In Defence Of Long-Form Content
Why we must prioritise depth and avoid a reel-only diet
Hi,
Many people wonder why they should invest hours in books or podcasts.
Here’s my detailed defense, or rather, an aggressive testimonial for prioritizing long form:
All ideas and concepts suffer dilution when you go short-form. Just like the map is not the territory, a short-form rendition of an idea is a very, very hazy approximation of a big idea that misses crucial details. If you try to reduce an argument that was made over a dense 300-page book to a 5-minute article, you lose significant amounts of depth. When you reduce it to a reel, you lose almost everything and can barely communicate just the outline.
All short-form content is therefore, at best, a flirtation if the end goal is to go deeper into ideas and get a firm grasp. A reel or an article can only act as an advertisement for the viewer to go deeper with books, papers, and longer forms of discussion. A short video is a summary of a summary of a summary- and you can imagine how much detail this third-order derivative must be missing. You don’t want to base your worldview on it.
Moreover, the devil is always in the details. A big idea may be presented in a fascinating reel, but what’s more important than the interesting illustrative anecdote is the causal factors, the edge cases & exceptions, the conditions under which it works & breaks, the details of the research/argumentation which led to the idea, case studies and, most importantly, criticism. Just like a friend offering one-line advice to your complicated relationship issue appears so shallow that you feel like punching their nose, short-form content can often be very superficial and misses going into all the crucial details needed to upgrade one’s thinking.
Long-form encourages you to take pauses when you go through the details behind an idea. Those pauses are essential for grappling with explanations. They provide time for you to reason with them and improve your own thinking. They also allow us to find analogies, which improve understanding and enhance our ability to make creative connections. Short form misses all of that- because it’s so short it’s over before you can blink and offers little food for thought. To get quality brain food that your mind can nibble with, you need depth. Not shorts.
And finally, long-form is essential for the very thing it promotes: patience and perseverance. Ideas can’t be served on a platter- those that can be aren’t deep enough to make any meaningful dent in your worldview. Ideas that impact your life require time and patience. It requires you to wrestle with words and thoughts. And more than anything, this intellectual wrestling promotes patience- something that’s more important than ever for people who are wired for a dopamine hit every 10 seconds. Go long-form and build the muscle that’s needed for a good attention span, for a decreased need for constant stimulus.
For people who intend to shape ideas and be shaped by them, long-form is crucial.
So when something seems fascinating, don’t feel content to just watch a reel and feel good about it.
Warren Buffet said, “Be greedy when others are fearful”. Similarly, consume long-form when everyone’s swiping.
Defy our culture’s war on attention, ignore the endless noise, and go for depth.
Depth defies mediocrity.
Without depth, there’s no wisdom.
Do what the wise do. Dive into ideas, go down rabbit holes, and don’t come back till you’ve wrestled with them. That’s where the alpha is.
Inspired to go deep and read some great books? Here are some solid ones to pick from:
World Fiction Recommendations [Popular]
5 More Book Recommendations- Just Pick One And Begin
good, the irony of this is that its a short read, that many will skim, but yet, defy that, defy cretinisation, go deep.