I fooled myself for 8 years and you still do

Aayu Kharbanda
2 min readJul 8, 2021

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After consuming content about productivity, we created our definition of productivity and considered some habits as productive which actually aren’t. This article is about one such habit.

The Lie

How many times do you feel more productive by watching/listening to content at 2x speed?

I had this misunderstanding for 8 years of my life.

Why it is not productive?

Content is created to be viewed at 1x. At 2x speed, you complete the content in half the time but the learnings vanish with time.

Since most of your brainpower was used to understand the unnatural high-speed content, we could only store the content temporarily.

The temporary memory fools us into believing that we got the learning.

What if….?

What if the content is too slow or too detailed for you? Why not ‘2x’ it?

If that is the case, then the content is wrong for you.

Instead of trying to make use of bad content, it is better to find content that you can view at 1x.

What to do?

Try different mediums and creators of content. Text, Audio, Video, or Image.

Find the content that works for you. By evaluating the Pros and Cons.

For example — If you need immediate help with your habits. It is best to read a summary of a book instead of rushed reading or 2x listening to the book.

What if you have no option (Highly Unlikely)?

Then do your brain a favor and watch it at 1x or max 1.5x.

Find time for the content don’t try to shrink the content for your time.

Conclusion

We are surrounded by content and we must develop the ability to reject content that is not for us. This will save time and mental energy.

For the framework, I use to avoid crap content. Stay Tuned!

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