☠️AIP 78 The Consumption Box Of Death
Noise.
In the information age, you feel it so constantly stillness becomes abnormal. The fog in your brain has fog. Your dreams become chaotic amalgamations of video games, YouTube shorts, TikTok, and Instagram reels.
You want to show your best self to your friends, family, and colleagues, but every activity requiring a high degree of focus is difficult.
What I’m describing is the consumption box of death:
The consumption box of death manifests when your use-to-consume ratio veers much too far to consumption.
“Using” in this ratio means applying what you consume to real life in any way—conversation, creation, or skill formation. “Consumption” refers to consuming information like YouTube, podcasts, books, anything on social media, articles, conversations, and more. The use-to-consume ratio you want varies depending on your season of life.
Generally, I keep the ratio over one. In other words, I want to use more than I consume.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. How does a low use-to-consume ratio create the consumption box of death?
Let’s think of you as an aspiring chef—dang, you look good in a chef hat! You just got signed for your first cooking show, Cooktastic Cooking. Ya, you didn’t get a word in the name. Anyway, you’re going to be cooking for a live audience, and you need to be in tip-top shape.
In this world, your brain is a box, and consumption fills it with ingredients. Inspired, you finally follow your mom’s advice and consume some of the enriching Russian novel Crime And Punishment. This adds some peanut butter, steak, and cabbage to the box.
In real life, each time you use what you use what you consume in some way, it’s as if you are taking those ingredients out of the box and making a meal. Your cooking show thrives when your consumption and creation are in a good relationship. Even Gordan Ramsay would give you five Michelin stars. You use ingredients before they rot, and your customers are happy.
But sometimes, you consume so much and create so little your box overflows with rotting ingredients: this is the consumption box of death.
When this happens, you start experiencing all the feelings I described above. And your Cooktastic Cooking reviews plummet a tragedy.
How do we navigate this?
The best way to fight the consumption box of death is drum roll please, to use what you consume more.
I do this in a few ways. First, whenever I consume something interesting, I try to talk about it with the next person I see. Second, I take notes on most of the content I consume. This raises the activation energy to consumption and helps me digest it more. Third, I create YouTube videos, podcasts, and newsletters digesting information I learn related to my interests in gamification, meta-learning, Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) and more.
Another great way to strengthen your use-to-consume ratio without using more is to install a fancy consumo-fridge in your box.
The consumo fridge keeps ingredients cool so they last longer before needing to be used. To install and put ingredients in this fridge, you have to consume information from longer-form mediums like podcasts and books. These mediums create an environment that encourages deep thought and reflection. Shorter-form mediums like TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram often require no thought to consume and therefore add ingredients directly to the box.
By strengthening your use-to-consume ratio, the noise in your life will become significantly less intense. I know from personal experience. I’m less restless. I have the focus to enjoy the simple pleasures of life, like a good meal with friends, a sunset, or an excellent writing session in the morning.
The people around you will be affected as well. They will consider using more, become more present with you during interactions, and ripple out their change.
Great cooking helps everyone.
One of the best ways to use what you consume more is to write atomic essays, short 100-500 word essays on anything you want. They’re the opposite of the boring, forced writing you did in school. Learn why and how to write them in this article.
Here’s what I would like to share this week.
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📖Book - Lessons in Chemistry: My mom recommended me this book and it has been surprisingly good. I can see why she likes it. The main character is a women, check, rows in college check, believes in the strength of women, check, takes things very literally, check, and is seen as super attractive by almost every guy in the book, final check. The premise is a single mom struggles to survive in a patriarchic society when she emboldens women on a cooking show to stand up for themselves and show their womanly powa!
📺YouTube Video - Harvard Psychologist On Why People Are Sad, Lonely, And Single: This YouTube videos is one of those that fundamentally changes you as a person before and afterward. Like a great book. The main insight I came to in this video is fulfilling any desire will never make you happy. Desire feeds on desire. Once you reach one goal post another is immediately set. The secret is in falling in love with the journey over the destination.
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Cheers, 🥜
Aidan
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