Stop Reading this Blog Right Now!!!
The popularity of blogs have risen phenomenally in the past decade, thanks to the easy internet availability and the small computing devices you have in your pocket. As per the State of the Blogging world infographic, by December 2016 more than 6.7 million people blog on blogging sites, whereas more than 12 million people blog via social media network (Facebook posts, etc.). Also, it is worthwhile to note that on an average 23% of our online time is spent on the blog or social media sites. At the same time, a leading research has shown that the average human attention span has fallen from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8 seconds in 2015 (Goldfish have attention span of 9 seconds).
All these studies and researches points unilaterally to one conclusion- our inclination to read small interesting content in short span of time has drastically reduced our ability to focus for prolonged period. You may argue that blog are a meaningful way to fill small time gaps we have in our daily lives. However, in this blog post, we try to analyze as to how blogs are detrimental to our overall growth and well being and why you should stop reading them. A blog post dedicated to stop reading blogs. Ironical, isn’t it?
One common argument we hear in favour of reading blogs is that they provide useful information at our fingertips, thereby helping us in learning new things. However, we miss the underlying fact that blogs being limited in size of content do not provide all the relevant information and therefore our knowledge is insufficient. We can not accomplish any meaningful task on the basis of our knowledge built solely from information contained in various blogs. Such tasks generally require in depth learning, which can be acquired only from books and research papers. Therefore, it is always more advisable to read one or more books on any topics rather than to go through blog posts related to them.
Have you ever started reading a blog and as soon as it ended, you scrolled down to find a similar interesting post and then another one after that and so on. These are a result of complex algorithms working behind those web pages who try to track every keystroke of yours and predict what should interest you more. These clickbait articles make sure that you binge read those small pieces of information continuously without realizing that they have gobbled hours of your workday. The website generates revenue from web traffic and therefore they benefit a lot when you are constantly scrolling their pages, one article after another. However, all this mindless scrolling doesn’t add any meaningful value to your existing knowledge and consumes a lot of your time. After all what is the use of reading “10 best SEO skills you must acquire” just after reading “a comprehensive guide to SEO and online marketing”!
Of late, a new variety of blogging culture has evolved- one that comprises of sites such as Quora. These site provide information in question answer form that may seem meaningful and indeed they have some well curated content to offer. But again these “Infotainment” sites (as I like to call them), tricks us into believing that we are getting something useful in return of our time, while ignoring the fact that they are major reason for procrastination. Instead of doing the work we are supposed to do, we are tricked into believing that we are gaining knowledge and this reduces our guilt of not doing what is really important, since we constantly assure our minds that we are doing something more meaningful. Also, these sites are bombarded with useless questions (dating tips, shopping tips, etc.) which have been skillfully answered in a manner to arouse curiosity, thereby trapping us in an unending spiral of time wastage. The constant dose of dopamine we get from such scrolling makes us more and more addictive to such websites.
These are only a few reasons. There are hosts of other reasons which justify as to why reading blog posts can hamper your productivity and contribute greatly in wasting your time. All this justify the title of the post- You should stop reading this blog post, Right now!
Originally published at Inspired Living.
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