In the spirit of seeking to disconfirm hypotheses, if you want evidence that waldenponding might be a good thing, look no further than Sarah Constantin’s writing. It’s been really good for a few years and largely since she quit social media.
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I think the lesson there is: waldenponding can be great if you have identified a specific intellectual mission to pursue. You’re not so much retreating from social media as going on a mission that requires unsociable deep focus.
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This is NOT “deep work” in Cal Newport sense. That’s trying to artificially force the effects of genuine attention locks. It’s the difference between test prep and being in the grips of inspiration. Sarah’s stuff has tell tale signs of inspiration. Almost every third post is A+.
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If you haven’t written consistently for years, you have no idea what a solid streak that is and how rare those are. A yield of 33% A+ posts is a very rich vein of inspired work.
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That said, waldenponding is neither sufficient, nor necessary for hitting such a deep focus streak of inspiration. But it is possible one strong factor for people who get inspired.
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This is Sarah’s 2017 post on why she quit. I think her output since then is proof that a) it worked for her and b) an existence proof that there is a genuinely interesting subset in the big pile of such quittings
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