I’ve decided I need to take control back of the way I consume things. And yes, I really have lost control. Like millions of others, I am constantly drawn in by the hypnotic pull of social streams and link bait nonsense. I’ve never been a person that ‘lets life happen to them’, but somehow ‘content’ has started just happening to me. I’ve become lazy and easily lured, my world reduced to a trickle of posts defined by sources I can’t remember choosing.

I’ve decided to do four things to regain control, although I refrained from entitling this post “4 things that...”.

The first thing I’ve done is moved the apps from the homescreen on my phone to screen two, and vice versa. A small gesture, but now the first things I see when I grab my Nexus 4 are sources of high quality, long-form content instead of social media icons, beckoning me with their promise of low-investment engagement.
Although this screams of a shallow solution to a deeper problem, I’m interested to see how a subtle ‘user experience’ change might impact my behaviour. Already, I’m constantly reminded of services I usually forget.

Next, I’ve decided to make a rule where I never click a link that starts with a number. 34 reasons socks are dangerous. 28 shocking photographs. This is more of a symbolic gesture than a real ‘solution’, but it’s a start. Of course, this Buzzfeedy number tactic is really a sign of something much bigger at play: an attempt to make articles sound more substantial and captivating than they really are. To prioritise social currency over nourishment.

Three: I’m starting to use a reader again. Years ago, I used Google Reader religiously but as I fell deeper into Twitter, I became lazy. I’d read what surfaced in front of me instead of what I wanted to see. Time to take some control back. Along with this, I need to carve out some reading time each day: another activity that fell victim to a busy calendar.

And lastly (for now) I’ve started to unfollow professional content sources on Twitter. I don’t need to see every story from mashable or Brainpicker as they’re published. The most important ones will surface through my peers. The others I’ll see if I deem that publication worth subscribing to. I spend too much time reading headlines for things I don’t care about and not enough time reading articles I would enjoy.

In short, I’m going to treat content like food. I don’t eat fast food and I won’t consume fast content. At least not as much.

But this isn’t just a post about what and how I consume. It’s also about what I do, and what others do. No one is just a consumer and no one is just a creator. We all do both. We’re part of the system. And I think it’s important to resolve this dual existence. We are guilty of hypocrisy, ranting about spam and yet praising manipulative ‘growth hacking’; celebrating growth and damning ubiquity. How we consume affects the system and hopefully impacts other creators too.

While writing this, I see Mel Exon has posted something along similar-ish lines and I get the feeling lots of people feel similarly. Here’s to resolutions, which may or may not have something to do with it being a new year ;)