The unending list

I’m eschewing infinity wells.

I’m on a two month experiment to reduce my reliance on apps that allow for unlimited scrolling. It’s going mostly ok. If I can I’d like to turn this into a permanent experiment, but we’ll see how it goes.

In the last few weeks I’ve slowly started to create new pathways in my brain. Instead of browsing Reddit endlessly, I find myself looking for any app to scratch the same itch. None do, of course. Instead I find myself refreshing email or the Reeder app, even though nothing is likely to show up 20 seconds after I last checked. But little by little I’m spending time on other things that I care about.

When we have the option to consume forever, whether on TikTok, Reddit, Reels, etc., we run into a problem. As humans we were made for unending curiosity and creativity. We love that stuff. It’s what we live for (along with community, my third C in my eventual TED Talk).

However, when we can consume forever it removes that itch, that twitch, that nervous energy to create. We feel like everything under the sun has been done, and better than we could ever do.

But that’s wrong.

Each of us have something we can bring, something beautiful we can riff on, something we can add to what came before.

It’s hard to do that, though, when we can hook up to the unlimited scroll or swipe mechanism that is mere seconds away at any time.

There’s an alternative, though.

I keep a list of articles I’d like to write in an Apple Notes doc. I did a quick check and there’s over 800 topics I’ve thrown in that I’d like to write. This will never happen.

The list fills up faster than I can write.

And you know what? I love that. Instead of an infinity well of scrolling I’d like an infinite list of creating.