Healthy Consumption
My previous post about balancing the scales painted consuming as all bad and I think in comparison to creation that is mostly the case but like most things there are spectrums of consumption and some are worse than others.
The healthiness aspect of consumption is directly related to it’s proximity to creation. If I am consuming a tutorial with the explicit intent to immediately use that knowledge on the path to creating something then that’s about as good as it can get when it comes to consuming.
The next best is something that improves some aspect of your life but you still need to implement it into your life in some way. Reading something and then writing about what your particular views are on it is a good way to make consuming something even better for you. If I merely consume and move on to the next thing and consume again I would say it’s not helping my life, sure, some knowledge might pop up again but I do think I lose access to that information unless I create on top of that knowledge or ruminate on it constantly.
Another aspect of healthiness is length of content and not multi-tasking during the consumption of the material. Some people would declare movies as strictly waste or bad use of my time but I disagree. Narratives are powerful so it depends on what story the movie is attempting to tell and also if I am keeping my attention on the movie. The attention aspect is important because of the amount of things reaching for it currently and the more you can curate what actually gets your attention the better. The longer you can focus on something the better, don’t burn out your dopamine receptors with quick hitter content.
So, to summarize, there are aspects of healthy consumption. The closer it is to creation the better, i.e. consuming a tutorial I am planning on using immediately is good consumption. Write or create immediately after consuming something, even if it wasn’t for the explicit reason to create something, it will help solidify and give a reason for the consumption. Length of material matters, focusing for long periods of time on something, even if it’s a fictional movie is better than other forms of consumption.
Unhealthy Consumption
The worst form of consumption is probably intuitive for everyone, it is the YouTube Shorts, it’s the TikToks, it’s the quick repetitive dose of dopamine that is shortening attention spans but is still gripping in the long term. Trust me, I’ve been there, YouTube Shorts start and somehow I’ve watched three hours before being able to finally exit the app. It feels terrible, everyone has been there, you haven’t done it in a while, you’re stressed out, you need a break, I deserve to do this for a little bit. It actually feels like a drug. If I have to consume something where I want my mind to relax and relieve some stress then I need to watch some long content and leave the phone away from me.
Shorts are the absolute worst but the next worst is still probably on YouTube. It’s something slightly helpful or informative but it’s a 10 to 15 minute video, I speed up to 2x speed so I can consume it faster. I don’t ever use it but found it entertaining and useful at the time, possibly keeping my phone near me so I can look at that when the entertainment value of the video lulls. It’s also not a good feeling to come out of this consuming pattern. I tend to feel more tired than when I started doing this and usually it’s for hours at a time.
Tutorials or longform content that is supposed to be helpful, even 1+ hour. Courses where I’m getting into the groove of simply consuming course content but never using the skills gained. This is another way to fall into feeling productive while not being productive at all. This was my biggest addiction for a while but I’ve seen how useless learning things can be if I don’t attempt to do anything with the knowledge shortly after, I lose the skills quickly.
Tools to Curb Unhealthy Consumption
The best tool is simply understanding that some forms of consumption are good and some are bad for you and need to be curbed. A lot of people simply shrug at their habits of falling down shortform content consumption and don’t understand that actual harm they are inflicting on themselves.
Another thing that has helped me immensely is getting rid of the apps off of my phone. I use YouTube via Brave browser on my phone and block short content, I did the same on my iPad. I have Focus YouTube extensions on my Computer that block suggestion and only show my subscriptions.
The understanding that taking courses, trainings, and classes without the goal to immediately start producing something with the knowledge gained from these was enough to stop going down this path for me.
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