More consumption doesn’t mean you’re better informed

The latest episode of the Cortex podcast was quite long (a bit over two hours), but had some fascinating bits in it. Myke has decided to leave Twitter, and much of the discussion was around that. Leaving Twitter is an interesting discussion in and of itself, but it was the higher-level discussion they had about content consumption that really fascinated me.

Two things that Grey said on the show really stood out. First was his disagreement that “volume of consumption is proportional to staying in touch”. In other words, consuming a ton more content on places like Twitter doesn’t necessarily mean you’re better informed. If you craft your inputs carefully, you can stay well-rounded without having to wade through a heavy stream all day long.

The other statement from Grey that stood out is largely the reason that I publish on this blog every day. He said “if you’re connected all the time, there’s no time to develop anything”. If you all you do is consume content, you never have a chance to site back and develop your own thoughts. That’s specifically why I write, and it’s why most people would likely benefit from it as well. It forces me to take things that I’ve heard, read, or simply thought about, and dig a little deeper than I might have otherwise gone.