Photo: Marya

A couple of my friends have told me that Pedantic Posts is the only blog they read. I was shocked that these very intelligent people don’t take advantage of this relatively new communication medium. I personally only started reading blogs a few years ago (and thought the word “blog” moronic at the time), but since have come to realize how valuable they are as a source of information. Here are the top 3 reasons:

An opportunity to hang out with people much smarter than you
Some incredibly smart people are willing to share their thoughts online for everyone to enjoy. Individuals such as marketing guru Seth Godin, venture capitalist Fred Wilson, serial entrepreneur Marc Andreesen, and the capricious Tim Ferriss. No matter the subject that interests you, there is probably an expert blogging about it.

You may be blessed to hang around brilliant individuals in both your business and personal life. Even if this is the case, odds are you only discuss the same handful of things over and over again, which leads us to the next reason to read blogs.

Exposure to new ideas
One of the first things I learned about via blogs was polyphasic sleep (where you sleep 20-30 minutes every 3-4 hours). While I am not personally interested in drastically changing my sleep schedule, I enjoyed reading about this new idea. I realized there are people in this world doing interesting things and sharing them in the form of short posts that take less than 10 minutes to read.

To speak in generalities, we surround ourselves with friends who are similar to ourselves. Blogs give us the opportunity to diversify our exposure better than any other medium.

The main advantage: brevity
There are other ways to gain exposure to new ideas – books exist for every topic you can imagine. But blog posts have the advantage of being much shorter. They give you exposure to the idea while not taking up a significant portion of your life. If you are interested in learning more about the subject you can research further online or pick up a book at your local library.

You should take advantage of this brevity. I don’t know much about world affairs or foreign policy, nor would I list either as an interest of mine. Because I know I don’t want to read humongous books on the topic, I would much rather seek out a blog to keep me informed. Thomas Friedman’s New York Times opinion articles are effectively blog posts in the newspaper every few days, and serve as my only exposure to foreign policy and most foreign affairs.

Another example is Ron Paul who comes off as an loony on TV because he spouts numerous radical ideas in only 3 minutes of air time. If you want to judge anyone you should attempt to understand where they are coming from – once again bloggers are the best source for short articles about everything Ron Paul believes in.

In closing
You should try to hang around smart people as much as possible and expose yourself to new ideas – blogs are the the most efficient way. Hopefully, the benefits allow you to overlook the awkward appellation “blogs” and you come to appreciate them as much as I have.