Purposeful consumption is different than impulse based consumption. Investigating ideas by reading specific books, articles, and reflecting on the idea is consumption at its finest IMO.
I'm trying to be more mindful about what I consume, but also more committed to finishing what I begin consuming. I try to eliminate the meta-think in your head constantly assessing whether the content is worth my time, instead fully committing to exploring the idea being espoused, even if its bullshit. Its much more mindful to dissect the bullshit rather than dismiss it as low thought.
The link-based architecture of the web contributes heavily to the way we bounce from idea to idea. I've been thinking about how to de-emphasize the constantly shifting focus of clicking on a new link to explore an idea (If you've ever got lost in a quora/wikipedia loop, you understand this phenomenon). What if we could anchor an origin (say, this HN page about "The Dangerous Effects of Reading"), and when we explored links from here, we started a new path on a map showing how deep we were surfing from the original page. If we return to this page, we start an adjacent path that we can explore again. At the end of our browsing session, we have an information map showing how different ideas linked to each other. It might provide a meaningful perspective to our browsing experience.
I'm trying to be more mindful about what I consume, but also more committed to finishing what I begin consuming. I try to eliminate the meta-think in your head constantly assessing whether the content is worth my time, instead fully committing to exploring the idea being espoused, even if its bullshit. Its much more mindful to dissect the bullshit rather than dismiss it as low thought.
The link-based architecture of the web contributes heavily to the way we bounce from idea to idea. I've been thinking about how to de-emphasize the constantly shifting focus of clicking on a new link to explore an idea (If you've ever got lost in a quora/wikipedia loop, you understand this phenomenon). What if we could anchor an origin (say, this HN page about "The Dangerous Effects of Reading"), and when we explored links from here, we started a new path on a map showing how deep we were surfing from the original page. If we return to this page, we start an adjacent path that we can explore again. At the end of our browsing session, we have an information map showing how different ideas linked to each other. It might provide a meaningful perspective to our browsing experience.