I, along with everyone else (it seems!) is super interested in the idea of attention and information consumption, probably because this is such a universal challenge right now.
We have so much more coming at us than we actually have the time or bandwidth to consume, and yet it’s not that commonplace to spend a lot of effort curating what comes at us (well, ALGORITHMS might curate, but we don’t curate for ourselves!). The end result is a frenetic mishmash of inputs with little value and often with an agenda pushed by the media/social media companies themselves.
Nobody wants that, right? I definitely don’t, so in 2024 I started generally tracking my media consumption and giving a bit more time and thought to my choices. In 2025, I want to continue that journey. Here are some concrete ways that I want to practice this:
1- Read books. This is an overlap with my last goal so I won’t belabor it, but books are such a great form of media and I want more of them back in my life.
2- Create daily podcast playlists from my menu of subscriptions. I started doing this at the end of 2024 and it worked well. I prefer doing this vs letting my podcast player choose for me at random! regularly delete eps I am not interested in, but this way I don’t miss anything from my favorite podcasts.
3- Listen to music daily, whether it‘s on a commute or while folding laundry. Music is calming and I love it, and yet it’s not always my first choice. I need a break from words constantly coming at me, though! I’ve long had this on my “daily metrics” tracker and will continue to keep it there. Sometimes I listen to something I’ve heard 24823 times and other times I’ll pick something new. (I generally keep up with notable new releases through NPR’s All Songs Considered podcast – love it!).
4- Track the media I consume! I know, this is absolutely not for everyone and probably the point in this post where some people are like “yeah, no.” But I love it and have been doing it fairly consistently for a few months now. Will I DO anything with this record? No, though sometimes I look back to pick “5 on a Friday” items. Keeping it does something to my awareness of my choices, and I plan on continuing in 2025!
5- Consume news in limited doses from sources that generally do not feel super-partisan News is stressful but I feel like I want to keep up with at least the biggest things going on in the world. At times I may turn to a Pantsuit Politics ep for nuance and I have been into Sam Harris lately (his perspectives feel balanced to me) but in generally my daily dose will remain NPR’s Up First.
6- Continue to avoid social media platforms. I don’t want to be served algorithmically organized content, period. Reddit has remained the only one I have jumped into from time to time in 2024 (lurking, not posting!) but I’m hoping to have made a clean and permanent break this year like I did with FB in 2016 and Insta in 2021.
7- Reduce mindless “fishing for inputs” behavior by keeping phone out of reach most of the time. This is probably the hardest item on the list! Often media inputs are sneaky. They come via email, via text links, via notifications (if the settings there aren’t airtight). The only way to avoid these behaviors are to . . . NOT CHECK ONE’S PHONE OR EMAIL unless there is intention behind that action. This is hard for me as it probably is for everyone, but I will keep up the good fight! I did find myself putting my phone down yesterday when I realized that I wasn’t going to have time to respond to any email so why was I even bothering to look?
To me, this set of goals is a very foundational one. It’s just hard to do anything else well with a scattered sense of focus, from writing to parenting to seeing patients. I think I’ve made a lot of progress in this realm, but the evolving landscape continues to present challenges! I want to make this set of items a big priority in 2025 and it goes very well with my word of the year, F I N I T E. Our attention and time to consume things is quite finite, and I want to honor that with my actions.
Few Pix:
Not shown: shopping with A for bat mitzvah party dresses (for others’ parties, not her!); lovely meetup with two peds endo friends at a park with ninja course (10 kids in all with great age matchups); organizing C’s room with my Boca friend Amanda — he did so well and loves his new space!
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I wish Amanda could come help my kids declutter their rooms!
I told her she should start a business 🙂 She’s talented (and it’s fun!)
She should!
Thanks 😊 It’s fun when I love helping friends! It’s fun. The kids get excited about being in charge and we get to hang out during the process.
the kids love it (and love Amanda!!!)
Those dumplings look scrumptious.
I will say, we did make progress with the front door mess this year! We now have special hooks for the dog harnesses (it only required a moderate amount of nagging to get everyone else to use them, lol) and we got a small chest of drawers for hats, gloves, scarves and stuff. On top we have a different container for leashes. We also made Dylan hang up her sweatshirts in the front closet because she was piling them on the couch instead. It’s been so much less cluttered!
(Otherwise I am *terrible* at aesthetics… and honestly with two dogs there’s not much point in getting nice things anyway!)
I am too!!!! I want to do better, but it is not really something that comes naturally. At all. And i feel like my kids still destroy a lot . . .
I just got a Brick and would recommend it. Via an iPhone app you can set it up to “brick” certain apps when you activate it. You can brick directly from your phone, but you have to tap it to the Brick device to unbrick. Set up is TERRIBLE – very glitchy and frustrating – but once you’ve set the apps that you want to block or allow, it works beautifully and has reduced my mindless scrolling by a LOT!
super intersting!!! I will look into it!
#7 is really game changer. I want to prioritize that too.
I just wanted to add a thought about listening to music as a break from words/podcasts! Sometime in the past year or two, I started using white noise or brown noise to help me tune out the outside world and focus on writing tasks at work. Then someone recommended using lofi music– I have found this so helpful! My favorite is a Disney lofi channel (which I listen to using youtube music), which plays in the background while I type at my laptop. It really helps me tune out the outside noise and helps me stay calm and focused. It’s even become a cue for me to get down to work and writing. Is this something you have tried? Maybe it could be nice to use on those days when you really need to hit your intended word count!
Ooh I bet I would love that!! Thank you!