Cognitive Obesity: Gluttony for the Information Age

The human body cannot properly function when in a constant state of consumption.

Forced to direct all energy to the digestion of excess food, the body neglects other vital processes, making its residents more susceptible to maladies like illness and cognitive decline. The excess energy contained in food can no longer be converted into fuel and is instead converted to stored fat.

Obesity is the unchecked result of taking in more energy than the body can exert.

Similarly, the creation economy, perpetuated by the ubiquity of the Internet and smartphones, drives its stakeholders to suppress output by taking on an excess of input.

The current “content” that thrives today is that which will readily have an equally clickable and consumable successor tomorrow. Just as the cuckoo does to baby chiclets, today’s information will force yesterday’s from the nest far before it is developed enough to fly.

Cognitive obesity is the unchecked result of taking in more information than the brain can learn from.

Of the podcasts, books, news articles, documentaries, YouTube videos, and TikToks you consumed in the last year, how many can you recall on a detailed level?

I asked myself this question at the turn of the year and decided to run a mental audit on my consumption habits.

Of the +200 podcast episodes I listened to in 2023, I can distinguish only 3 episodes that I still self-reference daily. Of the 10 books I read (still working on that reading habit), The Alchemist is the only one that I still bear in my thoughts. Of the +100 YouTube videos I watched, there are probably 4 that taught me something noteworthy. Of the countless TikToks and Instagram Reels I scrolled through, I frankly don’t remember a single one.

One book was immediately followed by another; the next podcast played without so much as a second of silence after the previous.

I had convinced myself that more information was directly correlated to more knowledge.

Learning is not as simple as just reading or watching an interesting piece of information though. If it were, then consuming as much information as possible would be the ultimate goal—a belief that a certain sect of the productivity-obsessed community preaches. This is incorrect.

If only it were this easy…

The means to a result are more important than the result itself.

The value of finishing a marathon is to learn how to prevail amid rigorous physical and mental conditions—not to slap a 26.2 sticker on a bumper.

The goal of improving health is to learn life-long habits to feel stronger and think clearer—not to hit a number on the scale or pop top at the beach.

The point of reading a good book is to learn something for future application—not to increase an arbitrary count from 19 to 20 for the year.

Just like the body does with food, the mind must digest what it has learned before the next slice of pie goes down the gullet. Without doing so, we are at risk of cognitive obesity.

The solution? Nothing.

Yes, doing nothing—on purpose. It means turning off the phone, taking out the headphones, and even putting down the book.

Before the Internet, it was borderline impossible to fill the screaming void of silence. Now, it is borderline impossible to find a shred of it.

In that silence, we can turn the input into output. Learning is much more complex than solely consuming information. What we consciously do with that information is what correlates to learning.

Experiment with its claims. Revisit it. Write about it. Form some personal conclusions from it.

Perhaps best of all, question its validity altogether.

We’ve all been taught principles to avoid obesity as it pertains to our physical health: eat nutrient-dense, whole foods, be more active, and only take in as many calories as you can put out. The same rules apply to the brain.

Eat the good stuff. As my friend Zane Jarecke wrote in a recent essay, the best quality information will be like steak: hard to chew, but full of nutrients if you can get it down.

Burn the energy. Create something with that new information, be it writing thoughts in a journal, bringing it up in conversation with a friend, or just meditating on it long enough to form your own opinion instead of that of the one who created it.

Balance your calories. Consume more information only once you’ve spent enough time to digest what you just ate.

Every year, a fad diet rears its fleeting head. This year’s is that of unnecessary content consumption.

The results won’t be sexy to brag about, nor quantifiable by tangible metrics. Just like with physical obesity though, preventing cognitive obesity is a long-term play with delayed gratification.

Form the habits today that pay exponential dividends in your later years.