Just Start: The Rudolf Question

Would it help?

A few weeks, I posted a list of mental models I might have invented, in the form of lines I’ve stolen from films to help me remember things that I think are important. Here’s one I didn’t have space for: the Rudolph question.

The Rudolf Question comes up two or three times in Bridge Of Spies, where Mark Rylance plays Rudolf Abel, a Soviet intelligence officer captured by the US in the Cold War. Abel becomes part of a prisoner exchange, and on several occasions lawyer James B. Donovan (played by Tom Hanks) asks if he’s worried about the outcome. Abel’s answer is the same every time:

Would it help?

You’ll probably agree that things are stressful at the moment. Wherever you sit on the political spectrum, it feels like the amount of troubling news stories have stepped up, and the number of existential threats we’re all looking at is…well, more than one, which isn’t great. At the same time, there’s a good chance you can’t do anything about most of this stuff, even if social media is designed to make you feel like you can. A few ways to look at this, in the order I learned about them.

In The 4-Hour Work Week, Tim Ferris talks about the idea of going on a ‘low-information diet’ — cultivating what he calls selective ignorance about the world by minimising the amount of media you expose yourself to. Ferris’s recommendations for a one-week fast are quite stern — no news, television, books (apart from fiction), or ‘web surfing’ (quaint!). His main argument is that this will give you more time (and attentional capacity) to focus on the stuff you should be doing.

A couple of years ago, I whizzed through Rolf Dobelli’s Stop Reading The News, which is a more carefully thought-out manifesto for eliminating the news from your life, in which he argues (among other things) that the nature of most news means that the more "factoids" you digest, the less of the big picture you’ll understand, and that most of the news is simply unnecessarily stressful. It’s well worth a go.

Recently, I read Neil Postman’s excellent Amusing Ourselves To Death, where he puts it this way:

“Ask yourself how often the information provided to you on television causes you to alter your plans for the day, or take some action which you would otherwise have not taken, or provides you with information you need to solve a problem?”

(Postman’s talking about television because he was writing in the 1980s, but really the same question applies to anything online)

Would it help?

The way I look at the news these days brings all of this stuff together: protecting my time, not getting too stressed, and focusing on the things I can (or will) actually do something about. So: I don’t read news stories about things I’m never going to have any effect on (high-profile murder trials, plane crashes, the possibility of an asteroid hitting the Earth in seven years), or spend too much time trying to understand the politics of things I’ll only ever use in conversation. I do spend quite a lot of time reading studies and trying to understand the dynamics of things I might write about, or write to a politician about, because those are places I might actually be able to do something — and the more I know, the more informed my actions are going to be. Most of all, though, when I’m deciding whether or not to be worried about something — climate change, the stock market crashing, all the bees dying, the fact that I’ll probably never get to retire — I ask myself the same thing:

Would it help?

And usually, I’m fine.

Have a great weekend!

Joel x

ps I’ve been on a YouTube refresh recently: the channel is back with a bang next week.

Stuff I like

📖 Book - Strange Pictures by Uketsu
I forgot to recommend this earlier in the year — it’s a fascinating (short) read from a faceless Japanese author who started out posted his picture-based mysteries on YouTube. It’s based on an idea I haven’t seen before: each of the four short stories in the book contains some odd, hand-drawn illustration, the meaning of which you’re invited to unravel before the story goes on. I didn’t work any of it out, but I read the book in about 24 hours, which is usually a good sign. I won’t say too much more, in case you read it (if any of this sounds appealling, you should).

📝 Article - 15 Brilliant Venn Diagrams
I love a good Venn diagram, and these are inventively delightful.

🎶 Hype Music - Stealing Fat by the Dust Brothers
I rediscovered this earlier in the week and remembered just how incredible it made the opening of Fight Club feel at the time — it’s perfect for the sort of unhinged, relentless, out-of-control vibe that the rest of the film goes on to cultivate. At 2:22 with a 53 second preamble before the mad bit kicks in, it’s also just about perfect for hitting a PB on a 500m row, or just running to the gym really fast.

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