research.
The second is TED (Technology, Education, and Design), an organization that puts on a conference every year. It invites luminaries from a myriad fields to come and present what they’re working on, and then share the talks online via its website. TED talks—especially about things you’re not ordinarily interested in—are a great way to add diversity to your diet.
The third is Kickstarter, which has effectively replaced the “Arts & Leisure” section of my local newspaper. Kickstarter’s purpose is to fund small projects and help artists and entrepreneurs get off the ground, but it turns out that it’s grown to be a good source of inspiration and entertainment as well.
Kickstarter lets you see what some people (the self-selecting group that uses the service) are passionate about—whether it’s building the world’s largest database, performing analysis of hip-hop music, or writing a guidebook to breakfast joints in Columbus, Ohio. It lets you browse local projects, too, so you can see what kinds of things are starting up in your town—and if you feel inclined, you can support local artists.
Again, the point isn’t to visit these three sites as an endorsement of ideas, or a strict rule for your information diet. But in the frame of conscious consumption, they mean something different. You’re choosing to consciously visit these sites on a regular basis in order to get something particular out of them: diversity.
Think of it like going out to a different kind of restaurant than the usual places you go. There’s nothing wrong with eating at the same place every day, but sometimes you need to branch out and see what else is out there.
Balance
So just how much of what should you consume? Every diet book in the world has some kind of recommendation—an interesting way of telling you what it is you should eat, and what it is you shouldn’t. I’m afraid that in the world of information, our tastes are far more diverse and require far more specialization than our food diets, and thus, I can’t make a recommendation for everybody.
There’s also information I’ve left out—information that I’ll make no attempt to classify or prescribe a diet for. For instance, our varying religious beliefs have prescriptions for consumption that are inappropriate to contradict.
Our information diets are also tied to our professions. Nobody but models and personal trainers get fired for eating too much fried chicken, or promoted for eating too much celery. But our information diets have serious job consequences: a doctor not dedicating enough of her time to skill development could lose her ability to practice.
Because our jobs and belief systems are very different, and because professions and religions often come with their own basic information diets baked in, a universal prescription for an information diet is impossible. But the good habits I’ve described in this chapter are possible.
The information diet I maintain looks like Figure 10-4.
The categories I’ve chosen here reflect the various suggestions I have in this chapter, but your breakdown will look different than mine. The situations of your work, and your stage in life, may require a vastly different diet than the one I’m on. And the truth is, the averages I’ve suggested are averages: they vary from day to day. Pollan’s “Eat. Not too much. Mostly plants.” beats the food pyramid not only with its simplicity but also its flexibility.
The classification and categorization of information are always subjective, and sometimes controversial. Do not worry nearly as much about achieving some set standard of balance, or even emulating my diet. Worry about consuming consciously, and making information—and our information providers—work for you, rather than the other way around. Form healthy habits, and the right balance will follow from it.
Balance means keeping our desire for affirmation in check. For the amount of time I spend consuming things that I believe in, I try to spend twice as much time seeking information from sources that disagree with me. The end result is twofold: not only do I gain exposure to differing viewpoints, but I also limit my passive exposure to mass affirmation.
Support and Fine Tuning
Going on an information diet is as difficult as going on a food diet. For a lot of us, it requires the support and ideas of our family and community. And it’s personal, too—our minds, just like our food palates, have different and unique tastes. Building a healthy information diet means discovering what works best for you, and creating a routine that you can stick to.
I built InformationDiet.com with this in mind. Reading this book is just the beginning of what is hopefully a larger journey towards better health, and as more people make more discoveries about what works for them, we can start sharing with one another what works and what doesn’t.
If you’re looking for ideas about what kinds of information could possibly share in your information production regime (I recommend at least an hour a day dedicated to writing or otherwise publishing information), try publishing what your information diet is, and how it’s working for you. Publish it on the InformationDiet.com forums, or publish it on your own website and drop me a line on Twitter (@cjoh), and I’ll be happy to link to it from InformationDiet.com.
Part III. Social Obesity
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”
When we start looking at information consumption through the lens of a diet and take responsibility for the information we’re consuming, things start to get really frightening. Poor information diets and poor filters are responsible for really atrocious things and have horrible social effects that are, as history suggests, as deadly as the worst of our diseases.
Physical obesity, it turns out, may be a social contagion. Some studies suggest, for instance, that introducing an obese person into your social circle may put you at risk for obesity. It’s not hard science, and there is disagreement—the counterargument to these studies is that we tend to homogenize in groups, so people who are already obese may just associate with one another, and reinforce one another’s bad eating habits.[87]
Regardless of causality, this trend is something we recognize from common sense: hang out with people living healthy lifestyles, and chances are you’ll be exposed to more stuff that’s good for you and less stuff that’s bad for you. If all your friends are alcoholics, it makes it more difficult for you to quit drinking. Because our consumption of food is tangentially social, those with whom we choose to associate affect our intake.
Information is far more social than food. You can grow your own food, and eat by yourself your entire life, and still remain healthy—but if you were the only person on the planet who knew how to speak, read, and write, you’d likely go crazy.
