Summary: The ability to maintain an engaged, critical and efficient attention is crucial if you want to achieve your goals. Casually browsing information, TRP included, is a waste of your time.

Body:

I’m focusing on not only the clickbait, sensationalised style of writing that has been circulating here recently, but also to the idea that TRP is something to be read regularly out of habit. People seem to be catching on to this idea. I decided to write about it for my first post.

The difference between passive and active attention

Being active is important if you want to achieve anything. It is especially important when it comes to the processing of information because this is something that takes up a lot of our time. Whatever your occupation, you need to be able to efficiently sort through the shit and find what you need. Part of the success of this comes from being effective with your attention. This active mindset can also positively influence your behaviour as a whole:

“There is now little question that how one uses one’s attention, moment to moment, largely determines what kind of person one becomes. Our minds—and lives—are largely shaped by how we use them.” – Sam Harris, Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality without Religion

An active mindset doesn’t capitulate to the frailty of ones attention; it has a long-term timeline. It is critical, evaluative and efficient. The end goal involves some sort of creation, whether it be the understanding of a complex idea, the ability to construct a persuasive argument, or the realisation of something (e.g. an article, a piece of music, etc..). It’s hard because you have to turn on your brain.

A passive mindset is consumption without engagement. You expend very little energy. It’s easy, comfortable. While you might be able to appreciate something on a rudimentary level, the progression stops there. Nothing is created.

Time for an analogy: say you are studying for a history essay. For the sake of interest and example, the topic is whether or not the Marco Polo Bridge Incident of July 1937 occurred organically, or was constructed as a pretext for the invasion of China by the Japanese (if you’re interested, read about it).

  • Active study: Read and digest multiple sources, understand complex and diverging ideas, synthesise information into key arguments and facts, construct an essay plan with a unique and interesting thesis.

  • Passive study: Read multiple sources, take basic notes (most of which aren’t in your own words), summarise, write a boring essay that sits on the fence.

I don’t need to tell you which essay will score higher.

So, the takeaway is that if you want to create/learn something, you need to expend some energy to create something of your own . Moreover, the basic economics of resource allocation demand that you do so efficiently, a precursor to which is an engaged mindset. In most cases, action and experience through creating will be more productive than more information.

Serving your attention rather than your brain

This is where clickbait and sensationalised information comes into play. This stuff is designed to grasp our attention; that’s it. You see it everywhere. Casey Neistat, the mainstream media, certain writers of TRP. Some tactics that are used: - Numbers and lists
- Manufactured emotions and characters
- Storytelling
- Providing “The Secret” and the “Wow Factor”
- Exploiting curiosity and desire
- New, cool thing + desirable outcome = reader curiosity

It’s no surprise that this stuff is effective. Most of the time, it is used to hide a lack of substance. Being aware makes you more critical of what you read. This may allow you to function more actively and “wake up”, as I described earlier. Hopefully this analysis can provide you with something useful, or give cause to some reflection.

Distractions

Concerning the sensationalised writing within TRP itself, I contend that this stuff catches on because of two reasons.

First, we all want to fill the gap of the perceived discrepancy between what we know and what we don’t know. This is called the information gap theory. It’s a simple concept but you can read about it here and here.

Secondly, we all have one thing in common; we want to improve ourselves, and we came here seeking information on how to do so. More information means more results, right babe?

Combine these two concepts and you get a passive and mindlessly habitual reading of TRP that serves little purpose. It’s like you are reading your history textbook, hoping that you will get better at writing history essays. No substantial learning takes place and you condition yourself to only pay attention to that which is designed to “grab” your attention. That is a bad cycle!

The glaringly obvious point, and its an important one, is that there is nothing intrinsically complicated about the process of self-improvement/game. The vast majority of successful men created their own paths using their own brains. There are excellent, pragmatic posts within the TRP canon that illustrate this. An example of one of them is a post titled "Focus on you first" by /u/Archwinger.

If you wanted it badly enough, and TRP didn’t exist, you would probably have figured it out by yourself. Read until you get it, and then stop. Don’t browse TRP in your spare time, as this hinders your progress; do it once a week. Focus your attention elsewhere and get after your goals.

Vicarious living

One final point. Focusing on producing and creating requires you have confidence in your own way of doing things. Resist the temptation to be inspired by and to follow others to such an extent that you feel a sense of true satisfaction from their success, to the detriment of your own (e.g. watching youtube videos of public speakers). This is the classic thing to do when reading FRs or success stories. Live victoriously through yourself, rather than vicariously through others.

Lessons learned:
- Lesson #1: Have an active mindset. Don't allow yourself to aimlessly wander. Focus on creating rather than consuming. Be critical.
- Lesson #2: Your attention is your resource; be efficient with it. There are better things to be doing than reading some clickbait nonsense. Save TRP for once a week.
- Lesson #3: Passivity is linked to vicarious living. Both of these things do nothing for your goals. Be satisfied through your own experience, not through others.

There was an interesting level of cognitive dissonance writing this. I wanted this post to grab people's attention, just not too much.