How do I build an information diet I actually chose?
What reaches you each day was mostly decided by other people — by feeds, by defaults, by what someone else thought would hold your attention. You want to choose it instead.
You want an information diet you actually chose. Notice first that you have one already. It was simply chosen by others, and it is working exactly as designed. In pursuit of learning, something is added every day. In pursuit of the way, something is dropped. Almost all of the advice you will find is about adding better sources. Start with the dropping. First, list what actually reaches you daily. Not what you intend to read — what arrives. Most people are surprised, because the list is longer than they think and shorter on things they chose. Second, remove before you add. Cut the three that consistently leave you agitated and no better informed. You will not miss them; nothing important is only reported in one place. Third, replace pull with pull. A feed pushes; a book, a paper, a person waits until you go to them. Move one item from push to pull and notice how differently it sits. Fourth, allow yourself to be uninformed about most things. This is the hard part, because being uninformed feels like negligence. Attending to everything is the same as attending to nothing. What arrives each day that you never chose?
What changes unlock by starting
- You can see the diet you actually have, rather than the one you meant to have.
- The agitating sources are gone and nothing important was lost.
- Some of what you read waits for you instead of arriving at you.
- Being uninformed about most things stops feeling like a failure.