A few months earlier, in March of 2012, I had received an email from a literary agent. Perhaps people were drawn to the structure that such rules imply. Perhaps I struck the right balance between the familiar and the unfamiliar while formulating the rules. So, I paid attention to the results, and thought about the reasons for that answer_s disproportionate success. Their opinions are spontaneous and unbiased. They_re disinterested, in the best sense. Nonetheless, Quora provides market research at its finest.
I had put a fair bit of care into all the sixty or so answers I submitted in the few months surrounding that post. It was not obvious to me when I wrote the list of rules for living that it was going to perform so well. My procrastination-induced musings hit a nerve.
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Only a few hundred of the roughly six hundred thousand questions on Quora have cracked the two-thousand-upvote barrier. To date, my answer to _What are the most valuable things _ has been viewed by a hundred and twenty thousand people and been upvoted twenty-three hundred times. We can just close the site now._ Students at the University of Toronto, where I teach, came up to me and told me how much they liked it. They said such things as _I_m definitely printing this list out and keeping it as a reference. The Quora readers appeared pleased with this list. Soon after, I answered another question: _What are the most valuable things everyone should know?_ I wrote a list of rules, or maxims some dead serious, some tongue-in-cheek_Be grateful in spite of your suffering,_ _Do not do things that you hate,_ _Do not hide things in the fog,_ and so on. On such sites, most answers receive very little attention, while a tiny minority become disproportionately popular. As of July 2017, as I write this_and five years after I addressed _What makes life more meaningful?_my answer to that question has received a relatively small audience (14,000 views, and 133 upvotes), while my response to the question about aging has been viewed by 7,200 people and received 36 upvotes. Only a small minority of those who view an answer upvote it. Thus, you can determine your reach, and see what people think of your ideas.
I considered, and eventually answered, such questions as _What_s the difference between being happy and being content?_, _What things get better as you age?_ and _What makes life more meaningful?_ Quora tells you how many people have viewed your answer and how many upvotes you received. When I was taking a break (or avoiding work), I often turned to Quora, looking for questions to engage with. The discussion was often compelling, and it was interesting to see the diverse range of opinions generated by the same question. In this manner, the most useful answers rise to the top, while the others sink into oblivion. Readers upvote those answers they like, and downvote those they don_t. On Quora, anyone can ask a question, of any sort_and anyone can answer. In 2012, I started contributing to a website called Quora. Overture This book has a short history and a long history.