Why you should curate what content you consume

This is an idea that has been in my head for the last few years because it is something essential to become an individual, because nowadays algorithms and the media are the ones who feed us with the information, news and entertainment they seem appropriate for us, they are able, if you let them, to shape the way you are and think. Obviously, by choosing more carefully what you read, listen or watch, you will still not be in total control, because everyone has an agenda, even if that person is right and everything is for your own good or beneficial for the world, but it is a step in the right direction, or better said, a step back from the wrong direction.

That’s all good, but, what do I mean by talking about curating the content? Usually, in social networks such as Facebook or Instagram people tend to follow hundreds of “friends” and other content they consider cute/funny/interesting, and those social networks take advance of our instincts of clicking on the scandalous title or cute photo of a dog, and they realise that it works and show us disproportionally more content like that. What I propose is to choose carefully who you follow on those social networks and see what really adds value to your life, nowadays there is infinite content and we should try to use the limited time for useful things, and yes, sometimes a photo of a cute dog could be useful to be happier that day for example, I don’t want to be extreme. Then, on news, you should try to find sources you trust and respect and be very critical about them, try to read the opposite point of view and watch debates to test your beliefs and arguments. For entertainment is similar, you should really ask yourself if you really need to watch two hours of a reality tv show about other people’s lives or singing, if you really think that it is valuable and you need it to disconnect, great, but just be honest with yourself and take into account the limited time you have and what you could do which could pay off  in the future.

The first benefit I would like to highlight would be that this helps you to be more productive towards the goals that you aim to achieve, obviously, you need to set those by asking yourself what you really want for your future first, and then you can try to judge most of your decisions whether these help you achieve your goals or not. Most of my life I have been quite unproductive and I really regret it because I know I could have learnt so much about so many things, I could have done things that really made me happy instead of just watching some useless tv shows. It feels great when you have been productive during the day and you get to bed, right? Why not do that (almost) every day? Because it is not easy, and what I’m proposing to do is to help yourself to be more productive, make it easy to read, watch or listen to interesting things and distantiate yourself from non-value adding content.

Thinking for yourself is important, and if you interact with the same content everybody does you will end up thinking quite similar to them and you will not have any innovative thoughts. If you don’t challenge your beliefs and live in an echo chamber you will not be able to open your mind to new ideas and concepts that could help you learn about the world or yourself to take better decisions in your life. Consuming content that adds value to your life does not have to be boring, you should find what you are interested in and dive into it, or look for what you are passionate about, being indifferent to everything is probably a life not worth living.

We are so lucky to live in an era when every question can be answered instantly, if you want to learn about anything there is infinite content about it, and the saddest part is that we do not value it. Not even the richest person 20 years ago had so much access to books, music, cooking recipes, cereal flavours, to everything we can think of… As uncle Ben says: “With great power comes great responsibility”, and we kinda owe the people who dedicated their lives to make this world a better place, through science, art, philosophy or other ways, to make our contribution, even if small, to the betterment of humanity now that the tools are at our disposal with minimum effort.

Do not doubt the power of small incremental continuous progress, as you improve the probability that each improvement will produce a further improvement increases, every day you train your willpower, which helps you learning more things, which makes you able to comprehend even more things, which allows you to make better decisions for your life. Every day counts, so every day just try to be a better person than you were the day before, in general, in any way you choose or several. And if for a whole year you try to improve even a little bit every day how tidy you are, how thankful you are to others, in your knowledge about something you care about or your physical and mental health, you cannot even imagine how much you could better your life, and choosing more carefully the content you consume plays a big part in that.