10 Tips for Better Content Consumption Habits

Unhealthy content is also not good for our mental health, so how can one maintain a healthy content diet?

Digital content often gets marketed as something that can change your life, something essential and highly-important. That thinking makes many people feel that content consumption will help them gain the motivation or the knowledge they need to achieve their goals, their dreams.

But, come to think of it — a similar thing happens with food. Food is important to gain energy, do work, to grow. And yet if we don’t maintain a proper diet we become obese. So, if we give so much importance to having a healthy diet, why not do the same with content? Why not have healthy content consumption habits? Because as much as unhealthy food isn’t good for our health, unhealthy content is also not good for our mental health. It can make us mentally obese, make us more confused, more frustrated, and less effective in our life.

So what can we do now? How can one maintain a healthy content diet? Well, just for that, today I have 10 strategies or let’s say 10 principles to help you separate good content from bad one and maintain a healthy content diet.

1. Practice restraint and limit when consuming content

Too much of anything is bad, so exercising some restraint on consumption is always a good idea. Many times we are reading an article, then we click on a link, then go to another link, then the next, and next, and we keep doing it. We must control this. I said restraint and limits because oftentimes, we say I will only do this for one hour. Now whether we consume one content for one hour or six different things over one hour — both can mean different things.

2. Align your content diet with your goals

I feel any content that doesn’t have long-term utility is not very useful, of course, entertainment is an exception to this. But anything that does not directly help you achieve your goal should be avoided as much as possible.

3. Balance content consumption, implementation and creation

When eating or consuming any food or drink, we think a little bit. If we are full, we avoid eating. If we know that toilet facilities will not be available soon, we do not drink much water. Somewhere in the head, these calculations are constantly going on. Then why should we forget this when consuming content? I mean, if I’m watching videos of cats and dogs, what am I learning? For a while, it was fun, but how am I going to use it later? If I watched say an origami or say a 5-minute craft video — will I do any of it? If not, why waste time? Time is the only thing we have, which is limited and perishable, we can’t get it back — so I highly recommend thinking about how we spend it on content consumption.

4. Be careful with extreme views

Extreme views usually come from two different types of content. The first type gets overly stimulating, irritating, or something that makes you uncomfortable or sad — avoid it. Because the more we consume it, the more bitterness we feel, and we become more sceptical and more cynical. The second type is the shocking type of content — something like breaking news or similar. It makes us feel that the whole world is out of our control. We feel our situation is hopeless. Instead pay more attention to things, ideas, thoughts, and stories that give you the courage and confidence to act. And therefore, the moment you feel that you are starting to think in extremes, pull back and avoid consuming that content.

5. Avoid divisive content

By exaggerating one side’s story and suppressing the other side’s story, it paints a biased picture of “us” versus “them”. It is not only newspapers or news channels that do it. Many people are doing it on social media too. Some do it purposefully, some without realizing it. Either way, avoid it.

6. Practice complete news blackout

It seems like a very bold step, but if you analyze any news, you will find that most of the news stories are statistically insignificant. They are almost always exceptions. But when we watch them, they fill us with shock and awe. Moreover, we have no control over anything that is shown on the news. Whether it is war, thefts & robberies, killings, the global economy, inflation, or anything such. It only increases our frustration. So just avoid the so-called news of today, try practising complete news blackout.

7. Identify and control content consumption that sucks out your time

Now here is the thing. For many content creators, getting your attention is essential because their business model depends on keeping us glued to the screen. But for our benefit, we have to be prudent. Understand what is important to us. This means we have to be very careful of content that makes us spend more time on it for comparatively smaller gains. So, anything that is not to the point and wastes your time must be avoided.

8. Inspiration is better than motivation

I find that inspirational content is always way better than motivational content. And here is the difference between the two. Motivational content can be quite stimulating. But, it lacks enablement or empowerment. We feel like we want to do a lot but we can’t because motivational content lacks the method or process. On the contrary, inspirational content is not overstimulating. However, it provides enough know-how to do something with that stimulation. It increases enthusiasm and also capacity. It enables us to do something. So, remember this, inspiration is better than motivation.

9. Too much advice eventually boils down to nothing

We often consume content because we want some advice, we need some direction. But it is quite common to receive advice so varied that it almost boils down to nothing. It averages out to net zero. That can increase our frustration instead of lowering it. And so the best strategy to apply here is to determine your strategy first and then seek advice through content.

10. Treat any advice, information, or content with appropriate context

The fact is everyone creates content from their own experiences or context. This means, their advice, examples, or formula may not necessarily work for us. If we do not understand their situation at that time, then the advice stemming from that content should be taken very carefully. Even what I am saying today should be considered with care and is also, of course, contextual.

Now I am quietly confident that these 10 principles will help you maintain a healthy content diet this year and many more years to come.

So, have a great year ahead and all the best!