Information is infinite. Attention isn’t. Most content doesn’t exist because you need it — it exists because someone needs you to look at it. So I keep an allowlist. Four entries.
What I love
Games, TV, music. No usefulness required.
Larry David I can rewatch forever. Most games I never want to open twice — the few I do are the signal. This input doesn’t feed knowledge; it feeds taste. Taste is the layer every later judgment runs on.
Tools, with a filter
Tool rabbit holes are bottomless, and tinkering is its own addiction. Three things justify it:
- Trajectory. Life as queryable data — where the money went, where the time went, when the ideas came.
- Observability. What I’m doing, visible — attention leaks, sleep quality, habits creeping back.
- Freed capacity. Hours handed back. Enjoying the setup screen doesn’t count.
Agent self-evolution is blocked on observe. Same for humans: no record, no iteration. Tinkering that serves none of the three is doomscrolling with a config file.
Outside my cognition
Domain-specific or general. One bar: some decision changes after reading.
The most pleasant reading is reconfirmation. Zero delta. Pleasure and delta run inverse.
Health
Sleep, training, food. Worth the input.
Also the domain with the worst input-to-action ratio: saved workout plans outnumber workouts. No amount of planning beats training today, lol.
Off the list
The four share a center: taste, data, the edge of cognition, the body. All state nobody else can hold for you.
Everything else defaults to noise. Choose your input — it’s how you choose your life.