One thing I’ve realized during the past 5 years or so is the mind-boggling amount of crap information that’s passed around as absolute truth. Of course, the arrival of the internet only hugely magnified this problem, so we live in an age where it can be extremely difficult to know what’s true and what’s not.

It seems like everyone around is trying to manipulate our thinking, taking advantage of human biases and weaknesses in logic to convince us to believe what they are trying to sell. Politicians do it, companies do it, religious organizations do it, etc etc.

In this post, I’ll list a number of great resources that have helped me in this journey to really understand how things work and cut through the crap. I’ll keep updating this list over the years.

Health & Medicine

• Science-Based Medicine – Discusses popular health-related topics like vaccines, homeopathy etc.
• PainScience.com – All about pain and associated treatments. Learn what works and what doesn’t.
• Examine.com – Research about supplements and nutrition
• FoundMyFitness – More exotic topics well examined
• Athlean-X – Favorite site for building muscle

Science & Philosophy

• LessWrong – Deep resource into philosophical arguments, rationality and logic.
• Skeptic.com – Many topics covered and also a great podcast (Science Salon)
• Skeptoid.com
• Skeptical Science
• Skeptical Enquirer
• Neurologica
• Center for Enquiry
• Snopes.com
• Rationalwiki
• Sloww
• Raptitude.com

I also recommend the Science Salon podcast hosted by Michael Schermer.

Economics & Politics

• Behavioral Scientist – Discusses many current topics from a behavioral science perspective.
• The Library of Economics & Liberty
• American Institute for Economic Research
• Mises Institute
• Libertarianism.org
• Notes on Liberty

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Smartphone usage and social media have become very detrimental to our attention spans and the ability to engage in deep work. We are constantly tempted to pick up our phones to get our next dopamine hit by checking Instagram or Facebook likes, or engaging in pointless chatter on apps such as Whatsapp.

The effects of social media and smartphones were the subject of the documentary The Social Dilemma. I have no doubt about the effects of social media and devices. I have got enough of a digital marketing education background as well as practical experience to understand how these mechanisms work in influencing us. I have also recognised that I am not immune to these effects, even though I know exactly how they are pushing me to do what I don’t really want to do.

These days, I keep off any social network. That’s the only thing that works for me. Yes, there are costs for doing so, but those can be mitigated by maintaining a healthy network of close friends who are also well-informed about the world. All important news eventually gets to you unless you live a completely isolated lifestyle. For the kind of news that is related to investments, where there is a strong argument for alpha being available on social media, I have found that being in a curated group of top players in your field of investment actually gives you better results and better conversations. So that is what I am doing now instead. This is also part of my experiment with building online communities.

In 2019 I ran a little experiment that I described below:

It’s been a while since I abandoned Facebook, and even longer since I stopped reading newspapers and online news sites. Over the past year, however, I’ve noticed that my phone had become a really serious distraction for me.

On several occasions, I have asked my wife to put away the phone so we could have a more engaging conversation, and she’s done the same to me, probably even more frequently. Since having our first child, it seems that we can’t take the phone out of our hands, and somehow it seems justified. We want to immortalize the memories of every little thing he does and then share it with our family on Whatsapp. Things recently got to a head and I decided I need to take serious action about this.

The thing is, our modern-day smartphones keep us addicted in a similar way to slot machines (see video below). We’re fighting a lost battle if we think it’s just a question of having more discipline.

Here’s how I solved this problem.

I love my iPhone 6S Plus (an older model of the iPhone that still works perfectly) and I use it a lot when I’m out and about with my bicycle or car and listen to podcasts or music while also using maps to get to my destination. I also use Calm for meditation and Spotify for music. So getting rid of the smartphone was out of the question. I needed to find a better solution than that.

What I did was resurrect an older Nexus 5 which runs Android OS, which I have since become quite unfamiliar with, plus it’s a slower phone that is moderately annoying to use.

I then moved all the apps that I qualify as addictive onto this older phone:

• Whatsapp (the biggest culprit)
• Instagram
• Facebook
• Wallapop
• Facebook Messenger

I then informed my family that I would still remain accessible via another messaging app, where they could contact me when needed. I work at home so communication with my wife is not an issue, we’re always within meters of each other in our apartment. I check the family group on Whatsapp once a day and that’s enough for catching up with any events of the day and commenting when needed. For more in-depth conversations I have a Skype call with them.

I also set up Freedom.to on all my devices and made sure that social media and other distracting websites are blocked during the majority of the day, so even if I wanted to I would not be able to access them. Again, the idea is not to rely on my weak self-discipline, but to put in hard blocks that will eventually remove that trigger to check updates from my brain.

So far so good, I’ve noticed a huge improvement in productivity and mental well-being after having gone through this process and tested it for a few weeks.

The one remaining issue for me comes from an old friend who I thought would be quite benign: email. With the other stuff out of the way, my email still remained a constantly open window on my computer and something I check frequently on my phone. But while I was on retreat earlier this month and trying to keep off the internet, it immediately became apparent to me how dependent my mood and task list was on email. I kept getting triggered by my brain to check email, and even felt the dread of receiving an email from a problematic person, knowing that if I opened my mail and found his email with the imagined content, it would really ruin my day. I then realized that I actually check the email app on my phone several times and even have the habit of hitting refresh in Gmail even though the app itself refreshes every few minutes itself. That’s how bad my addiction to email is.

That is, therefore, my next target: to become less reliant on email. I plan to check email around twice a day and also make sure that I don’t take immediate action on email requests unless it takes 2 minutes or less. I plan to allocate half an hour in the morning and another half an hour in the evening or afternoon for email. I’ll report on that later after concluding my experimentation.

Related books about this topic

• Deep Work by Cal Newport
• Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport
• Essentialism by Greg McKeown

All great books, but Digital Minimalism really hit the nail on the head and spurred me to try the two phones idea. There are also other ideas that are worth exploring, such as putting your phone in greyscale mode.

Useful Apps

• Screen Time
• Freedom

Let me know what’s your experience with smartphone and social media usage, have you felt addicted and how have you dealt with it?

My education has been quite extensive; built on these three pillars:

• University degrees (3 of them from two different universities)
• Countless courses at technical centers
• Lots of reading on my own

By far the most valuable of the three was the reading I did on my own time and based on my interests and ambitions. It’s what enabled me to build my own business and learn the skills needed to succeed. The rest of the aptitudes I got from my upbringing and people I met along the way.

I largely agree with Bryan Caplan’s view that formal education is mostly signalling. This is the view that school doesn’t so much teach you valuable skills, but helps filter society by which people are smart, conscientious and conformist enough to put up with it. This filtering can explain why schools seem to teach so much useless stuff, yet are nonetheless a requirement for almost any good job.

This way of thinking does not apply to all professions, however. There are several professions such as law and medicine where it would be foolish to think that you can study on your own and attain anywhere close to the knowledge that actually going to university would give you. What I disagree with is society’s relentless push for all young students to go to University as if not going would be a failure in itself. There are only a limited number of courses available at university and an infinite amount of human aptitudes and talents, so if young students feel that no course suits them they should seriously consider skipping University.

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The Dickens Process, named after the famous novelist Charles Dickens, is a unique approach to personal development and self-improvement that has been popularized by life coach and motivational speaker Tony Robbins.

The process is based on the themes and lessons present in Dickens’ classic novella, “A Christmas Carol,” in which the protagonist, Ebenezer Scrooge, is visited by the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future. Through these encounters, Scrooge is able to gain a deeper understanding of his own actions and motives, and ultimately transforms into a kinder and more compassionate person.

Similarly, the Dickens Process encourages individuals to take a reflective journey through their own past, present, and future, in order to gain a deeper understanding of themselves and their actions. By examining past experiences and memories, individuals can identify patterns and behaviors that may be holding them back, and work to overcome them.

The process also involves looking at the present moment and identifying areas of their life that they are dissatisfied with, and setting clear and specific goals for how to improve them. Lastly, individuals are encouraged to visualize their ideal future and the person they want to become, and take action towards making that vision a reality.

Listen to Tony himself describe the exercise and how to do it in this YouTube video:

So how do you do this exercise?

1. Close your eyes and visualize yourself in the present moment.
2. Imagine a future version of yourself, 10 years from now, who has achieved all of your goals and is living the life you desire.
3. See, hear and feel everything about this future version of yourself as vividly as possible. Imagine your surroundings, the people around you, and your emotions.
4. Now imagine going back in time and visiting different points in your past, starting with the most recent and going back further and further.
5. As you visit each point in your past, imagine how your future self would have handled the situation differently. Imagine how your future self would have acted, spoken and thought.
6. Continue going back through your past until you reach your childhood. Imagine how your future self would have handled your childhood experiences differently.
7. Finally, return to the present moment and open your eyes.

The idea behind this process is to help you gain a new perspective on your past and present, and to give you a clearer vision of the person you want to become in the future. By visualizing yourself as the person you want to be, you can start to take action to make that vision a reality.