Consumption, Perception Of Learning And Production

A few weeks ago, I had an engrossing conversation with a friend regarding their consumption habits. They detailed how they had painstakingly optimized their consumption for learning and how it played a role in their professional and personal life. Intrigued, I raised the question of what they were producing with all the knowledge they were absorbing. We had to cut our discussion short due to time zone difference and we concluded with me suggesting they sell their TV.

My hypothesis is that despite unprecedented access to quality information, there's a growing disconnect between what we consume in the name of learning and the tangible outputs or changes in our lives, aka production. We are falling prey to the perception of learning. Even for those among us who have invested time and effort to cultivate healthier consumption habits, it appears we're indulging in the digital equivalent of consuming 'healthy' snacks — items that claim to be beneficial but may not truly be so.

Some time ago, I wrote about consumption and said, "For comparison, a grad course is ~30 contact hours, and the sitcom Big Bang Theory is ~120 hours long," and started replacing Netflix with MIT lectures. However, this adoption of healthier content didn’t have the kind of profound impact I had imagined, prompting me to delve deeper.

Consumption and content In the first draft of this piece, I treated consumption and content as a single entity, but by the time I got to the end, I realized that not only are they distinct but that this distinction is key. I am going to try to tease these two things apart.

Content: A decade or so ago, there were very few people and entities with the resources to produce and distribute content geared towards learning outside of publishing. I remember growing up with only two sources that fed my desire to learn: Discovery and National Geographic channels. Thanks to some amazing technology, the number of sources has exploded, which has led to an increase in both breadth and depth of content. Moreover, almost all this content is available in multitudes of formats from audiobooks and podcasts to interactive applications and feature-length videos to cater to everyone’s preferences.

Platforms such as YouTube and Twitter have enabled more people than ever from more fields than ever to share knowledge, and so many amazing individuals and groups have stepped up. Andrew Huberman has been hard at work making science more accessible to the public. If you want to learn math, there is perhaps no better source than the 3Blue1Brown YouTube channel. Want to understand how LLMs work and are built? You can learn from one of the masters in Andrej Karpathy. Almost all of MIT’s courses are available online including lecture notes and assignments. Want to learn how to play the piano, you can learn from the award-winning artists. Then there are platforms such as Medium and Substack, which have added to this as well in fields such as philosophy and journalism. Add to that platforms such as Stack Overflow and Reddit that have provided the tools for like-minded people to dig deeper and support each other. And almost all of this is accessible for free.

I may have painted a rosier picture than reality but the underline point remains valid. In short, there is no dearth of quality content.

Consumption: Our consumption of content, in general, has gone up, fuelled by attention economy companies who have enlisted some of the world’s smartest individuals to feed us more and more content, and then some more. There is indeed valuable and nutritious content available, but it exists not in isolation but rather amidst a sea of tempting empty calories, just a tap away from luring us into hours of doom scrolling or binge-watching.

On a side note, I worry about the new tools in the form of AI at disposal of these companies. We are entering an era where we could tweak or create content from scratch, and while this could potentially be used to facilitate more effective learning, such as through improved translations, there is no incentive for these organizations to prioritize such features over ones that will keep us glued to our screens for longer. This, I fear, will lead us to a state where every piece of content is optimized to near perfection, designed to deliver the most significant dopamine hit every single time. Move over cocaine.

Great content but poor consumption habits?: This perplexing state is not restricted to the digital realm. In the physical world, thanks to innovations in supply chain and agricultural technology, we now have access to a higher quality and broader range of ingredients year-round. These ingredients are often found alongside other types of food in supermarkets so there is no extra effort involved in choosing them. Despite requiring the same level of effort when it comes to selection and being placed literally next to each other our consumption of junk alternatives has increased. In fact, research indicates that 73% of food in the typical US supermarket is either not considered food or is ultra-processed .(https://cos.northeastern.edu/news/has-your-food-been-chemically-altered-new-database-of-50000-products-provides-answers/). The good is outnumbered.   While our brains are remarkable at learning patterns, they tend to apply these patterns to all similar situations. Consequently, habits formed from consuming unhealthy content can spill over into healthy alternatives, leading to issues such as overconsumption.

Abundance: Here's a thought experiment. If you are an avid reader and your access to books was limited, would that nudge you into writing your own? If you were learning how to play the piano, and your access to music produced by others was limited, would that push you to craft your own melodies?

Perhaps the fact that we have an endless supply of books, sheet music, and YouTube lectures keeps us in perpetual cycles of consumption. There is no forcing function for us to produce and test if we are truly learning and in a way that we can use to enrich our lives.

When I was a teenager and didn't have access to sheet music, I used to write my own songs and melodies on the guitar. It was literally the only option available to me for playing the instrument. Did a teenage heartbreak drive this production of songs? Perhaps.

Lack of cohort of peers: Our consumption of quality content is happening in isolation. Looking back at my time in university, I realize the significance of peers in the learning process. The questions posed by classmates during lectures were essential to developing my understanding of the given topic, as each question brought to light a new perspective that I hadn’t considered. The presence of this cohort also meant that we often ended up teaching each other, and as the saying goes ’The best way to learn is to teach’.

No homework: The absence of structured assignments is notable. Unlike traditional learning environments, many online resources lack problem sets or exercises to reinforce new information. Simply reading or watching without practical application provides minimal value. While one might glean interesting facts or frameworks, these only scratch the surface of understanding. Memory is fragile, and true comprehension requires repetition and practice to solidify concepts.

I hope that a PM on YouTube would build the ability for educational creators to integrate homework assignments at the end of the video instead of autoplaying the next one.

Distractions sit alongside quality content: YouTube has made knowledge more accessible than ever! But right next to the Stanford Business School’s video ‘Jensen Huang, Founder and CEO of NVIDIA’ sits the ‘Oscar Trailers: 2024’ video. The distractions are way too close for comfort. Even if one does not click on the recommended list, one’s thoughts are directed in that direction and if one is not careful the next video will autoplay, leading to a sudden change in context that muddies the lessons learned.

Lack of depth: Early in my career, I asked my now mentor, Tenni, if there were any frameworks that she would recommend for me to learn and apply to do a better job. Her answer was no, that is not how it works; there are no shortcuts. Frameworks only help if you know the backstory of how they were created, have multiple examples of their application, understand things in depth and practice; otherwise, you’ll deploy them ineffectively at best. There has been a proliferation of short-form content that promises the same level of learning as long-form. Add to that apps such as Blinkist that promise to summarize the key ideas from a book into a single 15-minute chunk and the rise of listening and watching content at 2x speed! Andrew Karpathy’s stance on this is that they give the appearance of education, but if you look closely, they are really just entertainment. I would agree.

Turning consumption into production My argument is not that we stop consumption or even change our sources or the medium; rather, it is that we review our current habits and better balance them with production. Perhaps this is too strong of a stance, but 'healthy' consumption that does not translate into some kind of artifact is essentially entertainment. It may be healthier entertainment than doomscrolling on Instagram, but entertainment nonetheless.

I am not referring to all forms of consumption, but rather to those that we categorize as being in the ‘healthy’ bucket.

Start with the end in mind: Given the lure and ease of jumping onto the ‘next’ thing, stating upfront what you want to create at the end of this learning cycle can increase the probability of the endeavour leading to production and sticker learning. For instance, when learning how to play the piano, you might set the goal of playing one song at a public piano. When reading a book, perhaps you set the goal of writing a 1000-word critique. If reading a paper on strategy, consider setting the goal of rewriting your team's current draft and getting feedback from colleagues.

Take breaks to let it sink in: The mind is amazing; for example, one can increase their actual physical performance by simply visualizing the action in their head [Soruce] Taking breaks allows us to replay what we've learned and combine it with other ideas from past experiences, integrating it into our overall understanding and even opening new lines of thought. Personally, I love to take a walk after finishing reading a book or a heavy chapter.

Have a conversation: Talking about what one has learned forces us to structure our thoughts, which can help uncover gaps in understanding. If you are lucky enough to know an expert in that field, then talk to them but a conversation with anyone will go a long way. This conversation can also be in written form; kind of like this email 😊. I am always happy to jump on a call and chat about whatever you've just read or learned. Feel free to shoot me a text or directly block time on my calendar using this email.

Mental workout: If we consume something with the intent to learn, it should feel like a workout. And just like you would at the gym, you should spend enough time to feel that you have pushed yourself and got a real workout done.

Defining time commitment upfront: One of the major barriers that I have come across when it comes to turning consumption into production is that at the start of the journey into learning something, we basically suck at the production part. This makes it difficult to produce anything because the gap in quality between what we consume and what we produce is huge. This is expected, given that we live in a world where we are only exposed to the end results and not the hard work that it took to get there, leaving us with the feeling of not being good enough. To counter this, one could start by defining how much time and effort they want to invest in a field before they jump to the next.

Counter argument It is fair to argue that my hypothesis, suggesting that what we are consuming is not leading to effective learning or production, discounts the iterative improvements or refinement of already produced artifacts. For example, my friend, whom I was trying to convince to sell their TV, shared that after reading "Atomic Habits," they made a change wherein they put a box of nuts on the kitchen island, which led to them eating healthier. This is a great outcome and something that my hypothesis doesn’t give enough weight to.  

Coming back to selling the TV While selling the TV is a metaphor to drive home the point of reducing consumption it can be taken literally. And if anyone is concerned about what their furniture will be pointed towards, just like Joey from Friends if you sold your TV (reference to the meme), a bookshelf, a piano, or a great piece of art will work just fine. Trust me, I do not own a TV. Point your couch towards what you want to do more of :) Attached is a photo of the view from my couch.