The 19th century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer would have recognized the problem of clickbait.
In his essays, On Authorship and On Reading, he identified two types of authors: those who write for the sake of the subject, and those who write for the sake of writing (and really, for the sake of making money).
Their motivations couldn’t be more different. The former write because they are curious and they want to figure something out. They’re like a detective, exploring a subject from all sides, trying to come to a deeper understanding. For them the process of writing is how they figure out what they don’t know and how they come up with new ideas. The latter because they get paid by the word, not the insight. You can recognize the latter by how they stretch out half-baked thoughts “to the greatest possible length.” Their writing is evasive, “lacking in definiteness and clearness.”
If this sound familiar, it should. It’s the literary equivalent of clickbait – content created not to inform, but simply to capture eyeballs and sell ads. Our world is awash in this type of soul-sucking content. As Schopenhauer put it, writing for money is “at bottom, the ruin of literature. It is only the man who writes absolutely for the sake of the subject that writes anything worth writing.”
The more bad writing we tolerate, the more we get (Gresham’s Law). While people spend time on “worthless trash,” they leave “the works of great thinkers undisturbed.”
Not all writing is worth reading. Just because someone can put words on a page doesn’t mean they are worth reading or add value.
The Raw Material Of the Mind
Schopenhauer’s solution to clickbait is a form of inversion — avoiding what we don’t want to consume. In his words, we should make it a rule to “never to read what is bad; for life is short, and both time and strength limited.”
If you think of your mind as a factory for producing insights, consider reading the raw material. Just as a factory needs high-quality raw materials to produce great products, so does your mind. Without great raw material, even the best factory grinds to a halt.
If you find yourself low on ideas, it’s a sign you’re reading the wrong things or need to read more.
Avoid Bad Writing
It’s not enough to read great writing; you need to avoid terrible writing.
One of the most underrated skills is knowing what not to read. This keeps you from wasting time on content designed to cheat the reader.
Some of the warning signs are fairly easy to spot. If a headline is engineered to generate clicks rather than convey information, stay away. For example, a headline that reads, “You won’t BELIEVE what happens next,” strongly signals that you’re not likely to learn much. Likewise, if you land on a page with flashing ads and auto-playing videos, close the browser and move on. Insight and nuance are rarely found on pages like that.
But other red flags are subtler. Beware of writing that promises easy answers to hard problems. Any article that claims to reveal “The ONE secret to success” or “The REAL reason for [insert some complex problem]” is almost certainly peddling simplistic thinking. Reality is messy and multi-faceted; writing that pretends otherwise is either shallow or dishonest. Watch out, too, for prose full of jargon or is evasive. The business world is full of prose like this. If you find yourself wading through a swamp of “synergies,” “paradigm shifts,” and “disruptive innovations,” you’re likely reading something that’s low on substance and high on hype.
Even some outwardly respectable sources can be trojan horses for mediocre writing. That popular thought leader’s LinkedIn posts? Often little more than warmed-over platitudes. That management guru’s latest bestseller? Frequently, just one decent insight is stretched out to book length with copious anecdotes and repetition. The opportunity cost of consuming second-rate writing is higher than ever. In a world where more great writing is available than any human could read in a lifetime, every hour spent on pap is an hour stolen from a classic that could change your mind or your life. So be ruthless in filtering what you won’t read. Your attention is a precious resource; invest it wisely.
Unconventional Tips
One unconventional tip is to avoid news and read old biographies. Schopenhauer explains, “The best works come from the time when they had to write either for nothing or for very little pay.” Another is to regularly curate your social media feed. Regularly reviewing who provides the raw material of your mind allows you to regularly upgrade your supplies.
The choice of what to read has never been more important.
As Schopenhauer warned, a diet of intellectual junk food will cause us to “sink deeper and deeper into the mire” of shallow, unoriginal thinking. But if we’re selective in our reading, we can find writing that elevates our minds.
In the end, the thoughts we consume determine the ones we produce.