The hazards of diving in the shallows

That shell wasn’t really there. If it were, someone would have already picked it up. (Image by seth0s)

If you look up a common question on the Internet (“How to lose ten pounds,” “How to save money,” “How to quit smoking,”), you are likely to find many results.

The thing is, all of these results are the same. Page after page of the same tips, the same benign encouragement.

Finding something deeper is can be hard. You might not even know that it’s out there, but it must be. I know this because the “top ten tips” articles in my own areas of expertise are all but useless, and sometimes downright misleading or wrong.

If you want to learn more than the conventional wisdom, you need to find someone who is so passionate about the topic at hand — such a nerd — that they’ve gone past the superficial into the profound. Their work is buried in the search results because they’ve taken such a deep dive into a topic that it no longer has broad appeal. However, for the person who seeks to understand, these people are offering gems of insight.

One of my favorite articles on the Internet won’t come up in search results because it doesn’t have strong keywords. It’s a contrarian perspective on minimalism, worlds away from “Ten ways to make do with less.” I don’t even remember how I found it, and finding it again when I’ve lost the link has always been challenging. This humble Tumblr post is not trying to sell me anything, so it’s not following the rules that would help it to rank higher in search engines. It makes its point in spare, elegant prose and leaves you thinking. It’s not for everyone. And it’s just what I was looking for.

Some of the most useful information in the world isn’t even on the Internet. It’s available only from skilled practitioners who are too busy teaching or coaching to write click-baity articles, or it’s found in out-of-print books that had too unique a perspective to find widespread commercial potential.

This is important to talk about because for people under the age of twenty-five, the Internet has always existed. Anything known can be found in the Internet, right? But my point is that, no, not everything known can be found on the Internet, and not everything on the Internet can be found. So if you want to go beyond the basics, you have to work harder. You have to question the way everyone says a thing is done in order to discover how it’s really done. You have to over-invest in your desired field, sifting through the chaff to find the kernels of truth.

You’re not going to get rich by shifting your credit card balances to promotional cards with a 0% rate. You’re not going to get healthy by switching to diet soda. And you’re not going to get control of your email by making a bunch of labels. These are seemingly useful tips and tricks that obscure deeper realities instead of creating pathways toward them.

To find what is true, we can consult the people who have done what we seek to do. Even then, the advice they give us may simply be a reflection of their personal experience. We might have to measure its validity based on the results we get and not simply take their word for it.

Information has never been easier to find. But good information still takes some effort to uncover. Like any good quest, there will be twists and turns and blind alleys. However, if you’re expecting them, you won’t get frustrated; even more critically, you won’t stop at a dead end that seems like the destination. You’ll keep progressing until you find what you’re looking for.

When you do, I hope you’ll share what you’ve learned. We all could benefit.