Note: This is a work in progress.
Contents
I. INTRO
a. Who am I?
b. What is this guide about?
c. The ground truth
II. FOUR FUNDAMENTALS
a. Stream vs. Batch
b. "Pull" notifications
c. "Done" for the day
d. Be constraint-driven
III. STREAM VS BATCH
a. Infinite streams are bad
b. Batch your consumption
c. Different kinds of batching
IV. "PULL" NOTIFICATIONS
a. The addictive ding
b. Who gets the right to distract you?
c. Adding friction helps
V. "DONE" FOR THE DAY
a. Closure as a physiological need
b. "Newspaper" model
c. Streams don't close. Batch can.
VI. BE CONSTRAINT-DRIVEN
a. Constrains are good
b. Time constrains
c. Quantity constrains
d. Activity constraints
VII. CLOSING THOUGHTS
a. Build your protocol
b. Rules > Habits
c. Devaluing FOMO
I. INTRO
a. Who am I?
At the time of writing, I'm a software engineer with a voracious appetite for digital content. Mostly published essays, personal blogs, video essays and occasionally a podcast. This has not always been the case: there have been periods when I succumbed to doomscrolling, aimless meanderings through social media feeds and random clickhole journeys.
b. What is this guide about?
Think of this guide as my field-notes from building simple systems to help with these things:
- avoid being overwhelmed by all the content streaming at us across dozens of platforms
- build a healthy reading/watching habit that nourishes us instead of creating FOMO, anxiety and depression
- identify the basic dark patterns platforms use to lure us in, make us addicted by hacking our brains/behaviours. And deflect those patterns easily
The ideas, steps and pointers in this guide continue to help me. By no means are these general or globally applicable: but my guess is that these are generic enough for you to use and tweak as required.
c. The ground truth
Some basic facts to consider before going any further.
Infinite content is the systemic default. And it's patently bad.
Platforms need to make money. Either you, the user, give them the money or you give them something else that they convert into money. That something happens to be your attention. You spend your attention automatically when there is new, interesting content. And therefore, platforms stream infinite content at you. This is the systemic default. They are not going to stop this (unless law requires them to).
Generative AI is here to stay.
And it is going to make things infinitely worse for content consumers without a personal protocol.
Acting is spending but you don't look at it that way.
Notice what user-experience is made easy. Those are the things that are generally problematic. Following or subscribing to someone is a tap away. So is liking a piece of content. These are made easy because these help the platforms suck you deeper into themselves. The antidote is being very intentional, very conscious. If your actions are dollars that you spend, how careful would you be before doing those actions, spending those dollars?
II. FOUR FUNDAMENTALS
a. Stream vs. Batch
The most basic fundamental idea is this: almost every content platform streams content at us — an infinite stream which enables doomscrolling.
The counterpoint to this is to "batch" consume content and abandon the stream.
Streaming hacks our brains, dulls our cognitive abilities and causes fatigue. Batching hands us back the control of what we consume, how much we consume, and when we consume it.
b. "Pull" notifications
todo:
- push notifications distract. the ding is addictive.
- turn off almost all notifications. define and keep essentials (alarm, phone/sms, specific calendar events, real/physical emergency)
- fundamental idea: add friction to letting yourself be distracted
c. "Done" for the day
There was an internet where you scrolled down a few times and then you reached the end. There was no more content to see for the day so you went back to do something else. This is no longer the case.
The feeling of closure is necessary for us to lessen (or get rid of) the information overload and anxiety we feel today. Digital content is never-ending (and "streams" exacerbate this problem). The "end" has to come from us.
The best analogy is to think of old-school, print newspapers (or even print magazines). You picked one, skimmed through the headlines, read more of what you were interested in, and then that's it. Done.
d. Be constraint-driven
Constraint-driven consumption is the antidote to losing time to online digital content. The lack of a "cap" on time or quantity of content consumed leads to all kinds of issues dealing with digital consumption.
Constraints can be time-constraints (1hr of social media content consumption a day) and quantity-constraint (x number of videos or blogposts or essays per day).
Lots of tools to help with both kinds of constraints.
III. STREAM VS BATCH
a. Infinite streams are bad
We can trace most of the problems emanating from online content to this "feature" of infinite, endlessly scrollable content. There are different names for it: feed, timeline, threads, whatever.
Infinite content stream enables doomscrolling. It paves the way for shortform content that is addictive because it hacks into the dopamine-hit workflows.
Infinite streams make us lose time without us knowing. If you had to click on a page number, there is a visual cue (the page number) and a haptic action (you have to click or tap). That action and visual serve as an explicit indication of how long you've been online; but infinite streams deceptively remove these cues.
b. Batch your consumption
The antidote to infinite streams is to batch your consumption.
If you are reading or watching off of a "read/watch later" list, you cap it to, say, 5-10 videos/essays a day. If you are "doomscrolling" down a timeline, you can batch all timeline/newsfeed scrolling to an hour a day max, with the hour not spread into minutes but a single, dedicated hour.
Batching appears to be the only way currently to battle the dark pattern designs that cause doomscrolling, short attention spans and all sorts of addictive habits towards online content.
c. Different kinds of batching
You can batch by quantum of time or by the number of "links" you check out (read, watch or listen). It sounds simple enough but figuring this out and finding what works best for you is crucial to actually make this work for your benefit.
Some content, like social media "streams", are best batched by a time quantum. Say, 25 minutes of social media time a day. When I say 25 minutes, I do not mean 5 discontinuous periods of 5 minutes each. This defeats the purpose of batching (which is, focus your attention on one task for a decently-long duration). When we say 25 minutes of social media time a day, it's one continuous 25-minute duration.
The other kind is to batch by quantum of links. Suppose you have a bunch of links — blogposts, news, essays, op-eds, videos — to catch up on. You decide to read/watch/listen to, say, 15 of those in a day. That's it. No more.
(In case you're wondering about the FOMO emanating from missing out on the rest of the links in your radar, read VI. c. Devaluing FOMO).
IV. "PULL" NOTIFICATIONS
a. The addictive ding
todo
b. Who gets the right to distract you?
todo
c. Adding friction helps
todo
V. "DONE" FOR THE DAY
a. Closure as a physiological need
If you've felt a strange sense of uneasiness thinking about your reading list (books, essays, online reading etc.), it's coming from the same place as the uneasiness emanating from a todo-list that has been pending for a while.
Closure is not merely emotional or psychological. It can take on palpable, physiological proportions. Even in the case of digital consumption.
Being able to feel done with my reading for the day is very good. But the opposite of it — not being able to catch up with all the content — can lead to a residual feeling of "I have more things to do" at the end of every day. In the long run, this is very bad.
Infinite streams, feeds and a plethora of other forms trying to hack into our attention prevent us from feeling this closure (not necessarily intentionally, but as a side-effect).
b. "Newspaper" model
One analogy that helps is the old-school, print-media newspapers. On a daily newspaper, there are more than a hundred different news items, some long and some really just snippets. Irrespective of whether you read the paper in one-sitting or read it in bits and pieces throughout the day, there comes a point when you're done reading the paper for that day.
Typically, people skim through the headlines, stop to read more details about some of the news items, and then move on to skim more. At some point, they're done with the paper. There's nothing more in the paper to read.
This obvious thing, turns out, is a very helpful mental model to compare against our digital world. Even digital news is constantly streaming at us, with no end.
The "newspaper" model enables the "closure", the idea of "I am done with my content consumption for the day."
c. Streams don't close. Batch can.
The fundamental bit of insight is this: streams do not close. So by their very design, there is no scope for feeling "done" when you are dealing with streams. This is a primary cause for the feeling of overwhelm.
Batching, by it's nature, lends itself to the idea of "done"-ness. The goal is not to necessarily catch up on every piece of digital content that comes your way (or shows up on your radar). The goal is to consume a chunk, or a quantum of content with focus. This may be a batch of 15 longform content, or a 30-minute scroll down a social feed.
Batching helps modify the infinite stream nature of digital content landscape today into the old-school print newspaper model to give us a sense of closure and reduce (if not eliminate) the content overwhelm.
VI. BE CONSTRAINT-DRIVEN
a. Constraints are good.
todo
b. Time-constraints
todo
c. Quantity-constraints
todo
d. Activity-constraints
todo
VII. CLOSING THOUGHTS
a. Build your protocol
todo
b. Rules > Habits
todo
c. Devalue FOMO
todo