The Importance of Reducing Content Consumption

Lately I've been thinking about the balance of consuming vs producing that will work for me. It's so easy for me to mindlessly watch YouTube videos, TV shows or scroll social media and feel stimulated. Don't get me wrong, I still find value in consuming but there seems to be a special category of videos that really provides no long term value and is really there just to kill time.

That dopamine rush lifestyle used to be my life. I played a lot of games and watched a lot of shows. Whenever I was bored or stressed from a tiny bit of work my brain would crave the quick dopamine fix. I genuinely believed I had ADHD because of my inability to concentrate.

Stripped of over stimulation it gives me a chance to become aware of the patterns of thoughts and behaviors that are me. Our habits are really what make us who we are. We build them over time and reap what we sow. At any given moment, seemingly random thoughts may pop up into our head. However, it's not completely by chance that these thoughts pop up, there's also an element of habitual thought patterns that plays a large role in the thoughts that come up. If all you do is play games, then most likely you'll have thoughts in your brain about that game.

For the past year I've been working on coding interview problems. They can get really hard and require a lot of brain power to solve. When I started my brain was so lazy it couldn't stand not being able to solve questions for more than a few minutes. Fast forward to today, after I've completed hundreds of problems and spend countless nights working through a single hard problem, my brain has become much less lazy. Presented with a challenge I now notice my brain not immediately giving up, cheating or mentally short cutting to the answer. There seems to be space in my head to regulate the stress and keep the thoughts flowing.