Opening a YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram takes just few seconds. Once you’re there, you immediately get dragged into a feed and get lost for tens of minutes (if not a couple of hours). Time goes by. You get some joy. Maybe even some valuable information or inspiration. But those are gone few hours later. Important bits get lost in the stream of information.

Does this sound familiar?

The thing is that 12 clips 1 minute each require much more brain energy and concentration to process and make conclusions than 1 clip of 12 minutes.

Our brain tries hard to keep up with the information we load on it. It burns cycles of energy, but it cannot keep up with the speed of incoming info. It’s not designed to process lots of short pieces each with a different topic without any free time in between. Brain needs slower pace. It needs pauses. Only then it can handle things. What is even more important: only than it can create new thoughts and ideas.

If you consume information just to get entertained and receive quick dopamine. If that’s all you need then stop reading further. Things I’m taking about switching to intentional information consuming. And you don’t need that.

On the other hand if you wish to make a switch then carry on.

6 steps to intentional information consumption

Like many things in life this switch is simple, but not easy.

You stop doing this, start doing that, and enjoy the benefit.

The hard part is to be conscious about why you do what you do and actively support your decisions with day-to-day actions.

Content consuming should enable creative processes in mind. That’s the aim of intentional information consumption.

I’m not going to lie, first weeks will be hard. But if you go though this with an intention to unlock clarity and creativity in your brain, you will get the benefits very quickly.

1 – Completely stop consuming content online for 4 days

Before you can change your information diet, you need to gain clarity.

Clarity in your brain to think mindfully. Clarity in the time you actually have every day. And clarify in what is at stake.

It’s an information detox for your brain. Your mind will finally have cycles to rest and wander. From time to time doing nothing is the best we can do to grow. This is intentional “quiet” time.

The key is to stop consuming online at all (even useful content).

Why? You’re always one step away from “junk” content. One video or one article is enough for tech and brain to trick you into the loop. There is no way to avoid this unless you completely shut down online sources for yourself.

Ideally you would go offline. Turning off your wi-fi router at home and turning off wi-fi and cell data on all devices you carry with you. If you have the luxury to do so, perfect.

Realistically you may need being online to do the work or connect with friends in chat apps.

Great tactic in this case would be taking Sat-Tue as your 4 day information detox. I bet you can go offline for a weekend. Once you go through first 2 days, remaining 2 will be easier to keep going. Still the day when you have online access is much harder to overcome. Your life will be much easier if you put a physical barer between you and online content. Delete or offload apps on your devices, block sites in your browser.

During these detox days entertain yourself with old good off-line things. There are plenty of options: read a book, walk, spend time with kids, go to the cinema, do household “someday” stuff, etc.

There are two major things you should expect at the end of this step:

• Have a clear mind ready to deal with useful information.
• Realize that you have time in your days to grow in any area of your life you want to.

2 – Create permanent road blocks for for never-ending content flow

By now you felt what’s it like to live without mindless content consumption.

It’s time to prevent it coming back into your life.

In my opinion most evil comes from short-form scrollable content. Any video or a post which takes under 2 minutes to watch or read drags you down into game of scrolling. Once you start scrolling and consuming you’ve lost.

Think about how many times you’ve open a TikTok or YouTube shorts to watch a couple of them and stuck there for an hour. Same thing happens with Instagram or any other social platform. Same is true even for much lower pacing platforms like forums or groups.

The problem is not even that you find yourself lost in endless scrolling. The problem is that you get nothing useful to enhance your life.

Even if there was something useful, it gets lost in a ton of pure entertaining content.

Your brain cannot extract and persist useful information in a see of short-form clips.

You must help it by intentionally blocking short-form content from your information diet.

I prefer harsh approach of deleting and unsubscribing (cutting the rope quickly). Delete apps on devices. Unsubscribe from newsletters and channels. Leave groups.

Lighter approach is to make reaching scrollable feed as hard as possible. I wrote more about this in How to Set Your Tech to Work For You (Not Against You).

3 – Switch to long-form content

The key part of intentional information consumption is unlocking the thinking and idea creation process.

Pure information is not that important. When you need a fact you can google it and get an answer in a couple of minutes.

Longer YouTube videos, provoking articles, podcasts. They are not about facts. They are about enabling thinking process and creating your own conclusions or ideas.

One may think that having one insight from an hour-long podcast is not productive time use. I argue that ideas don’t come from nowhere and having five insights a week is better than zero.

Moreover having just one insight from an hour of long-form content is rare case. Usually there are more (if you pick your sources right).

4 – Pick topics of interest to grow in and curate original sources

The cornerstone of this transformation is to consume content intentionally. And the key here is to clearly realize which topics to curate.

Among of the interests you have, pick a couple of those you want to grow in this year. They can be from any area of your life. They can be broad or narrow, from personal or professional side of your life. That’s totally up to you.

Limit yourself to 2-3 topics. Don’t try to include each and every interest you have.

Once you have the topics it’s time to build your content sources. I wouldn’t rely on searching for the interesting and inspiring content every time I want to consume. Instead there should be a pack of videos, audio, and articles available at fingertips.

For each topic find 5-8 creators you like. It doesn’t matter if they are top experts with millions of subscribers or people with a small following. What important is their message and way of communication resonating with you.

With such curated list of sources you will have 10-20 long-form content pieces per week. I find this being a great spot. Not every video or article will attract your attention and desire to watch or read. On the other hand too many options can easily become a problem of choice.

And don’t forget that tech platform will give you recommendations based on what you watch or read. Some recommendations will definitely sparkle your interest. So you will always have more choices than your curated channels provide.

5 – Leave yourself entertainment time

What about entertainment you would ask?

“I want to have some fun as well. Not only consume to grow”.

For sure, you do need that.

However you need to be intentional about it as well:

• Use low-energy slots for entertaining content while preserving high-energy slots for growing.
• Prefer long-form content. You will be surprised how much of a difference is watching half an hour standup compared to half an hour of shorts.
• Do it offline more often. Ask your spouse out or meet with friends. Go to the cinema, standup show, or concert instead of watching a movie, standup or a concert at your device at home. Give it a try.

Be intentional about what and when you do. There is nothing counterintuitive to reserving Saturday night for entertainment. Same as unplugging for half an hour every day watching entertaining video.

Just keep in mind that your main course in information diet is content which enables you to grow while entertaining content is your dessert.

6 – Evolve, not only consume

It doesn’t matter how good the content you consume is if you don’t use it in your life.

Remember that the whole point of intentional consuming is to enable growing and enhancing your life.

Knowing something does not create benefit by itself. It’s the actions (based on the knowledge) what make life better. When you use the information you receive and insights your brain creates then you benefit from the process.

For that to happen it’s better to rely on “active reading” concept.

In a nutshell “active reading” means being determined to understand and evaluate information to use it for your needs. Making notes, thinking through them, combining into actions or conclusions beneficial to you, and eventually implementing in your life are the key elements of the idea behind active reading.

Whether you’re actually reading an article, watching a video, listening to podcast, or anything else doesn’t matter. These are just different forms of media.

Important is how you do this and what you conclude in result.

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