Resolutions don’t work. That’s why, instead of setting a big resolution-shaped goal every year, I take stock at the end of the year and think about what I liked and didn’t like about how I spent large chunks of my time the year before. Last year, I liked that I spent more time doing nothing and rejecting “hustle culture”. I liked that I traveled a bit more, crossing a few parts of the world off of my bucket list. I liked that I worked with a team of creators to build this home for my ideas on the internet.
I didn’t like that I spent more time watching and reading content that was more entertaining and less intellectually demanding. Spending my time like this didn’t match the story of who I am and of the person I want to be. I attribute my slippage in rigor to four things:
- Lack of accountability. I stopped writing for public consumption, which led me to feel less accountable for what I read.
- Poor discoverability. Accurate and enriching content is becoming much harder to find and more expensive to access.
- Burnout from years of grinding away under the misguided notion that simply working more and working harder would lead to greater professional success. That led me to give into …
- Curiosity about what it would feel like to stop, rest, and let myself read and watch the content I had long been told was junk but the stats showed a consistently growing number of people were consuming.
Working in academia and media led me to take access to quality information for granted. Gratis subscriptions to some of the world’s most incredible publications was a perk … and I worked hard for that perk. Twenty years in, I found myself suffering from a severe bout of burnout, and my brain wanted and needed a break. So, I stepped back from the academic papers and dense long reads, spun up the social media apps, and started scrolling. Besides being tired, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about and experience these tools as a consumer rather than a producer.
My trip (and fall) down the social media rabbit hole was fun and relaxing – until it wasn’t. After a few days, using these apps became, as the research has shown, enervating and depressing. I started buying things I didn’t need (a known problem), and I kept seeing the same types of videos (in some cases the same videos on two different platforms) and typo-riddled screeds over and over again, and I felt exhausted after every scrolling session with nothing to show for it. I also became more argumentative and disagreeable. My breathing got shorter and more labored as the dopamine-inducing jack-in-the-box dynamic where I didn't know (but also kinda’ knew) what the next bit of content would be (would it be political, financial, apocalyptic…?!) kept me on edge. My mind felt crowded and foggy, and I found it got harder and harder to get out of bed in the mornings as my mind slipped into a nihilistic fog.
Gen Z, this Geriatric Millennial sees you.
On the bright side, I discovered what all the fuss was about. I learned how dropshipping, social media marketing (SMM), and influencer sponsorships blend together, creating a fast-changing ecosystem that offers some people (mostly early-adopters and celebrities) a meaningful income stream. I could see first hand how AI slop was beginning to permeate the social media ecosystem. I learned about how people were building creator networks similar to television networks but without all the overhead and corporate consolidation.
I also got to see how the gravitational pull of recommendation algorithms made other perspectives and information invisible, leaving me to feel the world existed within a paradigm that felt good, righteous, and comfortable for me. I also got to see how even the most well-intentioned creators still used emotional manipulation and visual cues to keep their viewers hooked (which is why all YouTube thumbnails have people making an I-was-just-electrocuted face). Most importantly, I got to see the degree to which people are turning their back on pursuing traditional media careers – not that careers are a thing anymore – to make a living farming others’ attention (with some universities changing their curriculum in response).
I haven’t quit social media entirely, because media is my passion, and I want to stay informed about the past, present, and future of the industry. My knowledge of the industry helped me stay present with how my attitude and moods were changing as I consumed more on the apps. My professional background also helped me see that these apps can't feed my need for informative content that pushes me out of my comfort zone, strengthens my mental discipline, and sparks my curiosity. If that’s true for me, it’s likely true for millions of others.
Finding, consuming, and leveraging healthier content, just like healthier food, takes intention, discipline, and a bit of design work. So, let’s work backwards and start with design. When it comes to design, there are five principles that govern how I inject rigor into what I read:
- Pay for content. If you don’t pony up, you’re the pony.
- Watch less, read more. Replace videos with prose.
- Hunt for context. Look for content that answers why something is happening.
- Brave ignorance. If you don’t get it, get into it.
- Seek resistance. Convenience breeds weakness.
When it comes to discipline, change doesn’t happen overnight. Just like a workout routine, you have to start small. You also have to recognize that you’ll fall off the wagon a few times, and you have to give yourself grace for that. Cultivating discipline also means asking for help when you need it. My friend, Katie Harbath who leads Anchor Change (if you haven’t subscribed, you should) is an incredible content creator who digs through very complex subject matter with extraordinary discipline. I ask her for help all the time. Katie is well ahead of me in navigating the current media environment as a creator, which is much more complex, crowded, and vibrant than the one I left.
What about intention? I find intention comes from having a strong why, specifically you’ll have a clear answer to the question “Why am I doing this” where “this” equals:
- Reading this insanely long think tank report
- Combing through this congressional committee transcript
- Sticking with this long read all the way to the end
- Using up all my sticky notes on one book
Your why has to be strong enough to push you through the hard times when you’re tired and don’t want to grind your mind against complex, dry topics. Knowing why you’re putting in the effort converts the discomfort into curiosity and that generates energy you wouldn’t otherwise know you had.
This year, I’m not resolving to read more difficult stuff (I still read hard stuff for work), stop using social media, or write every day. I’m not even resolving to have balance. I’m just making a mental sticky note to leave space to notice what I didn’t like about last year and use that to inform decisions about how I habitually spend my time this year. Take today, for example, rather than come back from the gym and plop down in front of the TV, I sat down to write because I wanted to get clear about my own why for changing how and what I read for the better. Severance season 2 is out, so next weekend may look a little different, and that’s okay.
Here’s what I’m playing with this month:
- I used Feedly for years as my RSS feed, but the ads made me crazy, so I stopped. I’m thinking about signing up for Inoreader (and paying for it – hello, design principle number one).
- I took a look through Futurepedia, and it left me feeling like the only real change happening with consumer AI tools is the pricing. Check out the price hike on Microsoft co-pilot. Then I went to FutureTools and found Digest, which looks like it’s worth a try.
- I’ve gotten a few questions about my company. MarginCall.ai. What is it? What am I doing with it? It is new and still a bit of a sandbox. So I’m going to work on seeing how quickly I can rebuild the site in Canva to make that more clear.
- Research papers are a relatively high-quality source of useful information, but not everyone is trained in how to read them (setting aside the use of AI summarization). I found these two documents – one from Harvard, the other from Stanford that are pretty accessible. Also, this thread on r/IWantToLearn from six years ago held up well.
Copyright notice: No part of this content may be used to train any model of any kind in any way without the author's express permission.
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