Korva is a scroll of the internet’s best ideas.
Time is invested or spent
Spent time
Spent time feels good now and bad later, like scrolling social media or chasing instant gratification.
Invested time
Invested time varies in how it feels in the present but always feels good later. Slowing down, doing hard things, focusing, and being present all fall here.
Time is the most precious asset a person has, so the aim is to invest far more of it than to spend.
Everyday choices
Choosing a night in with family over a big night out, a home-cooked meal over a fancy one, and routine over novelty follows the same logic, as does reading old books over hot takes.
Why is instant gratification so hard to resist?
Behavioral economists have found that people value a reward much more when it is available now than when it is slightly delayed. In experiments, someone who prefers $100 today over $110 in a month will often prefer $110 in 13 months over $100 in 12 months. The same pattern shows up in animals, which suggests it is an old feature of how brains weigh time. Psychologist Walter Mischel's marshmallow studies at Stanford in the 1960s and 1970s made the same tension famous with preschool children.
Why do old books outlast hot takes?
Mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot and later writer Nassim Taleb popularized an idea called the Lindy effect. For things that do not wear out, such as books and ideas, the longer one has already survived, the longer it is expected to keep surviving. A book still read after a century has passed a far tougher filter than one published last month. The name comes from Lindy's delicatessen in New York, where comedians were said to predict how long a show would run by how long it had already run.