[Repost] Mentally Obese

Humanity’s collective diet is appalling and I’m not referring to what we shove in our mouths. I’m more concerned with what we feed our minds. We have adopted what my comrade from another launch pad Naval Ravikant calls a mental junk food diet. Mental junk food is rotting humanity’s collective mind.

Let me explain.

The Internet is both a beauty and a curse. It is the modern day Library of Alexandria available at the click of a button.

Yet, it’s a double-edged sword. There is more high-quality content created in a day than could be consumed in a lifetime. But there is a greater amount of mental junk food being served up at the same time.

The modern struggle is being able to distinguish the difference between the two. Unfortunately, the deck is stacked against us. Because some of the brightest minds from the most powerful corporations in the world are incentivized to stuff our mental food pyramid with a cornucopia of junk that would even make the USDA cringe.

The problem is most of us don’t even realize we are binging on the all-you-can-eat mental junk food buffet. We think we are feeding our minds a balanced and nutritious meal: TV nightly news, iPhone “breaking news” buzzes and bells, and a scoop of social media scrolling for dessert. We justify it because that’s what it takes to be an informed citizen, or so we are told.

As Richard Feynman, the Nobel Prize winning scientist and one of the world's great thinkers once said: “You must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.”

We are fooling ourselves by thinking we are properly equipped to handle all of the world’s breaking news in real time. Spoiler: we aren’t. It is causing us to run around like chickens with our heads cut off. Yet, we can’t seem to stop.

I was the worst chicken of all (aka the fool of all fools). Think I’m kidding? Here’s a glimpse into a typical morning of yours truly to prove it:

Wake up, roll over, grab my phone off the bedside table. Still blurry eyed, I would start my day by opening up my favorite apps and spending a mind-numbing 60 minutes scrolling through the goods. I’m talking: Apple News, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, YikYak (if you know you know). And the cherry on top would be walking to the living room to turn on the local TV station to complete my fix. The start of my day was filled with celebrity gossip, stabbings, shootings, murder, rape, threats of WW3, and a few funny memes to wash it all down. All of this before walking out the front door. It started as a mental sweet tooth that rivaled a kid in a candy store but transformed into a hardcore addiction. I was quickly becoming mentally obese.

Sound familiar?

This strange vortex of mental junk food is something David Perell calls the never-ending now. We only consume content created in the past 24 hours. We’re effectively goldfish. Think about it. Did you look at anything older than that the last time you scrolled?

This is a unique problem we face because at no other time in history did we have a continuous stream of mental junk food available at our fingertips. We are free to walk down the grocery aisles of the Internet and fill our bottomless carts with anything we please.

There must be another way.

First of all, you never need to watch the news again. “Come on Arman, haven’t you ever heard of FOMO?” I have, but JOMO (joy of missing out) is even better. The only news worth knowing will find a way to reach you without you seeking it out. Hypothetically, if a worldwide pandemic were to infect all corners of the globe, would you really need CNN or Fox News to let you know?

Let’s throw that mental junk food in the trash by deleting the news apps from our phones. Bonus points if you delete social media too.

Secondly, you are in luck. Because in addition to the junk there is a smorgasbord of nutritious mental treats in countless nooks and crannies of the Internet. Friendly reminder that you also have the ability to access the works of the greatest authors, thinkers and doers of all time.

Don’t know what to eat? Try a couple of my favorite snacks: Paul Graham’s essays (start here) and anything written by Derek Sivers (start here).

“But Arman, what if I don’t trust myself to select the healthy items while walking down the grocery aisles of the internet?” Have no fear. Simply disconnect by putting your phone in airplane mode for an hour and plop on the couch with an old book. Or dust off that old board game you used to love (Balderdash is my favorite). Those are fine places to start.

Just doing these two things will immediately improve your mental diet. I know because I’ve incorporated both of them into my life and that nagging level of anxiety has vanished. Try it. I’m confident it can do the same for you.

Now I can’t guarantee you will develop a mental six pack overnight, but neither can the best exercise routine. But just as cleaning up your diet is one of the best remedies for physical health, cleaning up your mental diet is a good start for improving your mental health.

So are you with me? Would you like to walk out of the mental junk food buffet and go find the Whole Foods for the mind? I’ll be waiting for you.