Information Diet

The deliberate management of what information one consumes — analogous to nutrition for the mind. The ideas a person holds about themselves and the world are, in this frame, the byproduct of what information they feed their brain.

Constrained creativity. Human minds are creative, but within constraints set by their inputs: “we can color outside the lines, but ignoring the lines altogether is the definition of insanity.” What one consumes sets the range of what one can think. This makes the design of an information diet as consequential as the design of a food diet — with the same mechanism of action: consume unhealthy things, experience unhealthy outcomes.

The Information Dietician. One saved tweet proposes a future professional role — “one part psychologist, one part data analyst” — whose goal is to recommend changes in information intake to improve happiness and productivity. The majority of information consumed leaves a trail of breadcrumbs that could be analyzed: not everything, but enough to see the forest rather than the trees. The key obstacle is that one’s own perspective is enmeshed within one’s information diet, making rational, unbiased self-assessment “unlikely” — an external observer is structurally necessary.

Related: Media Consumption tracks the broader question of how much to consume and from where; this concept focuses specifically on curation as a practice.

Where this appears

• Soon, I Expect We Will… (tweet)