Love Your Work

After fourteen rejections, as I outlined on episode 247, I finally landed a BookBub Featured Deal. Once I tallied up my results, I had lost more than $4,000 running the promotion. I'll tell you why, and why I'd still do another BookBub Featured Deal in a heartbeat.

My BookBub Featured Deal Results

• Book: The Heart to Start: Stop Procrastinating & Start Creating
• BookBub Category: Advice and How-To
• Date: Wednesday, June 10, 2020
• List Price: $9.99
• Deal Price: $1.99
• Territory: United States
• BookBub Promotion Fee: $1,008
• Promotion Size: ~1,000,000 subscribers
• Copies Sold: 2,541
• Revenue: $1,841
• Supplemental Ad Spend: $4,847
• Total Profit (Loss): ($4,014)

The breakdown of copies sold (across all countries):

• Amazon: 2,236
• Apple: 204
• Barnes & Noble: 49
• Google: 36
• Kobo: 16
• Total Copies Sold: 2,541

The breakdown of revenue results (across all countries):

• Amazon: $1,462
• Apple: $266
• Barnes & Noble: $59
• Google: $34
• Kobo: $19
• Total Revenue: $1,841

Overall ad spend results, broken down by network:

• BookBub Ads: $1,910
• BookBub Featured Deal: $1,008
• Amazon: $1,761
• Facebook: $1,187
• Instagram influencers: $185
• Total Ad Spend: $6,051

My BookBub Featured Deal made my book a bestseller across several categories

The Heart to Start ranked as high as:

• #136 overall on Amazon

• #1 in Self-Help/Creativity

• #1 in Arts & Photography

• #1 in Entrepreneurship & Small Business

• #6 overall in Self-Help

• #6 overall in Business & Investing

Three reasons my BookBub Featured Deal results were poor (financially)

The three main reasons I lost $4,000 running my BookBub Featured Deal are:

1. I was trying for a bestseller list
2. I poorly allocated advertising spend throughout the promotion
3. I poorly allocated advertising spend amongst platforms

1. I was trying for the WSJ bestseller list

Word on the street is, to qualify for the Wall Street Journal nonfiction ebook best-seller list, you need to sell 3,000–5,000 ebooks in a week, in the U.S. Supposedly you need to sell at least 500 of those copies in a single non-Amazon channel to trigger reporting to the list.

I contemplated not trying for the list and instead reaping what profits I could, but decided to go for it. I felt The Heart to Start was a longshot, but was curious to learn so I could later apply what I learned on my then-upcoming-now-out book, Mind Management, Not Time Management (read about my BookBub Featured New Release results for my new book).

Despite spending more than $6,000 on the promotion, I did not break the 3,000-copy barrier. Here is my sales breakdown for U.S. sales (the above sales are worldwide):

Sales (U.S.)

• Amazon: 2,123
• B&N: 51 (countries unknown)
• Apple: 185
• Kobo: 7
• Google: 29
• Total U.S. Copies Sold: 2,395

As you can see, perhaps harder than selling 3,000 copies overall is selling 500 copies in a non-Amazon channel (for this book in this genre with my audience, anyway).

2. I poorly allocated ad spend throughout the promotion

I broke my ad spend down into three buckets:

• Warm Up: Starting around 10 days before the promotion, I built awareness about my book to "warm up" the audience, so they would act more readily when the deal hit their inboxes.
• During: The day of and a couple days after my promotion, I advertised the discount (where possible).
• Last Day: The final day of the promotion, I advertised the discount, with messaging that it was the last day (where possible).

My ad spend results amongst these three buckets:

• Warm Up: $2,225 (46%)
• During: $1,477 (30%)
• Last Day: $1,145 (24%)
• Total: $4,847

I do not recommend this allocation. Without much time to plan my promotion, I got overly-zealous, and spent way too much early on. By the time I got to the Last Day, I was trigger shy and didn't want to spend more money.

If anything, this should have been reversed. The last day of any promotion will generally get you more bang for your buck. In the future, I plan to spend 50% of budget on the Last Day.

3. I poorly allocated supplemental advertising spend amongst platforms

I ran ads on Amazon, BookBub, and Facebook. My breakdown amongst these channels:

• Amazon Ads: $1,761 (36%)
• BookBub Ads: $1,910 (39%)
• Facebook: $1,177 (24%)
• Total: $4,847

(note, I spent $10 on Instagram ads, which went to Facebook thus the discrepancy from above "Facebook" numbers. I also paid $185 for promotion from Instagram influencers, which is not reflected in this report, for simplicity.)

I do not recommend this allocation. I spent too heavily on Facebook, and I especially did so during the Warm Up phase. I do not normally advertise on Facebook, and don't aspire to build my skills in running Facebook ads.

I already run Amazon Ads regularly, but their terms and platform features make it impossible or impractical to advertise discounts, especially with "Last Day" messaging.

I think you get more bang for your buck on a BookBub Featured Deal by advertising on BookBub itself. Yes, you can target BookBub subscribers on Facebook, but it's more straightforward to advertise on BookBub. Therefore, in the future, I plan to spend 50% of budget on BookBub Ads.

The long-term results of my BookBub Featured Deal

Part of the appeal of a BookBub Featured Deal is not just the sales you make during the promotion. There are also long-term benefits.

Amazon algorithm boost (and increased profits)

Word on the street is, Amazon has 30-day and 90-day "cliffs" on their algorithms. If your book has a big sales spike, you can expect to see a lift in organic sales for 30 days, and a less-pronounced lift that lasts for 90 days. I can tell you that once Seth Godin recommended The Heart to Start on his blog, my sales were lifted permanently.

In the five months before the month of my BookBub Featured Deal, my average monthly profit for The Heart to Start was $511.

In the five months after the month of my BookBub Featured Deal, my average monthly profit for The Heart to Start was $633.

I saw a 24% increase in average monthly profits after my BookBub Featured Deal. It's impossible to say the deal caused my increased profits, but I'm sure it didn't hurt.

New readers

It's fantastic to get a shot of 2,500 new readers in a single week. The effects your book can have on someone can last a lifetime. It's hard to measure the impact new readers can have on your author business, because new readers may buy every new book you publish for decades.

Sales of other formats, or books

BookBub Featured Deals are discounts on ebooks, but readers who like your ebook will sometimes buy other formats. Directly after my deal, I noticed a spike of a few dozen sales of my IngramSpark hardcover version. I suspect readers who liked the book picked up "souvenir" copies. I make more than $8 per book of profit on the hardcover.

It can be worth losing money initially on a BookBub Featured Deal if your book is the first in a series. As a nonfiction author, I don't string together my books into series – at least not as strongly as fiction authors tend to. It's hard for me to say how the promotion affected sales of my other books. I was promoting a new book at the time, too, so there were too many confounding factors.

More reviews

You need decent reviews to get a BookBub Featured Deal, but your deal also brings in a lot of new reviews. When I ran my BookBub Featured Deal, I had 275 Amazon ratings/reviews. After the deal, I quickly gained more reviews. Now, nine months after the promotion, I'm closing in on 500.

Cheaper Amazon Ads

When you make more sales on Amazon, your ads run more. This also usually means you can run your ads more cheaply. As I reported in my June 2020 income report, I had a number of Lockscreen Ads set up on Amazon well before my BookBub Featured Deal. With my 18¢-per-click bid, they weren't running. But once the promotion kicked in, suddenly I was getting cheaper clicks.

More sales on Amazon leads to cheaper ads, which can lead to more sales.

Why would I run another BookBub Featured Deal?

My BookBub Featured Deal wasn't pure gravy like my Kindle Daily Deal, but I would run another in a heartbeat. Why?

Because I've learned through experience that I should have allocated my ad spend better. If I spent ads more wisely on a future book, I may be able to hit that WSJ best-seller list. And if I didn't try for a list at all, I'd be interested to see if I could break even for the promotion – which would surely be profitable in the long-run, thanks to the effects of a sales boost.

Free budget calculator

To better plan my next BookBub Featured Deal, I've created a calculator. Enter your total budget and it helps break down ad spend according to phase of campaign and advertising channel.

Get this calculator free here. No email address required, though if you'd like to get my highly-detailed income reports delivered to your inbox, I do recommend signing up for blog post updates.

Want help with your BookBub Featured Deal? Call me!

If you're planning a BookBub Featured Deal, and would like to discuss it with me, I do consultations. Book a call with me on Clarity or Superpeer (recommended).

The Mind Management, Not Time Management audiobook is here!

Listen to the Mind Management, Not Time Management audiobook free with an Audible trial, or search for the audiobook on your favorite platform.

Thank you for having me on your podcasts!

Thank you for having me on your podcast! Thank you to Trey Kauffman at The Mosaic Life and the team at Domestika for having me as a Comic Sans expert on their Curious Minds podcast.

As always, you can see a full list of podcasts I've been here.

About Your Host, David Kadavy

David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative.

Follow David on:

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Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/bookbub-featured-deal-results/

If you want to succeed in anything creative – whether that's writing, art, or entrepreneurship – you're navigating unfamiliar territory. Everyone else is living in Mediocristan, but you're living in Extremistan. You need a different approach for deciding how you define success.

"Extremistan" is a term introduced by Nicholas Nassim Taleb in his book, The Black Swan, which I summarized on episode 244. We tend to think we're living in the opposite of Extremistan: Mediocristan. When we as creatives measure success and make our decisions as if we are in Mediocristan, we ruin any chance we have of succeeding in the world we're actually in: Extremistan.

Extremistan defined

Extremistan is an imaginary place where events are random and unpredictable, and the impact of those events are extreme. It's a world full of "Black Swans."

Extremistan vs. Mediocristan

Mediocristan is a place that's the opposite of Extremistan.

• Extremistan is unstable. Mediocristan is stable.
• Extremistan is the world of the unpredictable and unexpected. Mediocristan is the world of the predictable and expected.
• Extremistan is full of singular events ("Black Swans"). In Mediocristan, the same things happen over and over.
• Extremistan is full of variables that scale infinitely. In Mediocristan, all variables fall within a range.

We're used to Mediocristan

Our modern world is built to be Mediocristan. We think we can predict what will happen. Some of this may be that our mental hard-wiring makes it difficult for us to think in terms of the unpredictable and unstable. Some of it is definitely because we've spread, across the collective, risks that face the individual.

An hourly-wage job is in Mediocristan

Imagine you have an hourly-wage job serving coffee at Starbucks. You're working in Mediocristan.

There are plenty of unpredictable things Starbucks has to deal with serving millions of customers across tens of thousands of locations. Employees will call in sick or stop showing up. There can be a coffee bean shortage, causing prices to suddenly spike. Someone might slip and fall in the bathroom and sue for millions of dollars.

All these things affect Starbucks' profits. One month, they may make a big profit. The next month, they may lose money and need to take out a loan to stay in business.

But all the while, you know exactly how much you're getting paid each hour you work.

Starbucks can handle these shocks and pay you a steady wage because they spread risk across the entire organization. You don't even notice if a water main breaks, flooding another location, or if the Director of Operations gets in a car wreck and ends up in the hospital for seven weeks.

Your hourly-wage job at Starbucks is mind-numbing, it's boring, you're living on rice and beans from Aldi. But, it's impressively predictable. It beats the heck out of foraging in the jungle and hoping you don't get pounced on by a puma.

Creative work happens in Extremistan

A Mediocristan job is a pretty sweet deal if the wage is livable. Though, stable, well-paying Mediocristan jobs are more and more scarce. That's not the thing I want to talk about. What I want to talk about is how important it is to understand that when you're doing creative work, you're not in Mediocristan, rather you're in Extremistan.

An author works in Extremistan

Imagine if when you get off your shift at Starbucks, you sit down and write each day. After you build a writing habit and keep it for several years, you finish your first novel.

You upload your novel to Amazon, and: nothing. You get a few sales a month. Then one day, you log into your Amazon dashboard, and see a huge spike. You've sold 3,000 books, and it's not even 10 a.m. Turns out an influencer shared your book on TikTok.

3,000 books is just the beginning. Your book becomes a massive best-seller. You sell millions. A big publisher picks it up and distributes it around the world. You're getting six-figure checks for foreign rights deals, then you get a seven-figure check for the movie rights. You quit the Starbucks job. Your life is forever changed.

Extremistan is a world of extremes

Your job at Starbucks is in Mediocristan. Your work as an author is in Extremistan. Remember, Extremistan is unstable, unpredictable, with singular events and variables that scale infinitely.

• You wrote every day after work, with no financial returns – suddenly you had more money than you knew what to do with. That's unstable.
• It looked as if your book was a failure, until it wasn't. That's unpredictable.
• By some fluke, the influencer shared your book. That was a singular event (a "Black Swan").
• There's virtually no limit to the number of books you could sell. Your book sales are a variable that could scale infinitely.

As the name would imply, Extremistan is a world of extremes.

In Mediocristan, variables fall within a range

In Mediocristan, variables fall within a range. The height of humans is a good example. The height of humans is distributed on a bell curve. There are a lot of people who are about average height. There are far fewer people on the tails of the bell curve whether extremely tall, or extremely short. There are no adults nine inches tall, nor ninety feet tall. No one has even been nine feet tall.

In Extremistan, variables scale infinitely

In Extremistan, variables scale infinitely. The "average" net worth of a U.S. family is about $700,000. But while there are a lot of people who are average height, there aren't so many with average wealth. To be richer than half of all Americans, you need "only" $100,000.

Why are so many Americans below "average" wealth? Because if Bill Gates walks into a bar, on average, everyone there is a billionaire. The people on the high edge of wealth distribution are so wealthy, they skew the average. Jeff Bezos has 1 million times the wealth of the average American – over $100 billion.

Human height has a predictable and limited range – it's in Mediocristan. Wealth has an unpredictable and unlimited range – it's in Extremistan.

Be careful what you learn in Extremistan

Because Extremistan is so unpredictable, with unlimited variables, you have to be careful not to draw conclusions too soon from what you see in Extremistan.

A quote from Taleb:

In Extremistan, one unit can easily affect the total in a disproportionate way. In this world, you should always be suspicious of the knowledge you derive from data.

In other words, the individual can skew the collective – Bill Gates walks into a bar and on average everyone there is a billionaire. So be careful what conclusions you draw from the data, when you're working in Extremistan.

It wouldn't matter how long you worked at that hourly-wage job at Starbucks – you wouldn't get rich. If the wage were livable, and you enjoyed the work, that could be fine.

Don't measure Extremistan success on Mediocristan terms

But you're in trouble if, while writing your novel, you measure success on the same terms as you measure success at your hourly-wage job at Starbucks. You'd be measuring Extremistan work on Mediocristan terms. You could do something well at work, and get a dollar-an-hour raise. You're seeing progress. You could write an incredible chapter in your book, and not see no immediate benefit.

Yet the impact of that dollar-an-hour raise, stretched out over your entire Starbucks career, may be tiny when compared to the lifetime benefit of the incredible, climactic, chapter in your novel.

If you only looked at the data you immediately received, you'd quickly conclude there was no point in working on your novel. You might as well stick to serving coffee.

Another quote from Taleb:

What you can know from data in Mediocristan augments very rapidly with the supply of information. But knowledge in Extremistan grows slowly and erratically...

In other words, in Mediocristan, the more data you collect, the more you know. In Extremistan, the more data you collect, the more you think you know – if you're not careful. In reality, new data in Extremistan tells you very little.

Success in Extremistan is explosive

Like wealth, success in creative work scales infinitely. Art De Vany studied the box-office performance of 350 movies that came out during the course of nine months. The top four of those 350 movies made 20% of the total revenue. The bottom four: 0.0036%. The top movie made almost $50 million. The bottom movie, about $5,000.

Success in Extremistan is random

Nobody spends millions making a movie to only make $5,000. If the movie industry knew how to make $50 million instead, they would only make the movies that made $50 million.

William Goldman wrote a lot of screenplays, including the cult classic, The Princess Bride. He won two Academy Awards for other screenplays. Still, he said,

Nobody knows anything.... Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what's going to work. Every time out it's a guess and, if you're lucky, an educated one. —William Goldman

This applies to movies, books, scientific discoveries, and entrepreneurship. You can learn and apply skill, but ultimately success in Extremistan is random.

Success in Extremistan is delayed

Success in Extremistan can also be delayed. Vincent van Gogh, after only two years of painting, wrote his brother Theo saying that maybe he had made a mistake investing so much in painting. It wasn't until after ten years of painting that Van Gogh's work was recognized – just before his early death at 37.

It took Leonardo three years to paint The Last Supper. It took Marie Curie four years to isolate radium. It took James Cameron fifteen years to produce Avatar.

Don't use Mediocristan terms to measure Extremistan success

When you're measuring success in Mediocristan, you expect to see the graph go "up and to the right." But success in Extremistan looks more like a poorly-shaved porcupine.

The more you measure success in Extremistan on Mediocristan terms, the less you'll invest in doing the kinds of things that will bring you success in Extremistan.

If you focus all your energy on A/B testing, you'll only ever see incremental gains. Misleading A/B test data aside, you'll never take chances that lead to explosive growth.

If you dismiss advice or don't try something based upon a flawed interpretation of survivorship bias – as I talked about on episode 251, you won't have the perseverance to stick around long enough for randomness to give you a boost (remember, The Queen's Gambit took 37 years to become a bestseller).

Creative work is about riding randomness in Extremistan

If you want to make it in creative work, you need to recognize that you're riding randomness. That's a tough thing to get comfortable with – we like to have sure bets. A good strategy is "The Barbell Strategy," which I talked about in The Black Swan book summary on episode 244: Go ahead and take the sure bets, but leave some room for the wildcards. Work the Starbucks job, but spend your evenings writing the boldest novel you can.

We think of our world as predictable. We want to see steady growth. But the predicable and steady is from Mediocristan. Finding your way to success in creative work is a journey through Extremistan.

The Mind Management, Not Time Management audiobook is here!

Listen to the Mind Management, Not Time Management audiobook free with an Audible trial, or search for the audiobook on your favorite platform.

Thank you for having me on your podcasts!

Thank you for having me on your podcast! Thank you to Trey Kauffman at The Mosaic Life and the team at Domestika for having me as a Comic Sans expert on their Curious Minds podcast.

As always, you can see a full list of podcasts I've been here.

About Your Host, David Kadavy

David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative.

Follow David on:

• Twitter
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• Facebook
• YouTube

Subscribe to Love Your Work

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Support the show on Patreon

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Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/mediocristan-vs-extremistan/

Just a quick note here to tell you loyal listeners about a new opportunity over on Patreon.

As I've said in my Patreon pleas at the end of the episodes, some money that I make feels better than other money. When I sell a book, that money feels good. When I get a sponsor for the podcast, that money feels...not as good.

Other money I get that feels good is the money I get from Patreon supporters. This is why I don't take podcast sponsors anymore. Each dollar feels like a little note that says, "Hey, I like what you're doing. Please keep doing it."

And practically speaking, the money I get from Patreon supporters helps keep the business running. Books are the biggest part of my income, but it takes a long time to finish a book. Getting a few bucks a month from a reader helps me keep doing my work until I have enough ideas worth putting into a book.

I've asked you over the years many times for your support and many of you have joined, and for that I'm grateful.

But now I have a special opportunity: For a limited time I'm offering a special "True Fan" level. The name of this is inspired by Kevin Kelley's essay, "1,000 true fans." Basically, if you can find 1,000 people who think your work is worth $100 a year, you have a sustainable business.

This special True Fan level brings you all the benefits you'd normally get at a higher level of support, but at a discounted price. You get early access to episodes – there's two waiting you could listen to right now – plus audio of my monthly income reports, masterclasses with folks like Noah Kagan, and patron-only Q&As – all delivered to your own personal RSS feed you can easily copy and paste into your favorite podcast app.

Normally, all of this goes to Patreon supporters at the $15 a month level. For a limited time, you get all this for only $9 a month.

If you're already a supporter, this offer is open to you, too. Whether that's bumping your support up a bit, or if you're at a higher level you can get locked in for the same benefits at a lower price.

The offer, as I said, is only available for a limited time, but after it goes away, you're locked in at this price. Plus, if I add anything to the package in the future, you'll get that, too. The more members we have, the more cool things I can offer.

Not everyone is in a position to pay for something they could get for free. If you can't support my work, nothing will change and you can keep enjoying my free work as long as I can afford to do it from here in South America (assuming I can still live in South America). So far we have over 250 episode of Love Your Work from the past five years, and more than 100 Love Mondays email newsletters, all free to enjoy.

Otherwise, if you consider yourself a "True Fan" *and* you have the means, please take advantage of this special Patreon level.

As I said this is a limited-time offer. It's an experiment, and I will close sign-ups to this level at some random time in the near future, so do act now. Again, that's patreon.com/kadavy

Can the way we consume information make us unable to tell truth from lies? Neil Postman thought so. In his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman says everything has been turned into entertainment: Our politics, religion, news, athletics, our commerce – even our education – have all been turned into forms of entertainment. This has weakened our ability to reason about society's important questions. In this Amusing Ourselves to Death book summary, I'll break down – in my own words – why Postman believes the shift from a society built around reading, to a society built around moving pictures and music, has devolved our discourse into a dangerous level of nonsense.

America was built upon reading

In 1854, in a lecture hall in Peoria, Illinois, Abraham Lincoln was in a debate. His debate opponent, Stephen A. Douglas, had just finished a three-hour speech. Lincoln reminded the audience it was 5 p.m., he himself would be speaking for at least three hours, and Douglas would get a chance to respond. He told the audience, Go home, have dinner, and come back for four more hours of lecture.

Is today's technology "nothing new?"

Every time a new technology comes along, there are people who think the sky is falling. There are also people who say it's nothing new. They'll show you that old picture of men on a commuter train, with their faces buried in newspapers, or they might remind you Socrates worried people would be made forgetful by the breakthrough technology of: writing. If we think back to our own memories from ten or twenty years ago, we have to conclude that not much has changed. It's different technology, with the same people.

Yes, attention spans are shorter

But this scene from Lincoln's debate from more than 150 years ago is a stark contrast from today's world. It's hard to imagine ordinary citizens gathering in the local lecture hall to sit and listen to seven hours of debate, without so much as a smartphone to stay occupied if things got dull. What's even more remarkable is neither Lincoln nor Douglas were presidential candidates at the time – they weren't even candidates for the Senate.

America was the most reading-focused culture ever

Postman uses this lecture scene to paint a picture of what he says was probably the most print-oriented culture ever. Unlike in England, in Colonial America reading wasn't an elitist activity. Postman estimates that the literacy rate for men in Massachusetts and Connecticut was around 90 or 95%. Farm boys plowed the fields with a book in hand, reading Shakespeare, Emerson, or Thoreau.

Thomas Paine, who wrote the mega-best-selling Common Sense had little formal schooling, and before coming to America, had come from England's lowest laboring class. Still, Paine wrote political philosophy on par with Voltaire and Rousseau.

When Charles Dickens visited America in 1842, it was as if a movie star had visited. Dickens himself said, "There never was a King or Emperor upon earth so cheered and followed by the crowds."

Today's media is built around images

Since Amusing Ourselves to Death was written in the 1980's, it's not concerned with Facebook nor TikTok nor Twitter. It's concerned with television. But as Marshall McLuhan said, "the medium is the message", and the characteristics of the television medium translate well into the characteristics of today's media. Today's media isn't built around words – it's built around images.

Television is images

It's easy to turn the channel on a television, or to turn the television off completely. They sit running in the house while people do other things. Remember from my Understanding Media summary that pieces of content within a medium compete with one another in what I summed up as a "Darwinian battle." Only the strong survive, and to survive on television you need many moving pictures, changing every fraction of a second. Whatever content is put on television, it needs to be adapted to these demands.

Internet media is images

Extend that thinking to Instagram or YouTube. For your media to get noticed, you need eye-catching images. If it's video, you need quick cuts, graphics, and music. Even where there are words, words are used as if they were images. Headlines are too short to carry much content, but are also misleading and hyperbolic.

Our media shapes how we decide what is true

Our media is how we share ideas. It's how we have discussions about what is important. To decide what is important, we need to compare one fact to another. But to compare facts, we also need to agree upon what is true.

The media is the metaphor

Postman revises Marshall McLuhan's famous statement, "the medium is the message." As Postman points out, a message says something directly. It makes a concrete statement that can be agreed or disagreed with – a proposition.

Media based around images is not sending messages that make concrete statements. So, Postman says "the medium is the metaphor." Today's media merely makes suggestions. By not making concrete statements, it's open to interpretation.

You may have heard various news stories referred to as "Rorschach tests." In an actual Rorschach test, you look at something ambiguous – an ink blot – and that ambiguous thing serves as a metaphor for some idea. It makes you think of something. Our media, in being image-based instead of text-based, is ambiguous. It serves as a metaphor that's open to interpretation.

Pay attention the next time you see a news headline about a politician who said something. It will be accompanied by an image of that politician. Is that image actually of the moment that person said that thing? Usually not (not that it matters). It's often not even from the same event. Instead, you'll see an expression on the politician's face. Whether it's carefully chosen for the emotion it conveys, or chosen based upon click-through rate, it ascribes ambiguous meaning to the words in the headline. It's a metaphor. And those who agree or don't agree with what the politician said – or who merely identify or don't identify with that politician's party – will derive different meanings from that headline/image combination.

Images cannot express the truth

Here's where our image-based culture becomes a problem. When our media is not making concrete statements that can be agreed or disagreed with, we can no longer distinguish fact from fiction. Our media is the basis of our – fancy word here – epistemology: How we decide what is true.

What's even more dangerous about images is that we think "seeing is believing." If we see an image or a video of an incident, we take what we've seen – or rather how we've interpreted what we've seen – as the truth. But it's open to interpretation. It's a Rorschach test. The medium is the metaphor.

I'm always reminded of this when I see campaigns where models share pre-Photoshop images of their bodies. It's great we're becoming aware of how images are manipulated, but at the root of this is one problem: Even the raw image is not the truth. No image is an objective representation of reality. It's a picture, made by a camera. Three dimensions broken down into two. The fact that few seem to recognize this is troubling.

The written word can express the truth

As Postman argues, the written word – unlike images – can better express the truth. When you read long-form text, you follow a line of thought. You consume it in isolation, and have the mental resources available to consider whether the author is overgeneralizing, abusing logic, or exploiting biases. You can review things that are confusing, or notice contradictions.

Postman recognizes that words are not infallible. There were newspapers in the 1830's, such as New York's Sun and Herald that mostly covered sensational events about crime and sex. But there were two major turning points in how we used the written word.

One was the invention of the electric telegraph. Once information could be conveyed around the world within seconds, information became a commodity to be sold, and thus manufactured. The first American newspaper was three pages long and monthly. Our 24-hour news cycle is manufactured information.

Another major turning point was when advertising ceased to be used to convey information. Instead of making statements that could be confirmed or refuted, advertisers started using – along with images such as babies in high chairs – slogans, or "nonpropositional" language. Words as images, if you will.

Maybe the question about the model in the ad shouldn't be about whether she or he is Photoshopped, but rather why they're in the ad at all? The models in ads, Photoshopped or not, are not there to present factual statements – they are there to make nonpropositional statements. They are there to serve as metaphors.

Our world is not "Orwellian." It's "Huxleyan."

When people worry about the quality of information in our media landscape, people often describe it as "Orwellian." What they're suggesting is that our media is like that of George Orwell's 1984, where a totalitarian power controls information through tactics such as eliminating words from language, rewriting history, and distributing disinformation. By controlling information, this totalitarian power controls the people.

But Postman says our world is not Orwellian. Rather, it's "Huxleyan." In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, the people aren't so much oppressed by the government's control of information. Instead, they're oppressed by their own addiction to entertainment. If you haven't read Brave New World, it's worth reading. A genetically-engineered society of various castes – all grown in labs, with no mothers, fathers, or family – spends most of its time flying in helicopters to mini-golf courses, having sex with one another, and escaping reality by taking a drug called "soma." (If you've ever heard the Strokes' song, "Soma," you know based upon the lyrics "soma is what they would take when hard times opened their eyes.") The society presented in Brave New World is a slightly less idiotic form of the society presented in Mike Judge's movie, Idiocracy.

Entertainment itself is not dangerous – if you know it's entertainment

Postman isn't an old man telling the kids to get off his lawn – though he may sound like it sometimes. He's not trying to say there should be no television at all. What he's saying is the characteristics of the medium of television are such that everything on it has to be presented as entertainment.

Think about the television news. Presumably, we watch the news for information – to be informed and make rational decisions about our lives and our society. But why do news programs have a theme song? It plays when it opens, it plays when it closes, it plays before and after commercial breaks. They play similar music when presenting "breaking news." Music creates a mood. The only reason there could be for a news show to have music – not to mention the cool graphics – is because a news show is entertainment.

"Now ... this"

The TV news is a good analogy for Postman's view of our world – which is fitting since he sees the media landscape as shaping discourse. On television news, you might see coverage of a horrific bus crash. You see aerial footage of the wreckage, as the newscaster tells you fifteen people met their fiery demise. That takes a few seconds, then the newscaster says, "Now ... this." And we cut to the five day forecast.

"Now ... this," sums up the 1985 media landscape for Postman. Instead of long expanses of text that make cohesive arguments, it's one image, then another image, with no connection between the two. "Now ... this." When our media does not convey messages, but instead only ambiguous metaphors, and when the statements made by those metaphors aren't connected, there's no hope for reason.

The "peek-a-boo" world

Postman also calls it the "peek-a-boo" world, like a child's game of peek-a-boo. One event after another pops into view for a moment, then vanishes. It's entertaining, but it asks nothing of us.

Referring again to the world as Huxleyian rather than Orwellian, Postman says:

there is no Newspeak here. Lies have not been defined as truth nor truth as lies. All that has happened is that the public has adjusted to incoherence and been amused into indifference.

People might say that lies today are indeed defined as truth. But remember, the media is the metaphor. What is a lie to one person is somehow interpreted as the truth to another. There's no foundation upon which to distinguish lies from the truth because, per Postman's thesis, our discourse has devolved into nonsense.

The dominant medium shapes all other media

You might have caught a contradiction in this summary: The Lincoln/Douglas debate was spoken word, not written words. Isn't Postman's argument that America was founded as a highly-literate society? What's impressive about the Lincoln/Douglas debates isn't just the attention span it demonstrated in the populace, but also the complexity of the sentences that audience was able to follow.

As I mentioned in my Understanding Media summary, I change the way I write based upon how it will sound on the podcast. I don't think of it as "dumbing down" – but I recognize that our media landscape is predominantly images and audio, and that people listen in distracting environments. The dominant form of media shapes the rest of the media.

America before images only had words

As Postman illustrates the Lincoln/Douglas debate, he argues that since the audience consumed mostly long-form written media, they were able to understand extremely complex language. For example, one sentence Lincoln said: "It will readily occur to you that I cannot, in half an hour, notice all the things that so able a man as Judge Douglas can say in an hour and a half; and I hope, therefore, if there be anything that he has said upon which you would like to hear something from me, but which I omit to comment upon, you will bear in mind that it would be expecting an impossibility for me to cover his whole ground." Huh?

Keep in mind, at the time of these debates in the 1850's – aside from live events such as this one – there was only printed stuff. Not only were there no smartphones nor television nor true crime podcasts, there was no radio, no movies, and there weren't even photographs!

People on the street wouldn't have recognized James Madison

Imagine this striking observation by Postman: Each of the first fifteen U.S. presidents could have walked down the street, and the average person wouldn't have recognized them. Our leaders were only known for their words, not for their appearance. Contrast that to today's political landscape, where our politicians have to look the right way in the television debates. They also better be able to dish out sick burns on Twitter.

A final quote from Postman:

Americans no longer talk to each other, they entertain each other. They do not exchange ideas; they exchange images. They do not argue with propositions; they argue with good looks, celebrities and commercials.

There's your Amusing Ourselves to Death summary

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business was published in 1985. This media theory classic – alongside Understanding Media, which I talked about on episode 248 – is more relevant than ever. I hope you enjoyed this summary.

The Mind Management, Not Time Management audiobook is here!

Listen to the Mind Management, Not Time Management audiobook free with an Audible trial, or search for the audiobook on your favorite platform.

Thank you for having me on your podcasts!

Thank you for having me on your podcast! Thank you to Trey Kauffman at The Mosaic Life and the team at Domestika for having me as a Comic Sans expert on their Curious Minds podcast.

As always, you can see a full list of podcasts I've been here.

About Your Host, David Kadavy

David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative.

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Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/amusing-ourselves-to-death-book-summary-neil-postman

I just got word that the Mind Management, Not Time Management audiobook is now live on Audible.com. And you can listen to it free.

If you are not already an Audible member, you can listen to the Mind Management, Not Time Management audiobook free, with a free trial. Just go to kdv.co/mindaudible.

If you prefer another platform, check it out, Mind Management, Not Time Management is probably available there. I'll leave a list in the show notes with links to the audiobook on many retailers, but it's going live in forty retailers, so I can't get them all. It may even be available for check-out at your local library.

Here is a partial list of retailers where the audiobook is currently live:

• Audible
• Apple
• Google Play
• Kobo/Walmart
• Scribd
• Chirp
• Barnes & Noble NOOK
• Hibooks

Thanks to Findaway Voices' distribution, the audiobook is slated to go live on forty platforms. Check out your favorite platform, and it may even be available for check-out at your local library. I'll try to keep the Universal book link updated as it becomes available in more places.

There's an important bias to avoid: Survivorship bias. Unfortunately, people who might otherwise do something with their lives hide behind survivorship bias. Just as important as knowing when survivorship bias matters is knowing when survivorship bias does not matter. Survivorship bias has a fatal flaw.

Example: Abraham Wald avoided survivorship bias to bring back more survivors

In WWII the US military was trying to improve their planes. Each time a plane came back from a mission, they made a record of the bullet holes. Since most bullet holes were on the wings and tails of the planes, the military concluded they needed to add more armor in the wings and tails.

But statistician Abraham Wald said, No – that's not where you want to add more armor. You want more armor around the engine.

That seemed weird. Their map of bullet holes showed very little damage to the engine compartment.

What Wald noticed that the military hadn't noticed is they were only seeing bullet holes on planes that returned from missions. The bullet holes they weren't seeing were the bullet holes on planes that did not return. And the bullet holes on planes that did not return were the ones bringing the planes down.

Abraham Wald was cleverly taking into account what would become known as survivorship bias.

Example: How survivorship bias can be used by an investing con artist

In his book, Fooled by Randomness, Nassim Taleb tells a story of a con artist. He'd send out 10,000 letters. Half the letters predicted the stock market would go up in the next month. Half the letters, down.

The next month, the con artist would send not 10,000 letters, but only 5,000. The following month, 2,500. Then 1,250, and on and on.

Why did he keep sending fewer and fewer letters? Because he only sent follow-up letters to those who had received correct predictions. After enough letters, he had 150 or so victims hanging on his every word, eager to have this mystery genius invest money for them. Of course once the con artist received their money, they never heard from him again. They had been "fooled by randomness." They had been fooled by survivorship bias.

Survivorship bias doesn't account for ergodicity

Both these stories are useful examples of survivorship bias. In the first case, Abraham Wald used an awareness of survivorship bias to avoid getting a false signal from the data. In the second example, the recipients of the letters didn't realize they could be getting a false signal from the letters.

Survivorship bias is an important phenomenon to understand, but survivorship bias has a fatal flaw: Survivorship bias doesn't account for ergodicity.

What is ergodicity?

What is ergodicity? Imagine you enter a dimly-lit bar just as it opens. A table of patrons across the room light up cigarettes. You can see the cascading trails of smoke rising. When they're done with their cigarettes, they don't smoke anymore the rest of the night.

When you get home, you realize your clothes smell like smoke. How could this be? You were nowhere near the trails of smoke.

Well, after the trails of smoke rose from the cigarettes, they dissipated around the room, until a faint haze of smoke filled the entire room.

Randomness eventually touches everything

That's ergodicity. The smoke was rising from the cigarettes in a random pattern. But when a random pattern continues for long enough, that random pattern eventually fills the entire space it could have filled. The smoke spread randomly, until it filled the whole room.

Ergodicity is why it's not only 1% of Americans who are in the top 1% of income. As time passes, people enter and leave the top 1% of income. In a lifetime, 10% of Americans spend a year in the top 1%. More than half will spend a year in the top 10%.

Ergodicity is why – even though life expectancy is about 76 – a 76-year-old only has a 4% chance of dying. The small risks of dying each year of life accumulate over time.

Not every game is do-or-die

Next time some entrepreneur or creative gives advice, or is profiled in an article, look at the comments or responses. You'll probably see something like this: Don't forget about survivorship bias! You didn't hear from the thousands of others who followed that same advice, but didn't succeed!

Sometimes this is useful. More often than not, this is as damaging as survivorship bias itself.

Example: Survivorship bias in Russian Roulette

Imagine Russian Roulette was a spectator sport (thank God it's not, but imagine). Chances are, there would be some "Michael Jordan" of Russian Roulette. Through mere chance, this person has survived hundreds of Russian Roulette matches.

It just so happens that of the thousands of times this "champion" has spun the cylinder on the revolver, pointed the gun at their temple, and pulled the trigger, the chamber hasn't had a bullet in it once. If there were millions of Russian Roulette players in the world – playing college Russian Roulette and little league Russian Roulette, hoping to make it to the Russian Roulette big leagues – a person like this would probably exist.

Just like there is today in entrepreneurship and creativity, there would be an entire cottage industry of journalists and courses and Russian Roulette podcasts, all touting the advice from this Russian Roulette champion. How to spin the chamber, what thoughts to think while pulling the trigger, how much pressure to use, what gear like like gloves and jerseys to wear, and exercise programs for strength and conditioning.

That would be survivorship bias at its finest – or worst. It's all random. This "champion" has no skill. All their advice is useless.

The Queen's Gambit was not a "survivor" – then it was

In 1983, Walter Tevis published a novel. He soon after optioned the screenplay rights to Jesse Kornbluth. Then Tevis died, and the project was cancelled.

Nine years later, in 1992, Kornbluth could no longer afford to keep the option. Allan Scott bought the screen rights.

Fifteen years later, in 2007, plans were underway to make a feature film out of this novel. Then the director died. (That director, Heath Ledger.)

Finally, in 2020, the story from this novel was released as a Netflix series. At least 60 million people watched it. It's Netflix's most popular limited series ever.

That series: The Queen's Gambit. For the first time, the novel, The Queen's Gambit, became a New York Times bestseller.

This overnight success was almost 40 years in the making. For 37 years, The Queen's Gambit was one of the "thousands of others who never made it." In 2011, Kornbluth – who had the screenplay option before Scott had rights – said the rights had been bought by "people who will never get the film made."

The Queen's Gambit was not a "survivor." In fact, it went out of print. Not to mention at least two people literally did not survive to see it on the screen.

Creative work is not Russian Roulette

When you play Russian Roulette and lose, you are out of the game forever. Fortunately, as creatives, we are not playing Russian Roulette.

If you build a company that fails, you can try again. If you write a blog post that falls flat, you can try hundreds or thousands more times.

Creative work happens in Extremistan

When someone says "Don't forget survivorship bias," what they're really saying is, "Show me the exact steps to follow that guarantee success." In creative work, there are no exact steps that guarantee success. Those only exist in Mediocristan.

Even The Queen's Gambit, which was wildly successful, wasn't guaranteed success. It could have just as easily stayed out of print.

Creative work happens not in Mediocristan, but Extremistan. No failure will come from pure lack of skill. No success will come from pure good luck.

Creatives are like poker champions

I have a friend who is a professional poker player. He knows if he plays poker online eight hours a day, he'll average 100 dollars an hour.

But he also knows for long stretches of time he'll be losing money. It will look as if his career is over. On the contrary, he'll also sometimes be flush with cash. It will look like he's making way more than 100 dollars an hour.

His career only works if he has one critical thing: "bankroll." He needs a certain amount of money – a certain amount of padding – to help him weather losing streaks. If he goes bust, he's out of the game entirely – he's lost Russian Roulette.

He has tremendous skill. That's how he can survive as a professional poker player. But there's no fighting randomness. His bankroll allows him to let randomness run its course long enough for ergodicity to even things out.

The creative career is riding randomness

Your results in creative work are not a direct reflection of your skill. Even if you're "So good they can't ignore you," you could be toiling in obscurity for a while as you wait for your big break.

If you aren't cut out for that, fine. But admit it to yourself and don't use survivorship bias as your scapegoat.

Stay in the game long enough to survive

But if you're willing to try something that, as Seth Godin says, "might not work," go ahead and try that advice. Maybe it will improve your odds a little.

What's important is you stay in the game long enough to let ergodicity give you more shots at a win. That could be literally having the bankroll to stay in the game. That could be making sure you make small enough bets – with high enough potential upside – that you don't go bust, but have a chance to hit the jackpot. You have to watch your eggs long enough for a Black Swan to hatch.

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About Your Host, David Kadavy

David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative.

Follow David on:

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Subscribe to Love Your Work

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Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/survivorship-bias/

As a nonfiction author, retaining what I read is my job. Through the process of writing three books, I've experimented with different ways of reading, remembering what I read, and using that knowledge to develop my own thoughts. I'll share today my note-taking system. I hope it serves as a good example of a digital "Zettelkasten" or slip box.

Listen to My Zettelkasten: An Author's Digital Slip-Box

What is a Zettelkasten?

I talked about Zettelkasten in my How to Take Smart Notes book summary on episode 249, but here's a quick review. Zettelkasten is German for "slip box." In the analog form, a Zettelkasten is a box filled with slips of paper. On each slip is an idea, notes about which other slips that idea is related to, and keywords used for organizing the slips.

Wikipedia: Kai Schreiber

The Zettelkasten method originated in analog, but is being adapted to digital

Much of the original Zettelkasten techniques were developed to adapt the limitations of physical paper to non-hierarchical organization, like today's internet. Now, writers are adapting the Zettelkasten method to digital software.

"Zettelkasten" is a "slip box" and "note-taking system." A "slip" is a "note"

A note about terminology for this article: I'll be using the terms Zettelkasten, note-taking system, and slip box interchangeably. They all mean the same thing. The same goes for "slip" and "note." They're the same thing.

What do I use a Zettelkasten for?

The Zettelkasten method is most commonly used by academic writers. That use case has its own unique demands. I, however, am a blogger and nonfiction (self-help) author. Here's what I aim to do with my Zettelkasten:

• Retain what I read: I want to be able to put interesting things I read into my own words.
• Access my knowledge: I want to be able to quickly access quotes, facts, figures, and story details, when I don't remember them perfectly.
• Direct my curiosity: I want to have options for things I can read that will drive my knowledge more-or-less toward learning something useful. I call it strategic curiosity, which I talked about on episode 184.
• Develop my ideas: I want to guide ideas through the four stages of creativity, which I talked about on episode 218.
• Ship writing: I want to mix my knowledge and ideas into shipped tweets, weekly newsletters, articles, and books.

Four misconceptions about note-taking

Like many things I've come to love, I was resistant to the idea of note-taking at first. Some misconceptions I had:

1. Note-taking does not take the pleasure away from reading

Note-taking doesn't have to take more mental effort than reading. It can be broken into low-effort activities that build into something great.

Additionally, you can still read "for pleasure." Not all my reading goes through my note-taking process.

2. Note-taking is not mindlessly writing down everything you read

Note-taking connects your consumption of knowledge with your creation of knowledge. If you mindlessly write down everything, there's no room for creativity. Only take notes on the parts of your reading that interest you, or that you otherwise want to retain.

3. Note-taking is not boring

Some parts of note-taking look boring. For example, looking at a highlight you've made, then writing it in your own words, looks boring. But it's fun. It's just enough of a challenge to keep you engaged.

4. Google is not a substitute for notes

Your notes are not simple records of facts and figures. You would not get the same results by Googling anything you'd like to reference. Inherent in the system is your own thoughts.

My Zettelkasten notes are plain-text Markdown files

I have a lot of notes in Evernote, but those notes are distinct from notes in my Zettelkasten. Evernote is mostly for project-related or operational things. After using Evernote for ten years, and watching it get slow and bloated, I didn't want to get locked in to any software.

A lot of Zettelkasten practitioners love Roam Research, which is very powerful. But I like the portability, simplicity, and offline-capability of plain text.

My plain-text Zettelkasten notes are synced through Dropbox

I love writing in Markdown, which is a simple, human-readable way of adding formatting and links to plain-text. My notes are text files (with the extension .md) sitting in folders on my hard drive, and are also synced to Dropbox.

I edit my plain-text Zettelkasten notes through Obsidian, 1Writer, and Ulysses

Since my notes are plain-text files, I can access them on a ton of different software. I mostly work through Obsidian on desktop, and 1Writer on iPad. I also sometimes use Ulysses, because I like how it allows me to preview the contents of many files at once.

The structure of my digital Zettelkasten

As I covered in my How to Take Smart Notes book summary, the general structure of a Zettelkasten is:

• Fleeting Notes
• Literature Notes
• Permanent Notes

I have three additional categories:

• Inbox
• Someday/Maybe
• Raw

My Zettelkasten folder structure, as viewed through Ulysses.

A flow chart of my Zettelkasten process. Partly inspired by Getting Things Done.

Fleeting Notes I take in my tiny Moleskine Volant, or on the Drafts app, or in any of my other paper notebooks.

Literature Notes are any condensed notes I've made of an entire piece, such as an article or book – more on that process in a bit.

Permanent Notes are single ideas, facts, or stories. This is the real "slip box" or Zettelkasten, where I connect ideas to one another to sprout new ideas or build them into larger works – I'll give you an example later.

The Inbox is where I put notes that need to be processed. This could be highlights from a book that I need to condense and summarize – as I'll describe soon. This is where Fleeting Notes go next. This also might be a link to an article that I may want to summarize.

I don't always want to deal with everything in my Inbox, so if not, I put the note in my Someday/Maybe folder. I borrowed this from the GTD "Someday/Maybe" that I talked about in my Getting Things Done summary on episode 242. This folder is for things that seem interesting to me, but are either not interesting enough to motivate me to give them the attention I'd like to, and/or they're not relevant enough to any topics I'm working on.

Raw is where I store my exported highlights after I've condensed and summarized a book or article. This folder keeps me from cluttering the system, but I can still quickly search if there are details I want to retrieve that aren't covered in my literature notes.

I name my Zettelkasten files in plain English

An ongoing debate amongst Zettelkasten users is how to name files. Niklas Luhmann, whose physical Zettelkatsten is being studied at the University of Bielefeld, used a branched numbering system. One could make a case for why his naming system is still relevant. Still other users insist every file should have a unique ID, so they use the date and time.

I personally name my files with a plain-English description of what the note is about, such as "The Queen's Gambit took 37 years to become a bestseller.md". The main argument people have against this method is if you decide the note is about something else, you have to change the name of the note, and that breaks your links. But with modern technology you can easily do find/replace, and Obsidian handles name changes for you automatically.

How you should name files in your slip box depends upon your workflow and preferences.

Files are linked using "WikiLinks"

I link my files within my system using a feature called WikiLinks, aka FreeLink. Basically, any filename I put in [[double brackets]] is automatically linked to, even if that file is in another folder in my database.

WikiLinks isn't native to Markdown, but Obsidian does support it, and makes it easy with auto-suggest. On 1Writer for iPad, these links only work for files that are within the same folder, which limits the tasks I can do on iPad.

Arguably this is a form of lock-in to Obsidian, but other plain-text editors support WikiLinks. Evan Travers has a nice breakdown of Zettelkasten-supporting features in various Markdown plain-text editors.

I manage my Zettelkasten through a series of comfortable habits/rituals

You aren't going to maintain your Zettelkasten if it feels like a slog. This is why I've carefully designed my system so I manage it through a series of comfortable and easy habits and rituals.

Comfortable contexts for managing my Zettelkasten

There are four main contexts around which I've designed the habits and rituals for managing my Zettelkasten.

• Active: I might be cooking, taking a shower, or having dinner conversation with friends. If an idea comes to me, or I hear something great on a podcast, I want to capture it.
• Lying down: I do most of my reading lying down, and I do the initial stages of book summaries lying down (more in a bit).
• Reclining: I do as much of my writing as possible slightly reclined, with my iPad and keyboard on an over-bed table, over my recliner.
• Upright: I have a standing/sitting desk where I work at my computer sparingly.

https://twitter.com/kadavy/status/1288883415153094659

As you can see, I've designed my contexts to be as comfortable as possible, so maintaining my system doesn't feel like a chore. Now what do I do in all these contexts? I'll cover that as I talk about processes.

My process for reading and summarizing a book

One of the main sources of notes in my Zettelkasten is books. When I really want to absorb and document my learning from a book, here's the process I follow:

• Read the book: I do this on my Kindle, lying down on my couch or in my hammock. I highlight as I read, and I will occasionally take a quick note – which is hard to do on a Kindle. Unlike some people, I do not take Fleeting Notes in a notebook while reading. That would make the context uncomfortable.
• Export the highlights to Markdown: Readwise makes this easy, though there are other ways, if you search around.
• Highlight my highlights: Like my reading ritual, I highlight highlights while lying on my couch. On 1Writer for iPad, I bold the most interesting parts of my highlights. I can also do this on my phone during "in-between" time, such as waiting for friends to arrive at a restaurant. Tiago Forte calls highlighting of highlights "progressive summarization."
• Condense my highlights: I look at the highlights I've bolded and re-write the interesting ones in my own words. I'll also pull out any interesting quotes. I may also brainstorm my own thoughts about the implications of what I've learned. This is all a "Literature Note." I do this in my recliner, with iPad and keyboard.
• Break my condensed highlights into notes: I make individual "Permanent Notes" in my slip box – one idea per note. This is when I add relevant tags, link my note to any existing related notes, and add thoughts I have about how the individual note relates to my work. I do this on my desktop computer, using Obsidian.

I follow this process for only the best books

This may sound like a boring and arduous process for reading a single book. But it's not. First, I don't do this for every book. Whether or not I follow all these steps depends upon my interest in the book.

I only do this for books I really want to absorb, such as when I wrote my summaries of Understanding Media or The Black Swan.

Readwise helps me review books I don't fully process

If a book isn't compelling enough for me to follow these steps, I still get a chance to review the highlights. Readwise sends me three random highlights each day – from my database of 20,000+.

I review these highlights when I check my email. If I see a highlight I'd like to develop into a Permanent Note, I copy and paste it into Drafts, from where I will process it later.

My process for academic articles and web articles

I do most of my reading in books. I also read some academic articles. I do the least reading of all on the web.

For both academic articles and web articles, my process is the same: I save the PDF in a "toread" folder on Dropbox (yes, I make PDFs of web articles!) I then read the PDF on LiquidText for iPad, where I highlight it. I export my highlights to plain text, and follow the same process as for books to make Literature Notes and Permanent Notes.

My web-article process is inefficient

Yes, my process for web articles is inefficient, but I rarely read web articles. If I read on the web more, I'd probably use Pocket and have Readwise manage those highlights. I have begun experimenting with using ePub.press to read web articles on my Kindle, but to get the highlights I have to connect my Kindle to my computer to dig them out.

Capturing ideas

Probably more so than an academic writer, my writing as a self-help author is driven by my own ideas. When I get an idea, I either capture it in my Moleskine Volant with collapsible Zebra mini-pen, or I capture it with Drafts. In my shower, I keep an Aqua Notes pad and pencil.

I use Zapier to save my own tweets

Also, many of my ideas I soon turn into tweets. If I want to put something I've tweeted into my Zettelkasten, I "like" my own tweet. This triggers a Zapier automation that collects the tweet and basic metadata, and saves it as a text file in my Inbox on Dropbox. An Automator script on my computer then changes the file extension to .md.

I liked my own tweet, and Zapier imported it to Dropbox for me.

(If I want to capture someone else's tweet, I copy/paste it or share it to Drafts.)

Clearing the Inbox

As I describe in the final chapter of my book, Mind Management, Not Time Management, my ideas initially go into one of several inboxes. Currently, that's mostly my pocket notebook and Drafts. I then have to clear those inboxes.

I try to spend a few minutes each day looking through my inboxes, while at my computer. Not all notes that end up in Drafts are for my Zettelkasten, but for the ones that are, I have an "action" in Drafts that sends those notes to my Zettelkasten Inbox.

I'm far from having "Inbox zero" in my Zettelkasten. It's full of book or article highlights that need to be progressively summarized, or tweets that need to be tagged and turned into Permanent Notes.

My Zettelkasten Inbox, with some examples of the types of notes in there.

Idea-driven keywords for tags (and examples!)

Choosing the right keywords or tags for your Zettelkasten allows it to work as a non-hierarchical database of your knowledge and ideas. This is an important piece many Zettelkasten practitioners miss. This quote from How to Take Smart Notes captures how to choose keywords:

The way people choose their keywords shows clearly if they think like an archivist or a writer. Do they wonder where to store a note or how to retrieve it? The archivist asks: Which keyword is the most fitting? A writer asks: In which circumstances will I want to stumble upon this note, even if I forget about it? It is a crucial difference.

I avoid generic keywords such as "Psychology." Instead I create keywords based upon patterns I see, which inform theories I'm working on.

Not #writing, but #IcebergPrinciple

For example, one note I have is based upon the advice of screenwriting instructor Robert McKee. In Story, McKee says:

A finished screenplay represents, obviously, 100 percent of its author's creative labor. The vast majority of this work, 75 percent or more of our struggles, goes into...creating the climax of the last act.

For my Permanent Note, I of course re-wrote McKee's advice in my own words, but what tags did I use? The generic approach would be to tag it "#writing" or "#screenwriting." But how would that help me?

Instead, I think about how this advice supports (or refutes) an idea I'm working on. It reminds me of other writing advice, this time from Ernest Hemingway:

I've seen the marlin mate and know about that. So I leave that out. I've seen a school (or pod) of more than fifty sperm whales in that same stretch of water and once harpooned one nearly sixty feet in length and lost him. So I left that out. All the stories I know from the fishing village I leave out. But the knowledge is what makes the underwater part of the iceberg.

An iceberg? In another passage, Hemingway explains:

The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.

This Hemingway advice is so beautiful, I've made it the basis of one of my keywords. I call it the #IcebergPrinciple. Basically, any creative work you see is the tip of the iceberg. There's much more work and knowledge going on behind the scenes.

McKee's advice is about how 75 percent of the work on a screenplay goes into the climax. This advice is connected to Hemingway's advice about most of an iceberg being underwater. So, my Permanent Note for the McKee quote is not tagged #writing, nor #screenwriting, but #IcebergPrinciple.

Should related notes share the same tag AND be linked?

The two notes from Hemingway or McKee could be not just tagged with the same thing, but also linked to one another. Should they share the same tag, and also be linked? There's no right answer.

On one hand, it's redundant to link them to one another and also have them share the same tag. On the other hand, does it really hurt to do both?

This is the kind of internal debate I honestly haven't resolved yet. I do whatever seems right in the moment, and if I run into problems, I'll formalize my approach.

Linking helps spawn ideas (with example!)

The act of linking two notes serves a different purpose from the act of choosing the right tags for a note.

As I'm making a Permanent Note, I take a moment to think of whether there's a connection between this and any of my other notes. This is when ideas you never would have thought of otherwise come to mind.

For example, I've been collecting some notes on survivorship bias for an upcoming article. I tag these notes with #SurvivorshipBias. (Admittedly this is a generic-sounding tag, but I have my own personal ideas about it.)

But while I was creating my note about The Queen's Gambit, and the fact that it took 37 years for it to become a best-seller, I wasn't thinking about survivorship bias at all. I tagged it #LongNights, my personal tag for stories about "overnight successes" many years in the making.

As I thought about what to link this note to, I realized this note was related to a note about survivorship bias. It's a counter to the popular understanding of survivorship bias. For 36 years, The Queen's Gambit was one of the stories that "didn't survive," but in its 37th year, suddenly it was a survivor.

That may not make sense in that short example. A further explanation will have to wait for the article. But this is how linking notes makes you think about the meanings of those notes differently.

Tag Indexes build completed work

Once I have many notes collected related to a particular tag, I develop a Tag Index. This is a note, stored in my Slip Box or Permanent Note folder, with an overview of my thoughts on that topic.

I link to the various notes I have under that tag – as well as any other related notes – then arrange them as a list in an order that makes sense to me. I write short phrases next to each link to add any thoughts that give structure to this logical progression.

For example, a #SurvivorshipBias Index may start off with a link to a note called "Abraham Wald overcame survivorship bias to armor planes." Next to that, I could write a brief phrase, "Wald realized he only saw bullet holes on planes that returned. Survivorship bias is useful for interpreting misleading data."

After that, I could link to the note about The Queen's Gambit. I could write next to that link, "Not all who haven't 'survived' are dead."

After collecting notes together in this way, I now have an outline, with source material, I can use to build into a completed article, or even a book.

And if you'd like to hear how that article turns out, make sure you're subscribed for the next article.

There's your example of an author's digital Zettelkasten

I hope you found helpful this example of using the Zettelkasten or slip box method with digital, plain-text software. I know writing it improved my own note-taking system.

If you'd like to know more about the principles behind this system, do check out my How to Take Smart Notes book summary on episode 249.

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David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative.

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If you're a fan of using Getting Things Done to stay on top of all the, well, things you need to get done – you'll love How to Take Smart Notes for staying on top of all the things you want to learn. I'll give you an introduction – in my own words – in this How to Take Smart Notes book summary.

The note-taking system introduced in Sönke Ahrens's How to Take Smart Notes is a bit like Getting Things Done for learning. GTD is great for things that have a clear objective. But creative insights can't be planned, by definition. That's the point of an insight, it comes out of nowhere.

One of my favorite quotes from the book:

It is a huge misunderstanding that the only alternative to planning is aimless messing around. The challenge is to structure one's workflow in a way that insight and new ideas can become the driving forces that push us forward. —Sönke Ahrens

In other words, you can't plan an insight, but you can structure the way you read and learn in a way that not only improves your retention, but that also leads you to new insights.

What is a Zettelkasten?

The system introduced in How to Take Smart Notes is called a Zettelkasten, which is German for "slip box." A slip box was originally a box full of slips of paper, each slip with a little note on it. The slips were arranged and annotated in a certain way to facilitate thinking and to link ideas.

The most famous user of the Zettelkasten was a German sociologist named Niklas Luhmann. Luhmann credited his slip box for his prolific career, in which he published 58 books and hundreds of articles. His actual Zettelkasten is being studied in a long-term project at the University of Bielefeld, in Germany.

The linking, keyword, and organization characteristics of a slip box were a precursor to our modern-day internet. But now that we're no longer limited to slips of paper, writers and researchers are adapting the Zettelkasten technique to digital tools.

How do you take smart notes?

There are four basic steps to follow to make smart notes for your own Zettelkasten – or "slip box", if you prefer:

1. Make fleeting notes: Always have a way to capture ideas that pop into your mind, or – if reading – read actively, highlighting and taking notes. I personally carry around a tiny notebook, and use the Drafts app on iOS to capture quick thoughts. I don't take notes while I read, but I do highlight on my Kindle.
2. Make literature notes: Rewrite the important parts of what you've read. But, do it in your own words. It sounds pointless, but it's surprisingly fun, and later on we'll get to how it helps you learn better.
3. Make permanent notes: Break any literature notes or fleeting notes down to individual notes. Do this only for the most important ideas – the ones that are relevant to your interests and your ongoing projects. Do this a little bit each day, so you don't get a huge backlog.
4. Add permanent notes to the slip box: Luhmann used a special branched numbering system to organize his notes. I prefer plain-English note titles. You also want to add relevant tags to each note, and link your note to related notes.

How to use your smart notes for learning and writing

The main reason to have a system like this is to direct your curiosity in a productive way, and turn your learning into writing. There are three things you'll do with your slip box:

1. Develop topics: As you make new notes, themes will start to develop around your areas of interest. You can interact with your notes to follow the links, and you'll see holes in your knowledge to guide your learning.
2. Getting research/writing ideas: You'll never have to wonder again what you'd like to read about or write about. It will be clear from where there are lots of notes clustered around a topic in your slip box. For example, you may have many notes with a certain tag, or if you use a piece of software such as Obsidian you can visualize which notes link to one another to see patterns in your thinking.
3. Turn your notes into writing: You can collect your notes together, and quickly form rough drafts for articles or books. Don't simply copy your notes, though. Rewrite them, stitching them together along the way to create a completed piece.

How to Write Smart Notes is primarily directed at academic writers, and, as Ahrens points out, most books on academic writing see writing papers as a linear task, with a beginning and an end. I talk about the Four Stages of Creativity in my book, Mind Management, Not Time Management. Taking smart notes allows you to do "Preparation" on creative problems through small habits. By the time you write your first draft – after "Incubation" – "Illumination" is easy. Most of the work is already done.

Dos and don'ts

Sounds exciting, right? But when you try to create your own slip box, the possibilities can be overwhelming. Here are some dos and don'ts that can help guide your thinking.

Do choose keywords sparingly

When choosing keywords for your notes, your first instinct might be to make sure you tag your note with every relevant keyword you can think of. But if you use too many keywords, it becomes hard to manage your slip box.

Ahrens warns not to choose the keyword that is the most appropriate to the content. Instead, think about in what context you might want to retrieve that note, and choose your keywords in a way that would help you find that note.

I'll give you an example in the next, related, tip.

Don't use generic keywords

Another instinct you might have is to choose generic keywords. Like if the note is related to Psychology, you might think you should tag it with "Psychology."

But remember that the purpose of the slip box is to facilitate insights. A tag such as "Psychology" is too broad.

Choose your keywords sparingly – as I said in the previous tip – but also choose your keywords according to your specific areas of interest or lines of thought.

Imagine you're really interested in studying storytelling. You have a note about Eve eating an apple in the Garden of Eden. Your instincts might tell you to tag the note with "apple," or "fruits." Instead, you might have a tag called "symbols of discord," or even "apples of discord." You can create a whole collection of notes showing apples as symbols of discord in stories, such as in the Judgement of Paris or Snow White.

Do link every note to other notes

Each time you create a new "permanent note" that goes into the slip box, you should link it to at least one other note. Each note should serve as a starting point to follow a line of thought, and links help you navigate through your notes to see what ideas spring up.

Links may point directly to another note. That note might be on a different topic. For instance, your note about Snow White's stepmother feeding her a poisoned apple, tagged with "symbols of discord," might link to another note about Snow White's stepmother looking in her mirror on a daily basis – and that note might be tagged "vanity," a topic under which you have other stories with vanity as a theme.

Besides linking to other notes, notes can also be linked to a topic overview. This could present a summary of your notes on a topic – in other words, one of your keywords or tags. The summary could link to other notes on that topic, with a short description of what you'll find in each one. For example, your "vanity" overview note might link not only to the story of Snow White's stepmother looking in her mirror on a daily basis – it might also link to the story of Narcissus being captivated by his own reflection in the river. These summaries are great starting points for developing into finished articles.

Don't copy/paste

When you're creating a slip box with digital tools, another instinct you'll have is to copy and paste notes directly from your source material. The thinking is its the most "efficient" way.

The purpose of your slip box is not to be the most "efficient" directory of information. Just as important as providing a reference to things you learned in the past is the actual learning of those things. You learn better when you translate what you've read into your own words.

Resist the temptation to copy and paste directly from your source. I personally may copy and paste to keep a direct quote from source material, but I will always supplement with an "in my own words" explanation of what's being said.

Why it works?

This brings us to the science behind why the slip box is effective for learning. Ahrens explains that studies show success doesn't come from willpower. Instead, it comes from creating a working environment that makes willpower unnecessary.

There are five ways working with a slip box shapes your habits so you learn better:

1. Elaboration: This is why it's important not to copy/paste, but to write things in your own words. When you write something in your own words, you have to connect the new knowledge to your existing knowledge. You have to think about its broader implications. Ahrens says elaboration is the most effective technique for learning.
2. Spacing: In managing a slip box, you retrieve information repeatedly, after time away from it. This happens when you review your highlights and fleeting notes to elaborate on them and turn them into permanent notes. This also happens when you retrieve old notes to connect them to new notes. Your memory of information fades away over time, but when you're repeatedly exposed to information – a phenomenon called "spaced repetition" – you retain it better.
3. Variation: Using a slip box, you review information in a variety of contexts: You read it, you take fleeting notes, you translate those into permanent notes, then you review the information further when retrieving it and linking it to other notes. This variety helps you more robustly link new knowledge to existing knowledge.
4. Contextual Interference: Contextual interference is a randomization of contexts, and it has been shown to improve learning. For example, instead of practicing throwing all day, you might randomly alternate amongst throwing, catching, and running. The very nature of managing a slip box randomizes the contexts in which you interact with information.
5. Deliberate effort: Deliberate practice – where you're deliberately practicing individual skills, with rapid feedback – is more effective than simply doing whatever you feel like. Managing a slip box is structured and deliberate practice.

There's your How to Take Smart Notes book summary

I hope you found this summary helpful. As an author, I was excited to first learn of the Zettelkasten or slip box technique, but I wound up spending many hours watching confusing explanations of it on YouTube, or reading equally confusing articles.

How to Take Smart Notes was the only resource that gave me a good first-principles overview of how a slip box works. From that, I've been able to adapt the technique to my own workflow as a blogger, podcaster, and author. I do hope to share my own note-taking system soon, so make sure you're subscribed, so you don't miss it. Until then, I highly recommend you pick up How to Take Smart Notes.

Mind Management, Not Time Management now available!

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David Kadavy is author of Mind Management, Not Time Management, The Heart to Start and Design for Hackers. Through the Love Your Work podcast, his Love Mondays newsletter, and self-publishing coaching David helps you make it as a creative.

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Hey, just a quick note to let you know I'm launching a new (free) email course. It's 100-Word Writing Habit, and you can sign up at kdv.co/100

I built my writing career by building a writing habit. Three books later, I still write 100 words first thing in the morning.

That gets me going so – in addition to books – I can ship an email newsletter each week, and a couple 2,000-word articles on this podcast, and a 5,000-word income report each month.

Sure, I write more than 100 words a day, but it all starts with my 100-word habit.

100-Word Writing Habit: New FREE email course (starts March 3rd)

My 100-word writing habit is so powerful, I'm starting a new email course to teach it to others.

Learn the power behind the 100-word habit, as well as how to set yourself up so you never miss a day.

Sign up before March 3rd at kdv.co/100

You've heard the expression, "The medium is the message." But what does that really mean? "The medium is the message" is a term coined by Marshall McLuhan in his book, Understanding Media: Extensions of Man. More than fifty years after it was published – in 1964 – Understanding Media reads as if it's from the future. In this Understanding Media summary, I'll break down – in my own words – why "The medium is the message," as well as other key ideas within this media theory classic.

Three key ideas in Understanding Media

I'm going to cover three key ideas in this summary:

1. The medium is the message. Basically, it's not the content of the medium that matters. Instead, the characteristics of that medium determine its content.
2. We're shifting from mechanical technology to electric technology. Mechanical technology such as wheels, roads, and the printing press influence us in different ways from electric technology such as the lightbulb, television, or – today – the internet.
3. Mechanical technology detribalized humans. Now electric technology is retribalizing humans. This shift causes stress in the ways we interact with one another. Our lack of awareness of how technology changes the way we interact is a threat to civilization.

McLuhan weaves these and other ideas throughout the book as he analyzes things you might normally think of as media – such as radio, television, and books – but also things you might normally not think of as media – such as roads, clothes, money, and clocks.

Now, each of those three main ideas, in more detail:

1. The medium is the message

What does "The medium is the message" mean? McLuhan says:

The medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium – that is, of any extension of ourselves – results from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.

Media are extensions of ourselves

Let me break down some ideas within this quote. First, McLuhan refers to media as "extensions of ourselves." Remember, the subtitle of the book is Extensions of Man. McLuhan casts a wide net in what he thinks of as media. To McLuhan, media is anything that extends our capabilities as humans. As he says, "Any extension, whether of skin, hand, or foot, affects the psychic and social complex." In other words, any media extends our capabilities. In the process, it changes how we think, and how we interact with one another.

Media changes our "sense ratios"

How does media change how we think and interact – the "psychic and social complex?" In the quote I presented earlier, McLuhan also talks about "the new scale that is introduced into our affairs," by these extensions of ourselves.

Every medium alters what McLuhan calls "sense ratios." We read a book with our eyes and our mind. We watch television with our eyes and our ears. The content of the medium comes to us through specific senses (sight, sound, touch, thought, etc.). As those senses are engaged, it affects how we use our other senses.

I've referred to this before, myself, giving an example of a chimp fishing ants out of an anthill with a stick. The stick is an extension of her hand. While she's holding that stick, she can't use that hand for some other purpose, such as to defend herself from an attack by another chimp. Even if she could, she might not notice the attack, since she's focused mentally on the stick, and whether or not it has ants on it.

So as a medium makes one thing easy, it makes other things hard.

If you are reading this summary, you're using different senses than if you are listening to it. That changes how you interact with this summary. If you're reading, you can easily re-read parts. If you're listening, it's less likely you'll rewind to re-listen to parts.

If you're reading on a laptop or a phone or an ebook reader, each of these devices will also change how you engage with the content. Reading on an ebook reader while lying alone on your couch is different than listening on a subway surrounded by people, or listening on a bluetooth speaker while cooking dinner.

The medium itself alters the content

A really subtle part of McLuhan's basic description is that "personal and social consequences of any medium...[result]" from this altering of sense ratios.

In other words, the characteristics of the medium cause personal and social consequences. What's subtly implied here is that the content we're so often concerned about – violence in video games, for example – is really caused by the medium itself.

As I write this summary, I'm thinking about what medium you'll use to consume it. That's changing the decisions I make. I know you might listen to it instead of read it, so I use shorter sentences. I may even be repetitive.

I know if you find this summary through a search engine, you'll be in a hurry. I know that search engines will rank my article based upon signals that suggest whether or not it was helpful for you. For these reasons, I'm trying to break up the article, so you can skim it in a hurry.

McLuhan doesn't say this specifically, but any medium is Darwinian in nature. Only organisms suited for their environment survive. Only messages suited for the environment created by their medium survive. The medium is the message.

Media have social consequences

So media extends our capabilities, alters our sense ratios, and shapes the messages within the media themselves. This has social consequences.

Here's some examples of how media affects society, from today's world:

• Road rage: It is easier to yell at someone in another car while you're speeding away in your car than it is to say the same thing in an aisle in the grocery store. You get road rage.
• Porn addiction: It is easier to look up porn on the internet to satisfy any sexual fantasy you might have than it is to deal with actual human relationships that normally surround sex. You get porn addiction.
• Fake news: It is easier to share on Facebook an article you agree with, but that isn't true, than it is to stop and study the article to consider whether it is true. Additionally, the attention that message gets makes Facebook money. So as more people share the article, it further fuels the message. You get fake news.

Yes, every new medium has brought about new and strange behaviors people criticize. Yes, those behaviors are often a re-invention of existing behaviors. But that's the point McLuhan is making – the characteristics of a medium change the message. That in turn heightens and dampens various aspects of our behavior. To be unaware of how media changes us is a threat to civilization. More on that later.

2. We're shifting from mechanical technology to electric technology

Mechanical technology alters our "sense ratios" in different ways from electric technology. The same way cogs on a gear have to be cut and sized to fit together, mechanical technology forces us to compartmentalize things in a way that allows mechanical technology to work. (Kind of like Nassim Taleb's "Platonification" that I talked about in my The Black Swan book summary on episode 244.)

Mechanical technology: the alphabet

A very basic mechanical technology is the alphabet. We've broken language into twenty-six characters we can arrange to make words that represent our thoughts. Before written language, we had to physically be in front of someone to communicate with them through spoken word. The language we speak itself is mechanical. It's a mechanization of our thoughts.

Until relatively recently, if we wanted to transport information – something as simple as "hey, let's have dinner tonight" – we had to do so physically. McLuhan says the Roman Empire was able to govern because they distributed documents written on papyrus. They developed roads – a mechanical technology – primarily so they could physically move information throughout the empire. This enabled them to rule a massive area of land. Thanks to mechanical technology, Rome built a centralized government.

When Rome lost control of Egypt, they no longer had access to papyrus, so they could no longer distribute information. Europe decentralized – it fragmented into feudalism. It wasn't until Europe adopted paper-making methods from China that information could flow freely again and Europe could condense into larger states.

Electric technology: the telegraph

An example of an electric technology is the telegraph. Remember, before the telegraph was developed in the 1800s, you had to physically – or mechanically – move information from one place to another. With the telegraph, suddenly information that used to take weeks to reach its destination now took minutes.

This information flow has accelerated, and now we have the internet. When I was growing up in a cul-de-sac in Nebraska in the 90s, my life changed when I started using the internet. I previously lived in a mechanical world: I could only be friends with kids who lived in my neighborhood, regardless of whether we had the same interests. Suddenly, I lived in an electric world: I could now be friends with anyone, anywhere.

Now I can live in Colombia and publish my words to the whole world. But with this lifestyle that's made possible by electric technology, I run into conflicts with the remnants of mechanical technology. The very concept of a country where I spend a different currency and where I need permission to stay is a result of mechanical technology. Centralized governments like the Romans built are mechanical. They organize people and land through physical means.

Electric technology is an extension of the nervous system

Remember, media is an extension of our capabilities. The wheel – a mechanical technology – is an extension of the foot. Instead of walking wherever you like, the wheel lets you go faster, but you need roads on which to travel.

McLuhan says electric technology is an extension of our nervous system. In the book, McLuhan essentially predicts Google Maps: he says existing technologies – including cities – will become information systems.

When we have instant access to information all throughout the world, we "feel" that information just as we might feel a fluffy kitten or a hot stove.

3. Mechanical technology detribalized humans. Now electric technology is retribalizing humans.

As we use electric technology to overcome physical stress – such as carrying a letter over oceans and mountain ranges – that creates psychic stress. Thanks to electric technology, communication sped up so that we could communicate across the world. That created physical stress of doing commerce from far away. So many of us moved, creating psychic stress of being away from friends and family.

Another form of psychic stress caused by electric technology comes in the form of our simultaneous awareness of everything happening in the world at all times. More on that in a bit, but first, a story about how mechanical technology detribalizes.

Mechanical technology detribalized humans

McLuhan describes a UNESCO experiment where they installed running water in a village in India. The villagers soon after asked for the pipes to be removed. They said the social life of the village had eroded. Thanks to running water, people were staying in their homes. They were no longer gathering at the communal well, so they were no longer chatting and maintaining relationships.

Before running water, the village was more tribal. The running water detribalized the village. It compartmentalized a very important function in their lives – that of getting water. It did that through the mechanical technology of pipes. It was more convenient, but by altering the "sense ratios" involved in getting water, it extracted that act from the social ritual that once surrounded it.

Electric technology is retribalizing humans

In a purely physical world, people tend to organize into small tribes or villages. Instead of being compartmentalized and specialized, there are deep interconnections in relationships and functions. Instead of just selling shoes, the cobbler makes them, too. The smaller the group of people, the more every death and birth and prayer is experienced together – shared by everyone in the tribe.

As electric technology has more influence, we're increasingly retribalized. As McLuhan describes it, mechanical technology explodes, while electric technology implodes. The extension of our nervous system created by electric technology has made us more aware of how our local actions have effects on a global scale. Understanding Media, by the way, is where Marshall McLuhan coined the term, "global village."

The conflict between the mechanical and the electric

When you realize we are shifting from detribalized to retribalized as electric technology takes place of mechanical technology, the world starts to make sense.

Here are things we're seeing as the mechanical is replaced by the electric:

• We're shifting from industrialized food to organic food. Mechanical technology helped us increase crop yields and build reliable distribution of food. Electric technology is making us aware of where our food comes from, and the impact our food choices have on a global scale. We're seeing a re-wilding of diets, as we introduce more biodiversity beyond the staples of corn, wheat, orange juice, and pork bellies. As people interpret this flood of information, different diets are springing up – like different "tribes" – such as keto, paleo, carnivore, pescatarian, vegetarian, vegan, and on and on.
• Drugs are being legalized. The state control over what people put in their bodies is mechanical, as was the scare tactics and misinformation that helped reinforce that control. As more people are learning the truth about mostly harmless drugs such as marijuana, these drugs are becoming decriminalized and legalized.
• Time is being reconsidered. Our linear conception of time is a relic of a mechanical world. Time has allowed us to increase output by breaking processes into steps, and allowing the coordination of those steps amongst people and organizations. But as electric technology is allowing free information flow, and automation is making "work" obsolete, creativity is becoming more important. As I've talked about in Mind Management, Not Time Management creative output is de-coupled from our linear conception of time.

Next time you're puzzled by the state of the world, try this: Ask yourself, Is it a conflict between mechnical and electric technology? You can see it in the questioning of whether a police force is the right way to restore order in society, in the gendered bathroom debate, in Russia's media manipulation in American society, and in the rise of Bitcoin.

We need to understand media for civilization to survive

McLuhan sees our lack of awareness of how media affects us as a threat to civilization. From the book:

The threat of Stalin or Hitler was external. The electric technology is within the gates and we are numb, deaf, blind and mute about its encounter with the Gutenberg technology, on and through which the American way of life was formed. It is, however, no time to suggest strategies when the threat has not even been acknowledged to exist.

Yes, McLuhan compares the effects of electric technology to Hitler. He warns that it's foolish to think of technology as "neither good nor bad." The solution, he says is to start by being aware that the very nature of media alters our behavior in the first place.

He reminds us that we misunderstand the Greek Myth of Narcissus. Narcissus saw his reflection in the river, and stared at it longingly until he withered away. We think of narcissism as an obsession with oneself. McLuhan reminds us there is something missing from our modern understanding of the myth of Narcissus: That Narcissus didn't know he was looking at himself.

Narcissus's name comes from the Greek word for "narcotic." As media takes over our senses, it numbs us – like a narcotic – from the true effect it's having.

One last quote from McLuhan:

It is not an exaggeration to say that the future of modern society and the stability of its inner life depend in large part on the maintenance of an equilibrium between the strength of the techniques of communication and the capacity of the individual's own reaction.

In other words, we need to become aware of how media affects us. That's what Understanding Media helps us do.

Honorable mention: "hot" and "cool" media, and "learning a living"

There are many other compelling ideas in this book. One of the most famous being McLuhan's description of "hot" and "cool" media – "hot" media being media that directly takes over one particular sense, and "cool" media being media that invites your participation.

Another juicy idea was the chapter on "learning a living." Basically saying that the mere idea of "work" is a product of mechanical technology, and that we're increasingly finding our work to come in the form of continuously learning.

There's your Understanding Media summary

I could write entire articles on either of those ideas, but for now I hope you enjoyed that summary. Understanding Media is a very long and complex book – I broke down 25,000 words worth of highlights – a novella's worth – to write this summary. It's the most eye-opening book I've read in more than a decade. I highly recommend it.

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Show notes: http://kadavy.net/blog/posts/understanding-media-summary-marshall-mcluhan