“Initially, social media was a really amazing tool for people to connect with one another,” he said. “I think what’s happened the last five years is, we did connect the world - and everybody is awful,” he said.īefore he was an author, Manson was a blogger, caught up in the excitement of those optimistic internet days of the 2000s. Knowing what to invest energy in caring about and what to ignore has only gotten harder in a time when viral social media posts, click-bait, fake headlines, doxxing, and vicious political partisanship dominate every screen that we look at.Īt the beginning of the internet age, Manson said, “there was so much optimism,” as everyone looked to the World Wide Web as a way to reach across cultural and geographical boundaries to unite vastly different people. This is a lifelong effort, he said, since our values may change as we get older.

“So the goal is to kind of max out your own personal bandwidth - pick a handful of things that you can dedicate your life to, that you can fill up your days, doing something you feel like your time is being spent valuably.” “Our brains have a certain amount of bandwidth, and if you exceed that bandwidth, they freak out, they get anxious … but if you don’t use that bandwidth, you’re not living,” he said. ‘ Moneyball’ author explains how people are gaming the stock market We should identify the things we care about and pursue them, without running ourselves emotionally, mentally, and physically ragged by caring too much about too many things. In an era where we are “constantly bombarded with information” online, Manson said, it’s hard to focus on what matters most to us and shut out the rest. “But that’s not a fun sexy topic - so if you put the f-word on the title, you trick millions of people into thinking about it.”

“It’s a book about values, about what are you choosing to make important in your life, and how are you of what you’re making important,” he told KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson.

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