The Collector’s Fallacy and Tsundoku
One of my favorite Japanese words is tsundoku (積ん読). Aside from being a fantastic pun, I think it’s captures our shared problem pretty well:
“Tsundoku” is the condition of acquiring reading materials but letting them pile up in one’s home without reading them.
Buying books does not equal reading books. We all know that. Yet, so many end up victims of tsundoku anyway.
Why?
One problem, I think, is that collecting feels like learning. Each time we discover a new productivity toy, internet article or bestselling book, our brain sends us a jolt of dopamine (our brain’s “reward” hormone) for doing nothing at all.
Notes:
Folksonomies: knowledge productivity collecting procrastination
Taxonomies:
/art and entertainment/books and literature (0.513389)
/hobbies and interests/reading (0.484052)
/society/crime/personal offense/human trafficking (0.433603)
Keywords:
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Entities:
dopamine:Drug (0.789814 (:0.000000))
Concepts:
Psychology (0.932657): dbpedia_resource
Chinese language (0.788540): dbpedia_resource
The Collector’s Fallacy: Why We Gather Things We Don’t NeedSchemas
Productivity
Memes on becoming a producer rather than consumer.
