We feel addicted to social media. We know we lose a sense of time, get emotional, and use it whenever we want to escape the task in front of us for a second (or 30 minutes).
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This instant entertainment comes at a high cost, especially in the long term. Our attention span shrinks; we are constantly distracted and don't have enough time to memorize, reflect and digest the information. It's like filling a leaky bucket with a fire hose.
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Dopamine hits from social media are very short. And soon, we need more. This makes us increasingly distractable. Every notification breaks our stream of thought.
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The short-term incentive of consuming information is much higher than the one of reflecting, connecting, and making sense of all the information. This is a big loss because it might result in understanding, knowledge, and wisdom. And who wouldn't like to grow wise?
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“No man got ever wise by chance.” - Aristotle
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Turning away from consuming social media is something few people want for the stated reasons. So let's see how to live with it.
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How can we increase the chances that the information consumed has a longer-lasting effect on our lives? How can we make all these hours spent reading for entertainment compound and pay off later?
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At Napkin, we build a system making it easy to choose what to remember and yet see connections to our previous notes and ideas. Collect ideas whether you read them digitally or on paper, and the app shows you links to previously collected notes automatically.
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That way, we can embrace the entertainment. Still, whenever we come across a quote that resonates strongly with us, we collect it without further interruption of the fun part. Napkin shows connections between new notes and previously collected ones.
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First beta users have adopted this new behavior: Browsing their curated idea network instead of scrolling through a social feed for the 5th time that day. It's inspiring to see notes collected by your former self instead of an algorithm optimized for advertisement.
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The most exciting thing is that seeing these connections leads to new insights and ideas, and that gets you a dopamine kick as well, but a much more fulfilling one.
