. I’ve also been checking email once or twice a day so I can schedule networking events. But, I realized that there were about 3–4 hours this entire week that I really needed to be reading (the job requirements,) and the rest could be spent writing and editing, or finding interesting ways to spend my time.
Before I did this I thought “When I have more free time, I will use it to get more stuff done.” What I learned was, “When I have more free time, I get bored, and then start doing something that either seems fun or seems important.” I learned that I wasn’t doing enough fun stuff. Sometimes, the fun stuff is learning and progress in disguise. I also learned why I cared about the “important” stuff I was doing.
It was kind of crazy to go from thinking that I would fail without reading all week, to realizing that I maybe needed about half a day of it per week max.
The irony of clearing out inputs — television, social media, phones, even books — is that it feels like you will get so much less work done. But, you end up getting more important work done. You do less work in general, but the “work” you aren’t doing is garbage like over-communication, over-purchasing, and covering for inefficiencies you’ve created by being “busy.” If you turn all of that off and think about why you do what you do, you may realize that more than 50% of the “work” you do is unnecessary.
The second part is important. You have to write about why you do things.
Right now, It’s a rare feat to read something longer than four minutes.
The more choice you introduce into your life, the more you will have to respond to, and the less time you will have to respond to all of it.
