What you consume every day (and who you’re becoming)

There’s something I think we completely underestimate.

Every day we spend hours consuming content. Not necessarily because we’re shallow, or because we have nothing to do. Often it’s the gap between one commitment and the next, a break, the moment your brain wants to switch off. It happens. It’s human.

The problem isn’t the break itself. It’s what we do in that break, and how aware we are while doing it.

We scroll, we watch, sometimes we like, sometimes we follow people. Sometimes we fall into odd spirals: we start from a headline and end up on a video we didn’t even know we wanted. And while we do it, an inner voice says it’s just entertainment.

That’s where I think we lose the plot.

Because it isn’t neutral. Not at all.

You’re training a system

Every interaction tells the algorithm one very clear sentence: give me more of this.

This isn’t philosophy, it’s mechanics. The system learns from signals. What you watch, how long you stay, what you save, what you comment, what you ignore. Over time that system gets sharper. More precise. More aligned with what already keeps you glued.

And here comes the uncomfortable part.

We’re not only choosing what to see. We’re choosing what to let influence us. And therefore, indirectly, we’re choosing who to become.

Not in a melodramatic greeting-card sense. In a practical sense: your mind trains through repetition. If you spend months immersed in reactive, anxious, polarized, or hyper-simplified content, your way of sorting the world starts to resemble that. If you spend months on stories about building, failing, discipline, curiosity, you start to resemble that too.

Not because the internet makes you bad or good. But because what you repeat becomes normal.

It isn’t just lost time. It’s direction taken

I’m not a smartphone moralist. I use social media, I follow people, I read online like everyone else. The point is different: if you don’t set boundaries, the default isn’t balance. The default is maximum algorithmic yield, meaning whatever keeps you on screen longest.

And what keeps you on screen longest often doesn’t match what makes you more capable, calmer, or clearer on the decisions that actually matter.

So the useful question isn’t whether you should quit. The useful question is: is this input improving me, or is it only comforting me in the short term?

Because what you consume every day eventually becomes what you think. And what you think, over time, becomes what you do.

Not magically, in a mundane way: priorities, language, fear, ambition, risk tolerance, your relationship with work, money, people. It’s all connected.

The filter worth having

I don’t believe in the textbook solution of delete everything and live in the woods. For many of us the digital world is also work, opportunity, network, curiosity.

But I do believe in a simple, almost crude filter: a few high-quality inputs, chosen, and everything else treated for what it is: noise with a price.

The price isn’t only time.

It’s also the fineness with which you observe reality when you’re no longer used to being without constant stimulation.

It’s also patience for long projects that don’t deliver instant likes.

It’s also the ability to read hard texts that don’t have a ten-second hook.

If you want, that’s where the game about who you become in five years is played. Not in a big manifesto. In microscopic habits.

An honest closing

I’m not saying you should optimize every minute of the day. That would be absurd, and counterproductive too.

I’m saying it’s worth looking at your feed the way you look inside a fridge: not to judge yourself, but to ask what’s in there and whether it’s what you really want to feed yourself.

Because yes: you’re training a system.

The good news is you can also stop feeding it only what makes you smaller.

And start feeding it, little by little, something that widens you.