What is a Lindy Library?

I stumbled across The Lindy Effect a few months back and it’s reshaping the way I view my content and media digest.

The Lindy Effect states that the longer an idea, piece of literature or technology has existed, the longer it will continue to exist into the future. This revolves around the concept of staying power and resilience. If the idea is well founded it will have been tested and hard to disprove, leading to its longevity.

This means we can filter enduring ideas or information from fleeting ideas using this lens.

The easiest examples of this to understand are books.

• The King James Bible

• The Art of War

• Hamlet

Or more recently:

• How to Win Friends and Influence People

• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

• The Lord of the Rings

I’m using this concept to create a new starting point for what and how I consume content. The majority of your content digest is made up of things that are created in the last 24 hours.

The Perpetual Now.

Tiktoks. News. YouTube subscriptions. Live streams. Just released on Netflix.

This content rarely impacts your long term worldview or improves your life in any way outside of temporary enjoyment or distraction.

Don’t get me wrong, there is certainly a place for that but when you’re looking for tried and tested ideas, these might not be the best places to search.

Here’s how I’m using The Lindy Effect:

1. I’ve been vocal about this in the past but I rarely consume news outside of headlines I collect from passive browsing.

2. My tiktok digest consists of 15 minutes worth of dog, baby, Eras Tour and cooking videos in the morning with my wife while we drink our coffee.

3. If I’m planning on reading multiple books about the same topic with equal renown I’ll try and pick the older one.

   1. Most books or videos in the personal improvement space are the same information packaged differently.

   2. I might do a follow up newsletter soon on why I’m going back to not reading much moving forward. Doing > Learning.

4. I aim to listen to podcasts or YouTube content from people with multi-year track records.

5. I’m building a library of books, videos, podcasts and ideas that I can continually reference to build my knowledge.

There is approximately 700,000 hours of content uploaded to YouTube every single day. The world is designed for you to be an endless consumer of mindless content. The smartest people I know are the ones with the best knowledge filters, knowing how to find the best information.

The Lindy Effect is one of those filters that I’m excited to apply to my own life.

Did you learn something new? Think someone you know could benefit from this post? Help them by sharing it 👇