"You become what you consume."
I was always familiar with this quote in the context of “eating”.
Eat vegetables, you will become healthy. Eat processed foods, you will become sick.
Although it still makes sense in the context of “eating”, in today’s hyper-connected and overstimulated modern world, this quote might just have a new meaning.
Every day we feed our minds a boatload of digital information.
YouTube Videos
TikTok and Instagram Reels
Podcasts
Blogs
News
… etc
The more we consume, the more our perceptions change, the more our brains change.
With a constant barrage of opinions coming our way, and without a moment of silence to generate our own thoughts, we become prisoners to our own echo chambers.
We don’t form original thoughts. We become a mouthpiece of the content creators.
That’s why it’s even more important today to only consume what we need. We must consume out of necessity, not boredom.
Taking my first steps towards this transition, I went through a comprehensive process to curate my content feeds — YouTube, Podcasts, and Blogs.
Your poison might be something different — TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn — but you will still benefit from the process I followed.
Let’s get started.
When I started the process, the first step was to understand why I consume.
For me, it wasn’t strictly for entertainment purposes. What I mean is that I didn’t watch “funny cat videos” “celebrity drama”, or “TV show clips”.
Instead, I started consuming from a good place.
Wanting to know more about a topic — personal finance, credit cards, workout routines, healthy food, cryptocurrency, etc.
Making an informed purchasing decision — buying a backpack, desktop speakers, wallet, etc.
Informing myself about the world — true crime incidents, history lessons, etc.
The first 3-5 videos served exactly these purposes.
However, it’s beyond the first 5 videos that the benefits start diminishing.
YouTube algorithms, superpowered with the knowledge of your interest, start recommending "similar" videos, and I start going down a rabbit hole.
Before I realized it, my intention to learn about investment has morphed into an interest in credit cards and mortgage rates. From there, it continues — people’s debt stories, impulse purchases, what to buy and what not to buy, how to hunt deals and find coupons, etc.
10 videos later, I am consuming for entertainment.
My original intention is no longer there.
That’s why, my first step was to list out the topics that bring me to YouTube every day. It looked something like this:
Book Recommendations and Reviews
Tech Reviews
Productivity
Personal Finance
Sports
Privacy Tech
Travel Stories
Credit Cards
Personal Health
Religion or Spirituality
You will notice that the topics are very broad. Even if I list these out, without the next 2 steps, the curation process is useless.
Next, I went through all the channels I was subscribed to. Both on YouTube and Apple Podcasts.
For you it might be Instagram/TikTok accounts or LinkedIn followers, it doesn’t matter. The process is the same.
Look at the last 5-10 videos and ask myself — Did I find any of them valuable?
If “yes”, keep. Otherwise, “unsubscribe”.
Do this for all creators, until you have 3-4 creators for every topic.
Focus on quality of content, not quantity.
At the end of this process, I was left with a total of around 50 creators.
10 Topics * 5 Creators/topic = 50 Creators
I unsubscribed from the remaining 175…
With my “following” feed curated, I knew that the “pool of content” that I could pick from was drastically smaller. More focused, more intentional.
However, we still have one big problem: Recommendations, Explore, and Discover tabs.
Depending on your addition — TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube — every one of these apps has some version of algorithmic recommendation.
The goal is simple: Learn from your behaviors, recommend similar enticing content, and keep you hooked on their platform for as long as possible.
Without sufficient protection against it, I knew that my curated list of 50 creators would soon explode to 500 as these algorithms recommend newer channels with fresher content — things that my dopamine system needs to go on overdrive.
I had to figure out a way around it.
For me the solution was simple:
YouTube on desktop — browser extension to remove news feed
Instagram / LinkedIn on desktop — browser extension to remove news feed
YouTube on mobile — use Opal to limit screen time
Instagram / LinkedIn on mobile — apps uninstalled
No matter which platform’s “discovery” mode hooks you, there’s a way around it.
If you can’t find one, leave a comment below or email me. I hope together we can find a sustainable solution that works for you.
To bring everything together, here’s the process I went through to make my content consumption intentional on both YouTube and Apple Podcasts.
List the topics that bring me to these platforms
For every topic find 3-5 creators with the highest credibility
Once the list is finalized, unsubscribe from all other creators
Download browser extensions to remove infinite scrollable news feeds
Install Opal on my phone to limit YouTube and Apple screen time
Since I have implemented this system, my screen time has plummeted.
I can use the newly freed time on more intentional activities — talking to my family, reading a book, learning new programming and management skills, etc.
Okay, folks, that’s all for today.
Thank you for your time. I hope you found it valuable.
If you want to stay connected, here are a few ways you can do so: follow me on Medium or subscribe to my website.