Careful What Information You Consume

One of the concepts I’m a really big proponent of is to be careful of what you consume. If you put junk in, you get junk out. Now, this obviously pertains to our physical bodies, as when you put junk food into your body, the quality of your energy is low, and therefore, the quality of your focus, the quality of your results, quality of your life overall, starts to sag. But there’s another aspect of this is that not just what we physically consume with our body, but what we consume with our minds. If you put junk into your mind, then what is going to be the product of your thoughts? I think it’s going to be junk. And so we need to, as I believe it was Jim Rohn said, stand guard at the gate of our mind and be really careful about what information we allow in, because that will tint the quality of our beliefs and then our thoughts and our actions. Right. And this can manifest itself in all sorts of ways.

We need to be careful about letting pessimism into our lives, allowing negativity into our life, allowing small thinking into our lives. Right. These are the things that we need to stand guard at the gate of our minds. But the other side of this, too, is that we need to be, I believe, intentional about supplying our minds with a high quality, nutritious diet that is filling our minds with the best content, the best thoughts, the best ideas that are going to challenge us and help us learn to think more deeply and to grow and expand our understanding of the world. We have to intentionally seek out that information. In the same way, we have to go to the farmers market and get those organic fruits and vegetables, and we have know, go home and cook all that stuff. Right. We have to be intentional with the diet that we’re consuming.

And I was thinking about this while I was on a plane out to coeur d’Alene, Idaho, about what it is that I’m consuming at the moment. And is it highly nutritious? Is it the best that I could be putting into my mind? And as I was reflecting on it, what I came to realize is there’s really three quadrants or not quadrants. You can’t have three quadrants, three categories of content. To really think about that is timeless, timely, and then irrelevant, or soon to be irrelevant. I don’t have a catchy name for that third one. The timeless content is the content that’s been around for hundreds of years, if not thousands of years. This is Marcus Aurelius’s meditations. This is Frederick Nietzsche’s thus spoke Zara truth.

That’s a hard word to say. I’ve never actually had to say that out loud. But this is reading old things that have stood the test of time. Right. Maybe the Bible, maybe the Quran. Right. Those are timeless wisdoms. That’s timeless.

It’s been around for a thousand years. It’s very likely that Seneca’s letters to a stoic is going to be around for another thousand. So we can assume thus, by the fact that it has survived such a long period of time, that there’s a certain inherent quality to that content. The other content is timely content. This is stuff that is happening right now that is relevant for instantaneous decision making as you navigate your day to day for this content. Now, this is where people go to the news, largely ABC, NBC, CNN, all these things. And that’s problematic because I don’t believe that these are high quality sources of information. They’re not nutritious.

They’re the equivalent of fast food. You’re putting junk in and you’re getting a narrative. I think we need to have some mechanism for getting timely content so you can become aware broadly of what’s happening in the world, and you can kind of keep your fingers on the pulse. For me, that is Twitter. That is my favorite platform for it, because I can curate the thinkers and the people that I’m consuming my timely information from. So if I want to learn about AI, I can go direct to the source. I can see directly what Sam Altman or Elon Musk or Bret Adcock are talking about when it comes to this. When I’m thinking about crypto, I can go direct to the source.

When I’m thinking about real estate, I can go direct to the source and learn from the best thinkers in the space in a timely manner. So I’m a really big fan of that. The third category of content, though, this is the one that I’ve been thinking a lot about because I’ve kind of fallen into this trap. It’s the soon to be irrelevant content. This is content that’s been made maybe in the last 1015 years that we consider it, like, popular by cultural standards. It’s on the New York Times bestselling list. Right? But there’s no real guarantee that this book is going to be around in another 50 to 100 years. It’s just kind of timely for now, but maybe not timeless.

So you could pretty much take any book on the New York Times bestseller list. I think atomic Habits by James Clear is a good example of this. It’s a great book. I’ve read it. I love it. It’s been out for a number of years and it’s brought me a lot of value. But if you look at it in terms of is this timeless or timely? It’s neither. And I think a lot of my content consumption over the years has really focused on this soon to be irrelevant phase.

And the problem with it, I suppose, is this, is that it’s the content that the majority of people are consuming. And so you’re consuming the same thoughts that everybody else is consuming, and therefore the product of your thoughts is going to be similar to everybody else’s thoughts. Right? So if you want to have different thoughts, if you want to stand out as a thought leader, as a creator, you need to consume different things. You can’t just consume what everybody else is consuming and hope it produces something else, because chances are it won’t. And so you need to be intentional with whatever your content consumption strategy is. And for me, that’s been thinking more about how do I incorporate more timeless content? I went through a phase. I was a psychology and religion major and an english major, so I did a lot of reading of classic literature and a lot of religious texts as well. Those tend to be very timeless.

But over the last couple of years, I’ve focused more predominantly on the soon to be irrelevant content that is top of the charts right now. But probably in another 15 years won’t be. And we know this because you probably can’t name off the top of your head what the number one book in the year 1999 was, right? Sure, it was great. But has it meaningfully moved the needle of the cultural zeitgeist? Maybe not. Will it be around in another thousand years? Will people still be talking about it in the same way that they talk about meditations or the Bible? Probably not. So that’s what I’ve been thinking about recently, is standing guard at the gate of your mind, consuming timely content and timeless content, then trying to ignore everything in that in between for the last decade to 30 years and try to go older, older. Older or more timely? More timely. More timely.

So that’s my strategy. I don’t know what your strategy is. I’m curious, what is the timeless content that you’re consuming? And also what is the timely content that you find enjoyable? Like who are the thinkers and how are you getting plugged into their minds? I suppose this podcast is an example of a way of consuming timely content. So what are some other places that you’re getting your diet, your nutrition from recently? I’d love to learn. So shoot me a comment, shoot me a review, leave me a DM, whatever it takes to get a hold of me. I am out there and I will see you guys in the next episode. As always, thanks so much for in here. We’ll catch you tomorrow.

Until then, stay hyper focused, my friends.