You Need to Change How You Consume

I used to be just like you I was addicted to social media and short form content but slowly I've started to eradicate that addiction or I'm not perfect I still have Snapchat and I still occasionally catch myself on there and I know it's a cope but apart from that I'm pretty much Eric at Short content and the main reason I deleted all these apps was to achieve the one goal which I have achieved fix my attention span there were other goals that and objectives I plan to achieve off of and I have achieved them but this was the most important one it was to fix my attention Manan I can now read a book which I haven't been able to do I hadn't been able to do since I got my phone when I was around 13 years old so it's been around 3 years 2 3 years and I was probably a late one to get my phone so I imagine a lot of you have been using these ads for a lot longer than I have there's something uniquely beautiful about being able to sit down and just listen and pay attention and actually know that you remember what is being said when you're consuming the short form content you're not going to be able to do that when you fry your dopamine receptors it leaves your mind in this foggy state where it feels like you're trying really hard and you're just drudging through the mud and you can't get a clear Focus so many opportunities will pass by for those who are unable to pay attention if you look at the grades of people in your classes that use Tik Tok for several hours of the day there's a pretty clear correlation the more people use Tik Tok the lists they do well and of course there are Exceptions there are always exceptions they're always going to be intelligent people that can do the bare minimum to get a good grade especially our school Works in my country for grades but I'm not going to get into that you don't need to do a lot but that doesn't make you an excellent student it doesn't make you actually understand the content and I noticed how much of an improvement my grades got after I stopped using short form content specifically Instagram since I deleted Tik Tok ages ago I stopped using Instagram and in the second half of the year my grades were pretty much just the top grade I could get I had an incredible academic comeback and people were were shocked it was shocked that I'd managed to get the grades that I needed to get an endorsement before exams even happened and it was all because I changed what I consumed and I improved my mental health I'm going to go into changing what I consume I stopped watching content from unintelligent people I stopped watching videos that were merely entertainment and I started watching and learning from educated people from intelligent people the people that had success that I wanted and it's no wonder this works because if you're watching content from unintelligent people you're subconsciously going to be more un intelligent you're going to make yourself more un intelligent than you are but if you watch content from intelligent people then you're just going to become more intelligent because they're teaching you things and you're learning things the change in grade seemed like it happened overnight but it was really just persistence initially at the start of the year I couldn't really read books I could read them but I would easily get bored and it would take me forever I'd read the same line over and over again quite often but I kept persisting I kept on reading and slowly throughout the year reading became easier and easier and easier what I'm saying is I wasn't able to just delete short form content I wasn't able to just delete Tik Tok and Instagram and just pick up a book and just be able to read it it took time it took me time to change the way I consume because think about it I'd been using these platforms for years they were part of my day for years so think about how much my dopamine receptors have been fried over those years they needed to come back to Baseline it was going to take time because your brain will chase whichever dopamine is the easiest and when you got social media it's so easy to get dopamine from so it just fries your brain receptors cuz it goes above and then it drops below Baseline so your dopamine is so low once you quit social media and short for Content because youve fried it and you've slowly got to let it just come up by doing things that are more demanding that give you better dopamine delayed gratification such as going to the gym it's delayed gratification doesn't feel good while you're doing it but you get a dopamine Spike after and that increases your Baseline so you have to just try to do these things cuz they'll feel hard but they'll increase your Baseline at the end so every single time you go up your Baseline goes up and your dopamine gets closer to where it's meant to be bear in mind the time is varying it took me a couple of months maybe but I wasn't the guy that was spending six hours a day scrolling on Tik Tok I still spent quite a lot of time watching YouTube instead which whilst it wasn't good I was watching entertainment it was still long for more so it wasn't flashing all over the place it was still highly edited but it wasn't constantly changing it was one context so my brain wasn't as fried as it could have been so it'll vary in time how long it takes you to switch to educational content and longer form versions of learning but you'll get there if you keep persisting it's the same idea as Progressive overload you don't expect the 60 kg skinny fat boy to go into the gym and be able to bench 60 kges straight away even if he does it every single day he goes into the gym and he tries to Min 60 kgs he does it for a year every day he won't lift it but if he starts out where he can lift it so he starts with lower weight and he goes every single day slowly he's going to get stronger and stronger and he will eventually be able to do 60 kgs it might even be within less than a year so it will take time that's the problem we want results now but it will take time so you got to start out slow you got to start out with just a little bit you got to start out reading one page and two pages and increase how much you're reading or start out listening to a podcast for 5 minutes and then increasing the amount of time you're listening to it because it will take time for you to get used to it all the content you should consume should be educational and not for the sake of entertainment it should be actually educational where you're learning from it basically all the content you should consume should be from reading books watching long form videos and watching and listening to podcasts that should be where you're learning from these are genuinely generally the places where you learn the most information from of course there's lectures and teachings but online these are where you'll mostly find educational resources the content you consume should always be noteworthy what do I mean mean by this well if you're consuming content you should aim to listen to content that you want to take notes from like this I've got this notebook here and basically I just put we notes in it I mean this is my carrier but if I'm listening to a podcast or something I'll make sure I've got this on me so I can just write things down and I can just keep track and just remember things I do sometimes if I'm listening to like a full class or something I'll just get a refill pad out and I'll use that and take notes from that but this is what I use to track things throughout the day if I'm listening to a podcast and something I'll use that because it just means I remember what I'm learning you don't need a fancy system you don't need nice fancy notebook and an expensive pen nice note taking paper look at this it's literally like 20 cents don't over complicate something that doesn't need to be complicated that's what many beginners do they complicate things they even I did this they try and over complicate things just do the basics you don't need to complicate it make it easy for yourself it doesn't have to be perfect it just has to be practical you should aim to have a few content creators that are your go-tos the people that you consume as much of your content as possible because you don't want to be jumping all over the place from different person to different person you should consume content from people people that you resonate with you don't want to have too many people one of mine that I really consume quite a bit of content from was Andrew hubman and the role of five applies here the role of the five friends you have your five closest friends you'll be the average of them that can apply to the people that you follow the people that you watch because think about it if you're watching unintelligent content creators and you're watching it for entertainment purposes you're going to become more unintelligent but if you're making the people that you spend the most time with intelligent people such as Andrew hubman you're going to become more intelligent so keep it sort of tight keep the people that you follow Limited the people that you watch their content keep it limited to the people that you want to be like the success that you want to have because we're in an era where you can have one of those people be the likes of an Andrew hman who you might never meet in real life but you have the opportunity to now that we have the internet and I know it's not the same as a real friendship but it still works one thing you might want to do with this longer form content is watch certain parts of it over again specifically with the podcast you might want to watch certain parts of it over again but with shorter things sort of like YouTube videos you might want to watch the whole thing over again because sometimes you don't fully grasp the concepts that are being explained on the first Liston this is why I often look back through books or I'll keep my books and I'll highlight them so I can go back through them because it means I can actually relearn ideas that I already knew but they sort of went to the back of my head because a lot of learning is just remembering what you've learned you know a lot of things especially after you start listening to this content for a while so you need to just remember them because there's a lot of things that you'll listen to that are actually helpful that you won't apply and without being reminded you won't have any chance of doing it don't be afraid to highlight your books if you have your own self-help books or educational books and I know it makes you cringe and it made me cringe too when I started but as you do it more it's just normal and it's your book no one else has to say it it's just your book you're taking the notes to help you so if you highlight on it and write notes on it then who cares no one else has to see it this is the only thing I do like having a system for I like to just leave we symbols that I can go back to and look at and know what they're meaning so I have like this symbol that I have for the main idea of a chapter or something and then I have a symbol that I can go back so I can write notes on it or I can use it in videos or other things like that and then I have just like a symbol for something that I find interesting question marks that I use if like I'm unsure on a topic or a word and I don't understand it I'll go look it up it's just simple we symbols it's not complex but it is helpful for that that's the only thing I will allow you to have a system on but don't be afraid to mark up your books it's literally just the same as taking notes but you're just doing it in the book instead so keep persisting with this s form content thing it won't feel like it works to begin with it will take time so give it the time that it needs give it the time to solidify itself as a habit that you do and you will start to see your attention span improve and you will start to become more intelligent and don't we all want that I love you all now stop consuming and go create

Channel: Thri

Views: 788

Keywords: self improvement, attention span, stocism, productivity, focus, attention

Id: SkmAK2i_ajY

Length: 17min 0sec (1020 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 02 2024