A wise reader had this to say about last week’s post on media negativity:
“It’s for sure true as could be that the media has strong incentives to cover bad news, but I feel like what is often lost is what those incentives actually are and who they come from (us readers). And in an already struggling industry where layoffs are rampant, this strong incentive is probably much more of a stick than a carrot. Readers/viewers are WAY more into bad news than good news, which means publications/channels get more ad $$ and subscription $$ for covering it. Clicks are currency. We (readers) click doomsday-esq articles at higher rates, share them with larger audiences, and engage with them more fervidly.”
She makes a great point that I brushed over: We’re responsible for the perverse incentives that lead to more negative news than positive. We have a masochistic obsession with bad news and the media preys on that. As for who should be held responsible? I don’t know. The billions of individuals pounding the share button? Or the companies monetizing that weakness like a casino. It’s Robinhood all over again.
140 Big Macs
It’s hard to acknowledge the passing of time while it’s happening. There’s too much going on to constantly remind yourself: “Another Friday come and gone. That makes six so far this year.”
And on a certain level, we all know we’d go crazy if we did that. It’s important to be intentional in life, but I’m fairly sure that if you count every single day you’ll make yourself very, very unhappy. You have to let some number of days just slip on by.
But eventually something happens that puts a giant X on the calendar and reminds you exactly how much time has passed. The obvious stuff does this, like birthdays and holidays, but so do completely random events, like the release of Outer Banks Season Two.
Anne and I first watched Outer Banks in the Spring of 2020. Peak COVID. We binged it in a single day that I’d like to think was rainy and dark, but was probably beautifully sunny. We spent the day inside regardless of the weather, rising from the couch only to get delivery food and use the bathroom. It was awesome. The show is ten hours of pure, illogically scripted adrenaline that deserves to be watched in one straight shot.
But now the second season is out and we’re doing it all over again! I’m reminded that a lot of time has passed since the last time we binged. Anne and I have spent an entire year engaged. I have a new job. Friends have moved cities or are moving back to this one. We’re somehow closer to 2022 than we are to 2020. John B and Sarah have been lost at sea!
At a certain point time starts to feel very weighty. I remember this feeling vividly when I realized that my senior year of high school was really a series of lasts. Last soccer season. Last lacrosse season. Last summer. Until then, I’d been fine with the passage of time, but once I started quantifying everything it got a bit scary. There’s a reason why Click is such a depressing movie, and it’s not Adam Sandler past his prime: Life moves fast enough as it is, so please, please don’t speed it up on us.
Tim Urban writes about the quantification of time on his site, Wait But Why?:
“I probably eat pizza about once a month, so I’ve got about 700 more chances to eat pizza. I have an even brighter future with dumplings. I have Chinese food about twice a month and I tend to make sure six dumplings occurs each time, so I have a f*ckton of dumplings to look forward to.”
That’s a silly example, but when you break things down like this, it’s crazy how small the numbers become. I’ll eat McDonalds about 140 more times and celebrate about 70 more Christmases (at best). Based on the number of times I’ve been in the last decade, I’ll ski about half that much. You get the point, but here’s an awesome video that dives into this further.
All of which is kind of overwhelming! Numbers are finite, whereas “the rest of my life,” isn’t.
I bring this up not because I recommend you start counting your Big Macs. I guarantee you’ll never have enough. Instead, this quantification can be used to reflect on how much of the important stuff you have left, and to be intentional about maximizing it. The first time I heard someone do this calculus – “one visit per year times roughly thirty more years equals 30 more visits with my parents” – I was stunned. I had never thought about it that way. But once I had, it was hard to unsee it, and decisions that reduced that number became much more difficult.
Tim’s suggestions for what to do in the face of this realization are pretty simple:
1) Living in the same place as the people you love matters. I probably have 10X the time left with the people who live in my city as I do with the people who live somewhere else.
2) Priorities matter. Your remaining face time with any person depends largely on where that person falls on your list of life priorities. Make sure this list is set by you—not by unconscious inertia.
3) Quality time matters. If you’re in your last 10% of time with someone you love, keep that fact in the front of your mind when you’re with them and treat that time as what it actually is: precious.
Living in the same city as your loved ones is important, but it’s not always an option. Quality time, on the other hand, is. I doubt I’m the only one who finds their attention wandering while on phone calls with family. It’s only natural when you have the entire internet at your fingertips and multiple screens through which to access it. But that time is precious. It’s finite, no matter how many phone calls you think you have left (1 per week times 52 weeks times 30 years equals ~1,500 phone calls). In person time even more so.
It’s not always easy to make decisions with this in mind, but it seems important.
In other news, my favorite street artist painted an old Toyota Solara and it is parked on the street in Brooklyn Heights:
And finally, most important for last, Anne and I are getting married next weekend!
– Emmett
What I’m Reading:
Collecting One Book – Lauren Oster, New York Times
“Two years ago, I met a French tourist who explained that when he visits a new city, he makes a beeline for a local shop and buys every edition of George Orwell’s “1984” he can find.”