Adding Edges to Consumption

Caitlin Dewey spent this great article exploring how to have guardrails on media consumption. Social media sites aren’t going to do it for you. The algorithms on Facebook and X and Reddit are designed to keep feeding you shit that keeps you interested by focusing on stuff that makes you emotional. Rage is a good as joy if it keeps you scrolling.

I recently added constraints to my political content consumption by only reading Canadian magazines and listening to a select few Canadian political podcasts. The podcasts end, the magazines have a finite number of pages. Better yet, both mediums aren’t as prone to rage inducing tirades based on the latest thing that happened 4 minutes ago. The magazine content especially has more thought and time put into it making it a more reasoned take on what’s happening and how it affects the country I live in.

How are you adding edges?

Any magazines or podcasts I should be listening to across the political spectrum? I’d love suggestions so I don’t simply jump into content that promotes confirmation bias.

Oliver Burkeman also investigated the idea of a closed list of tasks so that what you do in a day has an edge. I’m a fan of ending work when the edge is hit instead of always looking for one more thing to do.

Asking Good Questions

I’ve seen a few people lately say that when they figure out how to ask ChatGPT, or Claude, a detailed enough question to get a reasonable answer they no longer need to submit the question because the answer is contained in the question. This isn’t new though.

I remember writing a Tweet with a technical question and after the 5 – 10 minutes spent thinking so I could frame the problem within the character limit I sent it off only to immediately figure out where I was going wrong. The same has happened with forums and many other places in life.

I also distinctly remember sitting in front of my screen in tears because I had spent 8 hours trying to figure something out and still didn’t know the right question to ask so that I could find a solution.

While I do use AI agents now, I often start by writing the problem down in my notebook. Talking myself through the options, the ideas, the problems as if I was about to ask it somewhere online. This alone regularly solves my problem without needing to dive into any external source but the code level documentation I already had in front of me.

What helped was the time spent thinking about the problem in a way that allowed my to investigate the nuances. The thinking allowed me to define the edges.

When confronted with a problem the best thing I can do most of the time is to stop what I’m doing and think. Maybe throw the ball for the dog but sit without distractions and think about what I’m trying to solve.

When was the last time you simply sat and thought about a problem?

One day

As I sat to write today I took up my regular routine of going through my read later pile to find some interesting stuff to read and inspire ideas for writing. Today I realized that much of what I had saved was interesting in the moment, but I’ve been sitting on it for months now and haven’t read it. I have no plans on reading it today, and I can’t tell you when I’m going to bother with the content.

I’m sure that most readers have a list like this. Books you’re going to read. A huge pile of articles and videos you’ve saved for some time in the future. Projects with supplies purchased and never started, or half finished.

While I’m not committing to this yet, what if I cleared my list of saved articles every week? If I can’t get to it in a week the article needs to be deleted or filed as a source into a larger writing project. No keeping things around forever, be honest about what I’ll get to and say goodbye to the pile of shit I’m never getting to.

I won’t get to it one day, it will likely just sit until I switch services and abandon all the stuff that I once thought was important.