We’ve got an obsession with ‘newness’. We’ll take the fresh-off-the line, shiny iPhone any day of the week, despite the last year’s model still working perfectly. We’re enamoured with constant progress – or what we see as progress. This rapacious desire for more, newer – why is it our instant assumption that this means it’s better?

It’s incredibly tricky to focus on anything for anything length of time in this age of instantly accessible information. We haven’t evolved to deal with the amount of stimulus we’re dealing with, especially in the way we’re being bombarded with it (more on this here).

I’m currently in the midst of revising for my final exams. Revision is a slow process, little by little strengthening the neural pathways between ideas, seeing how they work together, relaxing and tightening assumptions as you move towards understanding.

I’ve experienced a lot of long, frustrating hours before…