The Embarrassment of Riches and Content Consumption

FOMO and Information Overload

I am a content glutton who has just made a conscious decision to go on a diet.

By my own choice, I am flooded with an enormous amount of notifications. They offer me content I consciously subscribe to. I am a collector of lists filled with saved books, articles, podcasts, and videos "for later." When the number of items on these lists swells, I start devouring them in panic. Compulsively, thoughtlessly, carelessly. Quantity matters, not quality. It's about maximum processing power. The goal? So nothing escapes me. Because maybe somewhere in the flood of information lies the Holy Grail. A vessel with which to draw from the Spring of Knowledge that is the internet.

Once, access to information was a privilege. I remember trips to the city library: forty minutes on foot each way, a backpack with books to return, a notebook and pen. The room smelled of paper, both old and quite new. The librarian, quiet and smiling, peered from behind glasses with lenses like bottle bottoms. Volumes were arranged with their spines facing visitors. Wrapped in brown paper on which titles were written in marker, sometimes the author too. The thin shelves sagged under the weight of books. And the reading room with its crude desks and uncomfortable, creaking chairs. Here the strategic decision was made: which two of the roughly ten titles gathered during my walk between the shelves to take home. The ease of choosing those two pieces was driven by the awareness that at most in a month I would appear for the next two. The library was not made of rubber, new shelves would not appear, and the city office would not shower the sanctuary with money for new books. I took as much as I could digest on an ongoing basis and from a static collection.

Today, access to items on the internet is a curse for me. I fall into the information vortex with one click. After a month, I collect a hundred new notifications with sources. I am flooded with information, and not just any information. Webinars, courses, TED talks, educational and documentary films, YouTube analyses, books both new and old that are "worth reading" or "must-know."

At the library, I felt that knowledge nourished me. On the internet, I gorge myself on it, but it does not feed me. Now, important: it's not that the content that pops up is poorly nourishing or low quality. It's about the way of consuming it: highly unsanitary, hasty, and without respect for the author.

I felt exhausted by this situation. Such consumption is probably worse than cheap dopamine. Here there is no benefit, neither momentary nor false. There is only fatigue and a sense of waste. I waste my time without nourishing myself, and I waste something that, consumed differently, could nourish me. I overspill.

The plan. As a certain sage said: brutal execution of a good plan is the guarantee of success. In the next issue, I will share the method that seems to work. All in just eight points.

Do you have any problems related to the content you consume?