«Time is too short for soft porn.»
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After talking about people in the last posting, it is only fitting to talk about things in the next. Yeah, you should filter, and not only people, but also things. There are these old saying that you become the mean of the five people you spend most time with, or that you become not what you read, but what you reread. Or that you should take care of what you put “in your attic” (to use a Sherlock Holmes metaphor).
Thing is, take care of the input, it determines the output. And — for living with it — more importantly, the throughput.
So, yeah, personally, I begin to apply this heuristic more and more. If something is not well-written, fiction or non-fiction work, I rather spend my time with something else. After all, I can’t read it all, so why should I spend the time I can read something with badly written material? (Unless its from they my students, they have an excuse … for a little while.)
Today, in many cases, there are many roads to your success. To the things you want. Be it (vicarious) experience, knowledge, or skill. And your time is ticking down, minute by minute, word by word.
Make sure you spend it with something worthwhile.