The Struggle Of Sharing

The release ratio is something I read about almost two years ago, and it has stuck in my mind ever since. It's a concept written about by Lawrance Yeo in his blog "More to That" that simply states that the release ratio of the stuff in your brain is the knowledge you share divided by the knowledge you consume. I always imagined that our minds are like a balloon: when we read a book, see a video, or listen to a podcast, we gradually fill this balloon with the content we preserve, and we keep doing that until we can not learn anymore. So it pops and scatters all the information we learned into the void, just to end up where we started, with nothing. That article put a name to this idea I have and showed how to solve this problem: simply increase the release ratio of our mind. Which means when you consume something new and not sharing what you learn with others or creating something meaningful with it results in zero added value. Because of that, the equation goes like this: the time spent sharing/creating (which you did none of) divided by the time you spent consuming the knowledge equals zero. Simple math, right? No value really gained keeping the things you learned to yourself unless you share it somehow. The goal at last is to poke a small hole in that balloon to keep new air flowing and some for passing to learn new interesting stuff. Just keep it above zero. 

2021 was the year I consumed the most content and information that the human mind can handle (I think). Like, I used to watch a science video, read an article, and listen to a podcast episode for 5 days a week! So each time my mind explodes, I start refilling it again while not really learning anything. Until the beginning of the next year when looking back on the previous year, realizing that nothing really happened that stuck with me compared to the amount of content I was consuming! In order to fix this, I started writing articles and short paragraphs of every single thing I learned and kept it to myself. Despite that, it really paid off. The things will linger a bit longer in my mind, and I was able to think about them more, and when seeing someone, I have something valuable to say. It was not enough. I did decrease the amount of things, but I started learning more from the little things I see or hear, so I needed a bigger audience. Not in the sense of numbers but in the sense of responsibility and commitment that I have to add value or what am I doing. Three months after reading the article and at the beginning of my second academic year, I created an X account devoted to achieving this goal, sharing to a bigger audience. Sadly, three weeks later, I turned it into private and removed the 11 followers from the account. In a nutshell, I hated sharing and could not do it. I am a private person in nature, and having a known social media account assigned with my name on it felt like violating that even though I was sharing only the things I learned, but it still felt the same, and that  I was wasting valuable time can be spent elsewhere.

All credit goes to Austin Kelon. Now that I am back and trying to be more engaged for writing the book "Show Your Work." I liked every single idea he presented, and it did show me that sharing meant to be part of something bigger, contributing to the boundless institution of meaningful experiences and knowledge. How that everything I learned or I am about to learn in the future because of people sharing their work. When you take something, you have to give back one way or another. Sharing on social media does not necessarily mean wanting the attention or exposing your privacy like I always thought; on the contrary, it can make your journey more impactful, as well as enabling you to come across interesting people you will never meet otherwise. 

Now while writing I am realising that the article was a necessity to help me become better at this, more than just sharing. So this is my way of giving back. I do believe that I am not sharing my journey enough to make it more fun or interesting to me. Still, I am really glad that I know it will help and i can say that while really believing it. To giving back!

 Thanks for reading.

P.S.: Wait for a second, maybe third post for this month, because of missing the last one.

Resources: 

The Release Ratio: How to Make Use of Everything You Know

By Lawrence Yeo 

Show Your Work!: 10 ways to share your creativity and get discovered

 By Austin Kleon