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:
favorite Japanese words (0.998507 (:0.000000)), new productivity toy (0.917812 (:0.000000)), equal reading books (0.897397 (:0.000000)), Collector’s Fallacy (0.775817 (:0.000000)), fantastic pun (0.771514 (:0.000000)), internet article (0.670916 (:0.000000)), reading materials (0.667206 (:0.000000)), tsundoku (0.608629 (:0.000000)), problem (0.504119 (:0.000000)), dopamine (0.491997 (:0.000000)), jolt (0.484967 (:0.000000)), brain (0.484244 (:0.000000)), feels (0.480123 (:0.000000)), hormone (0.468884 (:0.000000)), captures (0.468048 (:0.000000)), victims (0.462570 (:0.000000)), condition (0.453005 (:0.000000)), end (0.451254 (:0.000000))

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 Need
Electronic/World Wide Web>Internet Article:  Chu, Charles (05/14/2017), The Collector’s Fallacy: Why We Gather Things We Don’t Need, Retrieved on 2017-05-17
  • Source Material [medium.com]
  • Folksonomies: research knowledge collecting


    Schemas

    17 JAN 2018

     Productivity

    Memes on becoming a producer rather than consumer.
    Folksonomies: productivity
    Folksonomies: productivity
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