Short Form Saturdays – 20th May 2023
Thoughts of the Week
· Quality of Information vs Length of Information (vs Everyone Having The Attention Span of a Goldfish). – I’m going to write about this for Something Greater in a few weeks. But I was thinking about the fact I released a 1 hour and 7-minute podcast episode. Now I like listening to longer-form podcasts. It’s probably the form of a podcast I listen to most, and I gain incredible value from them. But if faced with six 20-minute podcast episodes or a singular two-hour episode of a podcast, I’d be more likely to consume the smaller 20-minute episodes first. This way the same value is being added, just over a longer period of time, with each episode providing less information that needs to be consumed and maintained in one sitting.
We’re surrounded by things vying for our attention. And most people have the attention of a goldfish. Most short-form videos are scrolled past after less than a second, in a perpetual finger scroll of doom until something snaps us out of our zombified states. Like our own house on fire, or a baby screaming in our faces.
My first theory is it comes down to people who are growth-oriented and want to develop themselves and people who aren’t. If you want to grow you’ll naturally seek out information you can learn from that will add value to your life. Not all the time. Some information needs to be consumed for the sake of consumption. We can’t be switched on all the time. But in my view, most of this kind of information for learning and development won’t be found in your short-form content. Apart from this post, I hope!
Blog of the Week
· Bank of England and Quant Share CBDC Vision. - Quant
- Project Meridian - BIS
- Project Rosalind - BIS
· The BRI and Its Rivals: The Building and Rebuilding of Eurasia in the 21st Century. – Anoushiravan Ehteshami
Song of the Week
Before Paris – Tom Misch
- Spotify:
- YouTube:
- Soundcloud:
Film/TV Show of the Week
· Citadel – Amazon Prime – I enjoyed this but didn’t realise all the episodes weren’t out yet. Episode 5 is out today, and the final episode is out next Friday.
· Inside – Bo Burnham – Netflix – I rewatched Inside again this week. It’s a musical comedy show but it's so much more than that. The guy has one of the most fantastically creative brains in the world and he’s created a masterpiece with this show. He paints a picture of the scarier aspects of the world we live in.
Podcast of the Week
· How to Survive in the New Economic and Financial Order – Russell Napier. – Hidden Forces (From April 2022 but an absolute gold mine of information).