Hey there —

Are you choosing what you feed your brain — or letting the algorithms do it for you? 🤖

Sure, it’s convenient that apps like Instagram and TikTok push us content. But when’s the last time you got off the feed to follow your own curiosities? 🧐

While popular content may entertain us, it only scratches the surface of our unique interests. It’s through stumbling on weird and niche information that we spark creative thinking, find our people, and expand our worldview.

Like how an overheard conversation about a neighborhood “haunted” house leads you to join a local ghost-hunting club and, before you know it, you’re spending the weekend bravely (stupidly?) exploring abandoned houses. 👻

But if we’re going to follow our curiosity, we first have to deviate from the recommended. Here’s how writer Clive Thompson describes the idea of “rewilding” your attention:

“If you want to have wilder, curiouser thoughts, you have to avoid the industrial monocropping of big-tech feeds. You want an intellectual forest, overgrown with mushrooms and towering weeds and a massive dead log where a family of raccoons has taken up residence.” 🌳 🦝

So how exactly do we “rewild” our attention?

Well, the internet is a smorgasbord of weirdness perfect for going down the rabbit hole.

You can start off by trying Feedly, an app that organizes your hand-selected sources. There’s Marginalia, a website that helps you find interesting, text-heavy websites you didn’t know existed. Or try our personal favorite — this subterranean Reddit Map.

And you can change your content diet offline, too:

📚Pick up a random book at your local bookshop. (In this case, feel free to judge by the most interesting cover!)

📱Ditch your phone, go for a walk, and try to observe new things in your neighborhood.

👯‍♀️Chat with a pal and ask them offbeat questions (like if they think Bigfoot is real).

This isn’t to say the algorithm doesn’t ever serve us good stuff. But it’s a reminder that not everything that’s popular online is also valuable.

So instead of mindlessly consuming, curate your content diet to your definition of interesting (not an algorithm’s) and get to exploring. 🚀

When you keep learning instead of taking action

by Alexander Heyne

It was Alexander Heyne’s fifth day without food in the Saharan desert. 🏜

No, Heyne wasn’t stranded. He had voluntarily committed himself to solitude so he could experience silence and push the boundaries of his mind.

His isolation then brought on a striking revelation: “The utility of knowledge rests only in its application.”

Heyne breaks down his epiphany in this pithy and motivating read.

Read the article →

How to use block scheduling to revamp your workflow

by Kenneth R. Rosen

Parkinson’s Law states, “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”

In other words, your task will take as long as its deadline. 🤷

It’s not actually this simple, but the principle remains: allotting a limited amount of time to a specific task promotes efficiency. And block scheduling can be a great way to get started.

Check out this article for an overview of the four most common block scheduling methods and find a technique that works for you.

Read the thread →

10 Fast Fingers

by Christian Strang

Can you beat our score of 91 words per minute? 🤨

This nifty little website lets you determine if you’re a typing wizard. You can try different typing practices or even create your own typing test!

It’s a solid way to build up those typing skills (and engage in some friendly competition 😉).

Listen to the sounds →

Written by Alice Lemée

Edited by Matt D'Avella & Kerstin Sheppard