My daughter was looking at buying a Kindle for her overseas trip, which seemed a waste to me since I had a bunch of e-readers scattered around my office. I gave her my Oasis, the waterproof one. But having done that, I decided I’d replace it with a new Scribe, Amazon’s move into the digital notebook market.
It’s not as powerful a note-taker as the reMarkable2 tablet I was looking at a while ago, but its price was reduced by 40% for Prime Day, so that was a pretty good argument in favour of fattening up Jeff Bezos’s retirement account.
It took a while to get here, but it finally arrived this morning, just in time for me to enjoy Steve Stirling’s latest on it.
I’d been doing a lot of whatever the opposite of doomscrolling is since the US election and the Russian invasion of Ukraine flipped narrative directions recently, and while it’s been fun it hasn’t been the most productive use of my time. So I forced myself to stay away from the news feeds and socials the other day, instead leaning into my copy of Tom Holland’s Pax, reading it in prep for Steve’s To Turn the Tide.
I felt SO much better than I would have after a couple of hours of scrolling that Imma try a little experiment for a while and every time I get a craving for a social media feed, I’m gonna read a book chapter instead. See how I feel after a couple of days.
Question for Drew and Elana: Have either of you noticed subjective differences in your emotional or psychological state after swapping out the scroll for long form reading. I find myself feel much less anxious.
I went away to think about this and just realised I hadn't come back to reply.
I'm probably an outlier example; yes I've found a material change in my psychological state, but I think there's more to it than abandoning doomscrolling. Being a VP and team leader of the comms team for a political party means that I mostly doomscrolled with intent - keeping an eye on the political pulse, as it were, and tracking stuff that we would either re-post, add commentary to in regard to our policy platforms, or in the case of research, pass on to the policy team if it was relevant to our interests, so I didn't really have the existential despair that others may have experienced with the doomscrolling. Mostly I was mining it for content or context, so while I got as angry or frustrated as anyone else, I was able to channel a lot of that into some kind of action on behalf of the Aus Democrats.
During the height of the pandemic and the collective desire to punt the Morrison government as far from office as we could, I lost the ability to read fiction for about 18 months, I was just endlessly consuming news from various sources (mostly independent media). Now that I'm back to reading fiction at a rate equivalent to my pre-pandemic consumption I feel less anxious, although for a while there I had guilt and anxiety about frivolously reading fiction and not doing politics.
I think also the post 2022 political environment has helped; while the Albanese government is managing to not be the Morrison government (thank the old gods and the new) it's also managing to irritate and disappoint everyone who wanted them to be better than the Morrison government, yet we're also faced with no alternatives. It's slowly dawning on the politically engaged that we need to make the Albanese government better, since Dutton's busy making it clear that he'll somehow manage to be even worse than Morrison if he ever becomes PM. Hence the talk of minority government and the rise of independents in Labor seats, but that's a discussion for a different day.
My biggest problem hasn't been my mental health so much as it has been chronic self inflicted sleep deprivation, which I've still not managed to solve, but I'm enjoying the cause of the sleep deprivation a great deal more, which is probably helping in the mental health stakes.
The one benefit of being chronically online for political reasons has been to bear witness to the response, first to Kamala Harris' ascension as the US Democrats' presidential nominee, and then to her selection of Tim Walz as her running mate. The memes alone have been phenomenal, never mind the genuine outpouring of joy, hope and mobilisation of various interests in support of her. And the epic, EPIC schadenfreude aimed at Trump and Vance (also bearing witness to the absolute annihilation of Vance as a credible VP pick and successor to Trump because some Twitter account with 1700 followers shitposted about Vance and a couch and probably changed the course of history). People are so invested they've been talking about hopescrolling instead of doomscrolling; there's even a hashtag for it as the whole world encourages the US to not embrace the darkest timeline.
I've now strayed very far form the original question but I'm going to get Jason back on the Keep the Bastards Honest podcast to talk about all things US politics once the DNC is done, I'll let y'all know when it drops 😊
This is how I went from "I need to stop shouting at the TV and do something more constructive." in 2018 to running for the Senate in 2022. The whole making the world a better place impulse is a slippery slope.
I swapped out TV/streaming as well, so that might bias the results, but, anyway.
I feel like I'm more productive and more creative; I feel like I have more time, even if the time I have is diverted to reading/writing/thinking. My anxiety levels have been controlled by some top-notch legal chemicals that give me an almost Zen outlook at times. Has the reading helped? I can honestly say it hasn't hurt. I don't feel anywhere near as anxious as I was, say, ten years ago, and panic attacks have dropped off noticeably.
I do read a hell of a lot now, though. I have tried to read a book a week and I think over the last four years it's been 60ish, 80ish, 36ish (I had some physical pain I was dealing with and those kinds of painkillers messed with me) and this year I'm up to 68 books and I'm reading three as we speak.
Creatively I've started writing a collection of short stories (or two collections, depending on how you look at it), which I can blame on reading some good short story collections in January; hope to have one bunch finished by my birthday (which is December, so I have left a decent amount of time for drafts, rewrites, swearing, and the other necessities of the process). Hell, I might even see if anyone is interested in publishing said writing down the track.
I switched to trying to read a chapter of a book instead of doomscrolling before I retired for the night in an attempt to stop myself from staying up too late and not getting enough sleep. I'm still staying up too late and not getting enough sleep, but at least I'm getting through several chapters of a book instead now...
i wonder if the doom scroll will set the human species back a few decades on the arc of technological advancement/evolution . . . or maybe flatten the curve out a bit.
I recaught the reading fever during the lockdowns and haven't looked back. I don't know if it works to reduce anxiety in my case (a lack of control for the experiment) but it has meant I have discovered a bunch of great new writers and stories.
I'm a big fan of my Scribe, although I do suggest that people asking about it also know about the Remarkable and other options.
To be immodest about it, it massively improved my work.
I also point out to people that our employer supplies paper for free, but probably won't stump up a few hundred dollarbucks for an electronic notebook, so think carefully about whether they want to make that investment themselves.
Notepads are linear, chronological by nature. I found that being able to order my notes into folders reflecting the topic, and label each note itself, means I can easily find stuff later on.
Finding stuff later sounds very useful. My notes (on paper) are write-only.
When I'm being sensible, I write myself email messages. They're searchable, archived, self-documenting (time-stamp and subject line) and universally accessible. What's not to like? What's not to like is that swiping them in from a phone is a lousy experience... Only downside is that inexplicably I have found email search to be getting worse over time.
'Imma try a little experiment for a while and every time I get a craving for a social media feed, I’m gonna read a book chapter instead.'
I've been doing something similar (but with a physical book because, well, I am surrounded by them) - I even have a book with nice short chapters that make the 'just one more chapter' urge not too time intensive. That said, I'm now a 1/3 of the way through the book I started reading yesterday (a new book (2024 new) that I bought after I read one of her older books and saw there was a new one out)...
I’ve had one for about a month and I love it. I use it to write out meeting notes for my VERY IMPORTANT work meetings, and my wife and I do the Washington Post Sunday crossword on it every weekend.
You just download the crossword puzzle on your iPhone and send it to your kindle. Works perfectly.
I found ditching twitter stopped me doomscrolling. I spend some time scrolling through reels/tiktoks/whateverthefucktheyarecalled for lols sometimes. My feed is mostly cat and dog videos and watching the stuff my mates send me. I have been reading a LOT more recently and that has helped.
To Turn The Tide was so good I smashed it in a weekend. On to James S A Corey's new one The Mercy Of Gods.
Question for Drew and Elana: Have either of you noticed subjective differences in your emotional or psychological state after swapping out the scroll for long form reading. I find myself feel much less anxious.
I went away to think about this and just realised I hadn't come back to reply.
I'm probably an outlier example; yes I've found a material change in my psychological state, but I think there's more to it than abandoning doomscrolling. Being a VP and team leader of the comms team for a political party means that I mostly doomscrolled with intent - keeping an eye on the political pulse, as it were, and tracking stuff that we would either re-post, add commentary to in regard to our policy platforms, or in the case of research, pass on to the policy team if it was relevant to our interests, so I didn't really have the existential despair that others may have experienced with the doomscrolling. Mostly I was mining it for content or context, so while I got as angry or frustrated as anyone else, I was able to channel a lot of that into some kind of action on behalf of the Aus Democrats.
During the height of the pandemic and the collective desire to punt the Morrison government as far from office as we could, I lost the ability to read fiction for about 18 months, I was just endlessly consuming news from various sources (mostly independent media). Now that I'm back to reading fiction at a rate equivalent to my pre-pandemic consumption I feel less anxious, although for a while there I had guilt and anxiety about frivolously reading fiction and not doing politics.
I think also the post 2022 political environment has helped; while the Albanese government is managing to not be the Morrison government (thank the old gods and the new) it's also managing to irritate and disappoint everyone who wanted them to be better than the Morrison government, yet we're also faced with no alternatives. It's slowly dawning on the politically engaged that we need to make the Albanese government better, since Dutton's busy making it clear that he'll somehow manage to be even worse than Morrison if he ever becomes PM. Hence the talk of minority government and the rise of independents in Labor seats, but that's a discussion for a different day.
My biggest problem hasn't been my mental health so much as it has been chronic self inflicted sleep deprivation, which I've still not managed to solve, but I'm enjoying the cause of the sleep deprivation a great deal more, which is probably helping in the mental health stakes.
The one benefit of being chronically online for political reasons has been to bear witness to the response, first to Kamala Harris' ascension as the US Democrats' presidential nominee, and then to her selection of Tim Walz as her running mate. The memes alone have been phenomenal, never mind the genuine outpouring of joy, hope and mobilisation of various interests in support of her. And the epic, EPIC schadenfreude aimed at Trump and Vance (also bearing witness to the absolute annihilation of Vance as a credible VP pick and successor to Trump because some Twitter account with 1700 followers shitposted about Vance and a couch and probably changed the course of history). People are so invested they've been talking about hopescrolling instead of doomscrolling; there's even a hashtag for it as the whole world encourages the US to not embrace the darkest timeline.
I've now strayed very far form the original question but I'm going to get Jason back on the Keep the Bastards Honest podcast to talk about all things US politics once the DNC is done, I'll let y'all know when it drops 😊
the ALP says a better world isn't possible, the LNP says a worse one is.
That's really not much to root for, is it?
At least it's better than the current US Christian Nationalists who say that a better world is possible, but it's on the other side of Armageddon.
Clearly, definitions of "better" are personal and consequently varying.
I mean that's one of the problems with choosing the lesser of two evils, you still end up with evil.
This is how I went from "I need to stop shouting at the TV and do something more constructive." in 2018 to running for the Senate in 2022. The whole making the world a better place impulse is a slippery slope.
And the LNP is absolutely committed to proving this hypothesis 😂
I swapped out TV/streaming as well, so that might bias the results, but, anyway.
I feel like I'm more productive and more creative; I feel like I have more time, even if the time I have is diverted to reading/writing/thinking. My anxiety levels have been controlled by some top-notch legal chemicals that give me an almost Zen outlook at times. Has the reading helped? I can honestly say it hasn't hurt. I don't feel anywhere near as anxious as I was, say, ten years ago, and panic attacks have dropped off noticeably.
I do read a hell of a lot now, though. I have tried to read a book a week and I think over the last four years it's been 60ish, 80ish, 36ish (I had some physical pain I was dealing with and those kinds of painkillers messed with me) and this year I'm up to 68 books and I'm reading three as we speak.
Creatively I've started writing a collection of short stories (or two collections, depending on how you look at it), which I can blame on reading some good short story collections in January; hope to have one bunch finished by my birthday (which is December, so I have left a decent amount of time for drafts, rewrites, swearing, and the other necessities of the process). Hell, I might even see if anyone is interested in publishing said writing down the track.
Hmmm. That is quite a ramble.
I switched to trying to read a chapter of a book instead of doomscrolling before I retired for the night in an attempt to stop myself from staying up too late and not getting enough sleep. I'm still staying up too late and not getting enough sleep, but at least I'm getting through several chapters of a book instead now...
i wonder if the doom scroll will set the human species back a few decades on the arc of technological advancement/evolution . . . or maybe flatten the curve out a bit.
I recaught the reading fever during the lockdowns and haven't looked back. I don't know if it works to reduce anxiety in my case (a lack of control for the experiment) but it has meant I have discovered a bunch of great new writers and stories.
I'm a big fan of my Scribe, although I do suggest that people asking about it also know about the Remarkable and other options.
To be immodest about it, it massively improved my work.
I also point out to people that our employer supplies paper for free, but probably won't stump up a few hundred dollarbucks for an electronic notebook, so think carefully about whether they want to make that investment themselves.
How did it improve your work?
Notepads are linear, chronological by nature. I found that being able to order my notes into folders reflecting the topic, and label each note itself, means I can easily find stuff later on.
Finding stuff later sounds very useful. My notes (on paper) are write-only.
When I'm being sensible, I write myself email messages. They're searchable, archived, self-documenting (time-stamp and subject line) and universally accessible. What's not to like? What's not to like is that swiping them in from a phone is a lousy experience... Only downside is that inexplicably I have found email search to be getting worse over time.
'Imma try a little experiment for a while and every time I get a craving for a social media feed, I’m gonna read a book chapter instead.'
I've been doing something similar (but with a physical book because, well, I am surrounded by them) - I even have a book with nice short chapters that make the 'just one more chapter' urge not too time intensive. That said, I'm now a 1/3 of the way through the book I started reading yesterday (a new book (2024 new) that I bought after I read one of her older books and saw there was a new one out)...
I’ve had one for about a month and I love it. I use it to write out meeting notes for my VERY IMPORTANT work meetings, and my wife and I do the Washington Post Sunday crossword on it every weekend.
You just download the crossword puzzle on your iPhone and send it to your kindle. Works perfectly.
I found ditching twitter stopped me doomscrolling. I spend some time scrolling through reels/tiktoks/whateverthefucktheyarecalled for lols sometimes. My feed is mostly cat and dog videos and watching the stuff my mates send me. I have been reading a LOT more recently and that has helped.
To Turn The Tide was so good I smashed it in a weekend. On to James S A Corey's new one The Mercy Of Gods.