Getting Quality Information is About Staying Healthy

I think [the key to a healthy information diet] is understanding that this stuff is about your health, not about productivity or politics or fact checking.  It’s about your personal individual health and I think that having a healthy information diet will actually make you live longer and having a poor information diet will kill you faster. 

So looking at these problems through the lens of health rather than through the lens of media or productivity is I think the first step in doing that.  That’s an admittedly vague answer, but there are some pretty practical tips that you can do too.  Minimize the amount of time that you spend sitting is something that’s going to keep you alive longer.  Schedule the time that you spend with your media such that you don’t get lost in it. 

Twenty years ago if you wanted to watch a television show you had to make an appointment with it, but now you’re favorite television shows are on whenever you want them to be, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make an appointment with them still.  So block out time to have a healthy relationship with information and then finally, stick closer to the facts.  If a news organization isn’t providing you source material don’t use that news organization.  Use one that will and that will make all of media change after awhile, just like our food business is starting to change as people seek out closer to source foods.

In Their Own Words is recorded in Big Think’s studio.

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