Wow. It’s been a nuts week. If you missed it, we were at CES where we did about 50 videos, two hours of video content, had about a month’s worth of video views and all-in-all had a nuts time.
I’m so happy for how everything has gone, and am thankful for our team both on and off site. Not to mention Wendy Gorman of the CEA, who hooked everything up for our studio.
I can’t describe how happy I am, and am thankful for everyone who’s supported TechVi thus far. Thank you so much.
So what really scares me? It’s the rise of fast food content that will surely, over time, destroy the mom and pop operations that hand craft their content today.
The crux of the issue? Essentially content that’s even less thought out and less produced than TechCrunch will soon replace it as the go-to source for news and info.
I can’t wait.
Ever since the invention and stabilization of CNN-esque 24-hour-news in the ’80s, we’ve seen countless attempts at getting the news to consumers as fast as possible. The pendulum started swinging away from month-long lead times at magazines and to instant analysis “journalism” ala the now ubiquitous panel format seen at most news networks and other places like, well, TechVi.
As news nerds know, the real problem with true news speed is with every iteration, there’s a loss of depth. You can’t have quick and perfectly covered, you get to choose to be 60 Minutes or in-the-now news.
As speedy bottom-feeding SEO-driven news comes to its inevitable head, I’ve been talking to a plethora of people who feel like there’s going to be pent up demand for in-depth journalism. At some point, we hope anyway, the pendulum hits its limit, and real content producers who actually are creating information to be consumed will start to be rewarded as taste swings from Cheetos to steak.
The problem with my hypothesis? That assumes regular people can tell the difference, and more to the point, want to tell a difference. Regular people will eventually seek out knowledge, rather than just take whatever’s given to them.
To some extent, just like the sales of Cheetos not directly relating to the sales of steak, both tastes can coexist, though the snack-food consumers will largely outnumber the slow-cooked connoisseur.
And more to the point, realistically, the future rarely moves in extremes. Sure, I’d love to take the side of the argument that says we’re going to hit a breaking point and see well reported content make a comeback, I’m also not stupid enough to expect my pendulum call to be the right one. I’m expecting the future to reward top-shelfers who try hard (TechCrunch still breaks a ton of stories, Gawker is still extremely interesting, and Engadget, especially with the latest redesign, still looks / reads great) while bottom feeders continue to troll the bottom and eventually find robots can write stories for free.
Real content producers just need to be able to stick through the muck, and survive through this transition. Oh, and being innovative (video, perhaps?) might not hurt either.
The real problem is breaking into journalism / content producing will become more and more difficult for people who want an established track. It’s already hugely difficult for anyone who isn’t going to take risks to get into content production as a career, but it’s just going to get worse. But as the blog crusades showed, Arringtons and Rojases of the world can come out of the woodwork, but people who just go to J-School and then graduate, expecting a lengthy, well paying career, will have to wait a bit (years) before that track is truly clear.
Create, innovate or sit on the sidelines. It’s your call.
So thanks to thanksgiving, some job-related travel, and other annoyingness… I’ve stopped polyphasic sleeping. Its hard to keep up when traveling, and dealing with other regular sleepers. I haven’t yet decided when I’m going to restart it, but it’s going to be soon. And when I do, I’ll be blogging it again. I think you pick up some sort of immunity, because when I did wake up early this week, it wasn’t difficult to stay awake. I’m hoping that’s really the case, and I end up falling back into polyphasic sleep soon.
As an aside, it was exactly 90 days of polyphasic sleeping. Go figure!
Funny night last night. Went to bed around 10:30 or 11, expected to wake up at 2.
Actually woke up at 5, with iPod touch (alarm clock) in bed beneath me.
I’m assuming the ‘oversleep’ was due to a lack of quality napping the day before. Seems like my naps have been decreasing in quality ever since the sleep deprivation symptoms went away. Funny? Maybe. Sad? Also maybe. I really miss the feeling of going to sleep in 5 minutes or less, and then having multiple dreams.
Sometimes during my sleep dep phase, I’d have like 2 full hours worth of dreams in 15 minutes. That freaked me out really badly. Now, I tend to barely sleep . If I do sleep, it feels great. If I don’t sleep, well, today happens.
Luckily 6 hours of sleep is still not bad. That still puts me up at 8am EST time, which is when most EST-ers get in the office. I can live with those oversleeps, no matter how bizarre.
From the beginning, one of my biggest hurdles with polyphasic sleep is the Saturday Morning conundrum. Basically when I wake up, there’s nothing good on TV, I don’t feel like working, and realistically there’s not much for me to do by myself.
2-7am is my “by myself” time. Typically its spent in the pursuit of some work-related goals during the week, but on Saturday mornings I catch up on lots of things I missed during the week, like old episodes of 60 minutes, SNL, and other comedies that I don’t have time for. (30 Rock!)
I used to sleep on Saturday mornings, but every time I “oversleep,” aka get a regular amount of sleep, it worries me that I’m going to get back into that habit, which is fairly easy to do.
On top of that, if I’m going to be by myself for an entire day, like today, since my wife is working, it really gives me less incentive to do the polyphasic sleep thing.
But I do it anyway. I’m addicted to the benefits. It’s sort of like some bad habit– and some could argue it is a bad habit in itself– but I want it for all the right reasons. I like having more time. I like being on east coast time with my west coast family. I enjoy fixing problems with my business earlier than the rest of the world. I’m thinking that the only advantages I really have are the ones I create, so the more I create, the better I’ll do.
That’s what I tell myself, anyway– when I’m alone on Saturday mornings.
Wow, 44 days. That’s gotta be some sort of milestone.
Woke up on time today, at 2am. Got about 3 hours of “real” sleep, since I was lying down at about 9:30 but consciously remember looking at the clock at 11. (Probably some light sleep from 9:30-11.)
One thing I’ve noticed is that if I do wake up at 2am and commit to being awake, it’s not really hard anymore. I don’t have the same loss of function that I did in the first three weeks.
Also, my body is much more flexible to my needs. If I feel like sleeping in for a few hours and getting a full night’s rest, I don’t really have any issues the next night. Sometimes I’ll forget to nap, which leads to more issues the next day, but that’s not really an issue as much as it used to be.
My mornings are also longer than they used to be. Even though I’m waking up at 2am, I used to feel like 2am – 7am was much quicker than the 5 hours it really is. I’m still getting a lot done in that time, but yeah.
I’ve also picked up some habits I really wanted to do too. For instance, I get my scriptures read now in the mornings.
I’ve got a full-time employee starting on Nov 1st, and I’m excited because he’s an east coaster. I’m thinking he’s going to do the 6am thing with me, which means we’ll be able to rule the world. Between him, two Philippines based writers, UK-er, and my polyphasic behind, we’re stacked for the morning rush of news.
It’s odd, but I once again slept for a full 8 hours. Seems like I’m almost on a 48 hour schedule where I take naps regularly, and then alternate between shorties and long sleeps.
I’m sort of getting the rest in while I can, because I’ve just picked up another person to work on TechVi, and when he starts, there’s no going back to regular sleep. I’ll really need to be working east coast hours then.
My site had been down over the weekend, and i guess it took my will to polyphasically sleep with it. Friday, Saturday, Sunday and today, I’ve slept regular hours. That means only 1 in 5 days have I slept polyphasically. Hoping to return to the schedule starting tomorrow. Hoping I don’t have to go through adaptation hell again.
So it’s funny… when I decide to “sleep in” now, it’s quite a different and more hillarious thought process.
My wife and her entire family are out of town, meaning I’ll have alone time ALL DAY.
When I had alone time yesterday, it was something that felt odd. Typically, I only have alone time in the mornings from 2-8 or whatever. I love my alone time, but I also love being harassed occasionally by family members because its a great way to liven up my day.
I decided this morning since I was prepping for an entire day of alone time, I was going to sleep in.
Now, my definition of sleeping in is waking up at 7 instead of 2 (or midnight). Which, to be fair, is a huge difference. But, realistically, I’m still a gigantic nerd if I sleep in till 7. Though, my body makes it feel like i slept in till 11am or something if I was a normal person.
It’s a good feeling.
So missed a couple days updating. Here’s what happened.
Tuesday: Woke up at 3am, ended up sleeping till about 6. Wasn’t very fun. I missed a nap the night previous, so it through me off all together.
Wednesday: Woke up at 3am, but felt really refreshed. Did a two napper day. (More like a 1.5 napper, since the last one was only 7-10 minutes.)
Today: Woke up at 12:30. I used to get scared only getting 3 hours of sleep and waking up at 12:30. Today, I felt refreshed, so I went with it. Have some meetings today in San Diego, so I hope I don’t end up regretting it.
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