3: Information Diets, Cognitive Overload, and Mental Obesity

How mental obesity is preventing you from thinking clearly and learning

Much has been said about the Standard American Diet ("SAD"), and it is nearly common knowledge that over 40% of Americans are obese. But what about the the content, not calories, we consume? Is the Standard American Information Diet any better?

Mental obesity refers to the idea where individuals consume excessive information without processing it into knowledge. Americans in the Information Age are endlessly bombarded with digital calories far in excess of what our brains are capable of digesting.

According to the New York Times, the average person’s daily consumption of information now adds up to a remarkable 34 gigabytes. A separate study cited by the Times estimates that we consume the equivalent of 174 full newspapers’ worth of content each and every day. (1)

The sheer volume of information we encounter is astounding. What can be done?

Cognitive Overload

Let's look at an example. Todd, our average American adult, is not just a little thick around the waistline, but also mentally displaying the cognitive fog that comes with mental obesity. Todd struggles to focus on complex topics. He often finds himself staring blankly at his phone thinking, "What did I open my phone for, again?" But what's the big deal? Todd has a stable 9-5 and is able to retain just enough Instagram sound bites to make conversation at dinner parties.

However, cognitive overload and unprocessed information prevents people like Todd from ever really learning new concepts. It prevents progress.

It's been my experience that many people that feel unfulfilled and "stuck" in their 9-5 life are also mentally obese. Part of why this dynamic exists is because it becomes impossible to tackle new concepts like financial freedom with debilitating mental obesity. Someone setting out to improve their finances and ultimately achieve financial freedom is met by a mountain of information. Are you supposed to contribute to your Roth IRA or HSA, and how much do I need to invest in the stock market? What's the difference between an ETF and mutual fund? And wait, what am I supposed to do about this credit card debt? It's all too much, so Todd defaults back to a complacent and apathetic state. The monotony of his 9-5 nurses him back to his comfort zone.

Information Diets

The truth is I used to be like Todd. Dozens of books a year, countless podcast episodes, endless number of articles, and an addition to social media made me the textbook example of mental obesity. I'm eager to learn and ambitious, which both compound our natural human inclination to mental obesity. My cognitive fog eventually got to the point where I wasn't learning anything new despite reading so much. A few months after finishing a book I hardly remembered what it was about.

This changed for me when I started to understand:

  • Reading isn't the same as understanding

  • College didn't teach me how to learn

  • If you can't explain it, you don't know it

  • You are the content you consume

This meant I had to monitor my information diet as much as I had to monitor my nutritional diet. I needed to be selective about what I consumed, how much of it I consumed, and why I was consuming it. Most of all, the process doesn't end at the point of consumption.

A healthy information diet does three things well (1) limits the total volume of thoughtless content consumption and instead focuses on high quality content (2) processes consumption into knowledge, which reduces the cognitive load and (3) leverages a system for reinforcing learning.

Content Selection and the Lindy Effect

The Lindy Effect describes the phenomenon that the longer something has been around, the longer it’s likely to persist into the future. (2) Great works remain great. Focusing on content that’s “lindy” is a helpful heuristic in determining content worth consuming.

Social media has it’s uses, but often the content is like digital junk food — providing momentary gratification with little value in the long run.

Processing Consumption and Learning Systems

Most of us read, listen, and watch (consume) endless hours of content. Very little meaningful information is retained at this level.

Remember, after a day of school, your mom would ask you, "So, what did you learn today?" Intentionally or not, your mom was actually playing a huge role in helping you process what you learned. Time spent discussing, applying, and teaching reduces cognitive load by filing away information. But this all requires extra work, which can be difficult to manage when you're already feeling the burden of cognitive overload.

An information diet can be implemented by adopting mental models, better learning techniques, and technology. A few of the solutions that have worked best for me:

  • Digital content management flow (pictured)

  • Feynman technique

  • Spaced repetition (assisted by Readwise)

  • Telling friends about what I just learned

  • Jotting down ideas as they come (Drafts app) and returning to them when I have time to think deeply (Obsidian)

Notion - content management system
Readwise - read-it later app & integration hub
Drafts - quick capture app
Kindle - ebook reader across kindle + iOS
Obsidian - longer form, linked notebook
Readwise - integration hub & spaced repetition tool

Socrates tells us, "the unexamined life is not worth living." It is difficult to seriously examine life with mental obesity. This newsletter will continue to examine life and explore how we can live better lives.

Content Corner

Some standouts from the content I've consumed the past two weeks:

The Wager by David Grann

  • An unbelievable true story of adventure, human nature, mutiny, survival, and the brutal realities of life in the Age of Sail.

  • I have always been interested in the conviction and intrepid spirit that captains & sailors displayed from this era.

  • In my personal life I’ve recently have felt the pressure of being responsible for others. The responsibility borne by ship captains was enormous: “Captain Kidd, who presided from the quarterdeck, was at the pinnacle of this structure. At sea, beyond the reach of any government, he had enormous authority. “The captain had to be father and confessor, judge and jury, to his men,” one historian wrote. “He had more power over them than the King—for the King could not order a man to be flogged. He could and did order them into battle and thus had the power of life and death over everyone on board.”

  • AI: I’m not at all sympathetic to the luddite-adjacent takes that AI is going to extinguish the human race. But the pace of AI advancement is certainly dizzying:

    • “Moore’s Law told us that technology should double every two years. Over the past 10 years, though, we’ve advanced AI by about a million times. The result: AI can now do many things better than humans can—image recognition, reading comprehension, language understanding, and so on.”

  • Dopamine Culture: Everything is now gamified & optimized for clicks/attention. Sports is reduced to gambling on sports, newspapers are dead (killed by clickbait), and romantic courtship reduced to swiping an app

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“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.”

James Clear
Sources:
  • Building a Second Brain - Tiago Forte

  • “What’s Lindy Stays Lindy” - David Perell