You Need a Content Tap
Trading the “Fountain of Knowledge” for the “Fountain of Junk”
The way we interact with content on the internet today is unsustainable. Before smart phones and always on devices you needed to:
- Sit at your computer desk
- Turn the computer on
- Wait for it to boot up
- Connect to the internet
- Navigate to a website
- Look at the content on said website
- Navigate to another website
- Repeat
The pre-smartphone era of the internet gave us access to the “fountain of knowledge” and our physical environment provided the “tap” for how much we could consume at once.
Today, consumption of content online has moved from that slow flow to standing in front of a firehose. Smartphones and always on devices mean unlimited content is only seconds away.
Many of us don’t realise our mindless scrolling is a firehose that batters our minds, inducing stress and anxiety. If the quality of this content was good then maybe there could be an argument for it being a positive but it is increasingly poor quality.
Many of us now drink from this “fountain of junk” that we call “social” media. Calling it drinking might be giving it too much of an air of grace. It’s more akin to shoving the firehose in our mouths and being inflated like a cartoon. We fry ourselves on dopamine and trigger our fight or flight, severely impacting our ability to think critically.
We change fountains but not our habits
For as long as the fountain of junk has existed there have been people trying to rediscover the goodness of the fountain of knowledge. They reduce their consumption from the fountain of junk and turn back to the fountain of knowledge. But a lot bring bad habits with them.
The smartphone era has broken the tap on our metaphorical fountains. We have become so used to being blasted by the firehose that we hook it up to the fountain of knowledge.
Going on a content binge outside of the social media sphere is hampered by needing to spend longer than 60 seconds on a piece of content. We can’t shove it down our intellectual gullets quick enough, causing friction (mental constipation, if you will) that turns us back to the fountain of junk.
While we take a right step in preferring the fountain of knowledge we fail to fix the tap, leaving them at full blast. There are plenty of types of taps. RSS feeds, content via email, AI summarisation, etc. But none of them work if we allow them to flow freely.
Speaking from experience, I have set up an RSS reader multiple times but then added far too many feeds. The result is a dread inducing experience, hundreds of pieces of content daily taking anywhere from 5-30 minutes of my life to process and digest. And because I curated them to land in my inbox I feel obliged to interact with each one.
We need to learn to limit the volume of content we interact with.
We need to let go of our content addictions
For many, the idea of turning the tap down triggers a fight or flight response.
What if I miss a crucial piece of information?
I won’t be able to keep up with my chosen interests
If I’m not in the loop then I’m not in control
These are all instinctive responses I have had when confronted with the idea of slowing the flow.
But to experience life in a healthy way we need to accept our limitations.
Having unfettered access to the fountain of knowledge fools us into thinking we can drink widely and deeply at the same time, but we can only pick one direction.
We live in an unprecedented period of access to knowledge, and that should be celebrated. Feel free to drink widely if your interests are varied but don’t expect to master them all. Feel free to limit yourself to specific topics and drink deeply from their flows. But doing both at the same time will knock you off your feet.
How to turn the tap down
Without trying to move into “how-to” territory I want to suggest some ways to begin to slow the flow that have worked for me.
These suggestions are focused on RSS which I think is the best way for many people, but the principles should apply for different mediums of consumption.
1. Figure out what is most important
This is the hardest of the 3 but the most important. It’s fun to have a wide variety of interests (mine change almost weekly) but there is a limit on how many you can entertain at one time.
Figuring out what is most important requires time away from consumption and instead think about what matters most.
You may want to use a model like Feynman’s 12 problems, take inspiration from each area of your life or simply commit yourself to a fixed number of topics.
A trap we can fall into when moving back to the fountain of knowledge is that the content we consume must always be intellectually beneficial. Consuming only long-form, intellectual content daily can be mentally taxing.
There is nothing wrong with enjoying short-form, entertainment content when it is mindfully consumed. You can “subscribe” to Youtube channels via RSS and watch from within your reader, protecting you from the allure of the “next up” rabbit hole.
One of the main uses of my RSS reader is to subscribe to Mastodon hashtags that I find interesting. The medium of an RSS reader lets me filter what I see and focus on what truly matters.
By taking this initial step you provide turn your tap down in the most significant way. Allowing you to focus on what truly matters and benefits you.
2. Quality over quantity
Even with a refined list of topics/areas we can let the tap flow too freely. When I started using RSS I would add as many feeds as possible. This left me with a mountain of content each day that I felt obligated to work through.
My challenge to you is to ask yourself: “do I really need this feed?”. Two of my criteria for answering this question are:
- Does it provide unique value that I cannot get from a source I already consume?
- Does it provide too much content? Am I able to adequately find content I want?
Another question I ask myself about the state of my RSS feeds in general is:
Do I feel happiness or dread when I open my reader?
If it’s dread, I’m trying to consume too much and I need to reduce the amount of feeds. You’ve probably experienced this as well but are paralysed by the fight or flight thought:
I can’t remove any of my feeds. They all provide too much quality!
No amount of quality is worth the psychological toll it takes if reading becomes a negative.
3. Make your reader your inbox
My final suggestion is to make your RSS reader an inbox rather than a reader. Despite being called readers I’ve found most actually function like an inbox. Typical behaviour of readers is that once you’ve clicked on an item it gets marked as “read”, hiding that item in the archive that you never visit.
This pattern enforces a psychologically stressful situation:
I need to read this article now or mark it as unread and make my reading pile bigger!
Instead of seeing your RSS inbox as a list that you must read. See it as a way to separate the interesting from the boring. Does a headline or the first few sentences intrigue you? Send it to a “to-read” pile. This might be tools such as Pocket or Instapaper or some other invention of yours.
The idea is that you should be able to get through your RSS inbox in a few minutes each day. Picking out content that you truly want for consumption later in the day.
If you’ve been discerning enough, when you come to your “to-read” pile you’ll be greeted with an array of content that you can dive into at your leisure. Allowing you to sip freely from the fountain of knowledge.
The way we consume can improve our world
I whole-heartedly agree that as knowledge has become more readily available our ability to absorb it has reduced.
As a society we have failed each other in providing the mental models, motivations and tools to consume knowledge. I can only imagine what our world would look like if we spent more time thinking and connecting with each others ideas than the latest TikTok trend.
My hope is that as we start to become disillusioned with social media we work together to make the internet a more wonderful place for future generations.