The High-Leverage Information Diet

Lifehacking Reading

Books

Yes, books, I'm a big believer in this old-fashioned medium of wisdom. With very few exceptions I learn way more from books than I do from blogs, podcasts, or other "new media" formats.

• On the whole, significantly more work and attention go into books by the writer. The differentiating characteristic of blogs, podcasts, and YouTube is the dirt-cheap or non-existent cost of entry - literally, all you need is an internet connection and you can create and syndicate content. The content creator has often not actually invested anything other than a little bit of their leisure time.
• They chronically prioritize quantity over quality.
• Bloggers don't often ponder deeply or ask others to challenge their ideas, so they can be refined - it's tantamount to diarrhea of the mind - there's no filter for quality.
• They have no incentive to fact-check the information they put out. If they completely misquote a source or get something wrong they can just update their blog - but few will.

On the other hand, an author writing a book is looking at a minimum investment of at least $900 just to get the book edited. If they get something wrong in the book, once it's published, printed, and on people's bookshelves, they can't recall it and their reputation will face dire consequences.
The world of literature is the closest thing to a real meritocracy or free market of ideas, outside of a few examples of pop culture smut, the best ones rise to the top.

For example: Flow states are probably the hottest topic in the personal development world in the past few years. Tune into any personal development podcast or channel and you'll hear the phrase flow state bandied about liberally. Two older novels, Memoir from Antproof Case and Atlas Shrugged (published in 1995 and 1957 respectively) I've read in the past year talked a lot about Flow states allegorically and contained some real gems of knowledge on the topic.

I'm convinced that good fiction and non-fiction contain the seeds of what will be the game changers in the personal development world in the next 10-15 years.
About a year ago I resolved to drastically cut down the amount of time I spent reading blogs since then I've read eight books (Including, as I mentioned, Atlas Shrugged which is like four books in one!) which have subtly shaped me into a profoundly more happy and productive person. I encourage you to do the same!

Then there's the cost factor, when you pay for something, even when the cost is very little, it flips a subtle yet profound switch in our psychology that motivates us to work hard, follow through, and accomplish our goals. I think that reading blogs or other free personal development content is almost useless for this reason. Books cost money, but are relatively inexpensive to other paid mediums of learning and instruction, especially with Kindle and digital delivery lowering the cost of books, to below $10 in most cases. If you are a person that always consumes free content, try paying for some content, and just see how much more value you get out of it. I think you'll find it's a night and day difference.

Reading is particularly difficult to prioritize, I can always find something more important or diverting to do than reading. So I make it a habit in Coach.me, to read 30-60 minutes daily, this provides an extra dimension of motivation. As you can see here, for a very busy guy I do a lot of reading.

Coach.me

 

5.0

Category: Apps & Software

Reading apps

While a younger version of myself was a voracious page-turner with a full bookshelf, I adopt new technology if it's superior. In this case, reading apps (like Kindle or Google Play Books) do improve the reading experience. Its intuitive highlighting and note-taking features make it easier than ever to record and remember meaningful passages from books. I prefer reading with apps over a Kindle or e-reader device for these reasons...

• They are free.
• It's one less piece of technology that I need to worry about.
• They are sleep-friendly with a night mode, a feature that not all e-readers have.

Here's a sleep hack for us who find reading before bed incredibly relaxing and aren't planning on giving it up anytime soon. We all know that bright screen light is a big problem, so I spend about an hour before bed reading on my tablet with a black background and white text, I turn the brightness of the screen all the way down in the books app and will use other screen dimmer apps if it's still too bright.
This lets me turn down the screen brightness even further, I read in a darkened room before bed and I turn the brightness down as low as possible without straining my eyes.

I turn off the wifi on my device so I'm not tempted to text message, check social media, or use other time-wasting, narcissism-feeding apps. If you enjoy listening to music while reading, you create an offline playlist with the VLC app.
Also, Kindle only allows me to read the books I've bought so I'm consuming higher quality, more meaningful content before drifting off to the dream world.

 Warpspeed Reading for Hacking Retention of Book Knowledge

Here's a problem that I think anyone can relate to who reads a lot: if we are honest, you forget the vast majority of the information you spend so much time consuming. You spend 10-20 hours reading 300-400 pages, how much of it are you actually going to commit to memory, recall when you need it, and apply?

I was listening to a podcast lately and the guy was saying that reading dense non-fiction books is "pointless" because your retention of the information presented is so little compared to the time it takes to read the book.
Which I think is a little pessimistic, we know on a foundational level that reading is important because successful people are always talking about how much they read. However, we do indeed forget the majority of what we read. Years ago I read probably six of Donald Trump's books about business and if someone asked me to summarize the points of each book off the top of my head, I couldn't do it!

I've got a cool technology lifehack for this problem that takes advantage of the memory spacing effect. It requires Kindle (either the app or the device), Evernote, and an app called Spritz.

Spritz

 

5.0

Category: Apps & Software

How it works

As I read, I highlight passages that I want to remember or find actionable.
When I finish a book, I open up the Kindle desktop reader and copy/paste my highlights into an Evernote note in a Books Notebook. If a book is particularly good it gets its own Evernote note, if not I just put it in a general note.
I have a shortcut on my Android home screen for this Notebook, so it's just a tap (or click) away from me at any moment.

Spritz is a free app for your smartphone or browser that allows you to read at 500-1000 words per minute via rapid serial presentation of words (it's pretty rad actually!) With just a little practice you'll be able to drastically increase the speed at which you can speed read. Obviously, your reading comprehension of brand-new material takes a hit speed reading at this velocity, but we are just reviewing material that we've already read at a normal speed, which Spritz works great for.
From my smartphone, I share the note to the Spritz app (for Android I recommend A Faster Reader) which then super speed reads me the note.

Spritz

 

5.0

Category: Apps & Software

I'm a pretty liberal highlighter of the books I read and it takes me maybe 60 seconds to speed-review my favorite parts of a book. I often do my super-speed reading while on the toilet.

A few points...

• Yes, it takes about five tedious minutes of copying and pasting the quotes to my Evernote note, but if I can significantly improve the retention of the book knowledge that I spent 10-20 hours consuming, it's five minutes well-spent!
• Kindle's desktop software can also show you the most popular highlighted passages of a given book by other Kindle readers, which I frequently check after reading a book, sometimes there will be some real gems of knowledge that I skimmed over, so you could crowdsource the selection of the passages.

Blogs

There are a couple of blogs that do keep me on the cutting edge of the constantly changing industries in which I dabble.

Feedly

Is probably the best RSS reader available as a very intuitive web browser tool and a smartphone app. With just a few clicks you can add your favorite blogs, podcasts, or creator's channels and Feedly will notify you in a very non-intrusive way when they put out new content. You read the articles in Feedly's minimalistic app so you don't get distracted by website sidebars or popups.

Browsing

I ditched Google Chrome and use the Brave and Opera browsers because they block ads and trackers, improving website load times and reducing distraction - among other things.

I switched my default search to Brave Search which is quite good, although, I don't love that they started answering your search inquiries with AI (Google's search is going to be doing the same thing, putting AI's advice above the organic search results - which is a bad idea for the reasons detailed here)

Amplenote - for note taking

I ditched Evernote when they jacked up their prices into the stratosphere for their premium plan and switched to Amplenote which has almost all the same features. When people send me studies to read or there is a long article on conversion optimization that I want to understand thoroughly, I will save it in my Stuff to Read folder.

Lifehacking Watching

I reserve my time in front of the tube for Hour 2-type tasks, rote processes that require very little creative energy or decision-making. As a veteran web developer, about 40% of my daily work falls into this category.

Online video

Is one of my favorite content mediums but I'm not watching cute cat videos or music videos. I spend most of my time consuming long-form, detailed content. My viewing breaks down like this:

• Funny stuff 5%
• News and current events 15%
• Philosophy 10%
• Health 20%
• History 20%
• Social dynamics 10%
• Personal development 10%
• Business and entrepreneurship 10%

I seldom only watch online video, I always multitask viewing with some other project. My simple way of doing this is to just place my phone or tablet next to my computer and charge it while watching. Also, a lot of times I will wear two pairs of headphones at a time so I can do some monotonous tasks, like video editing while watching a video on my phone.

Update: I despise YouTube for their disregard for free speech, double standards, bigotry, hypocrisy, and bullying so I urge everyone to diversify their video viewing; rediscover the wild wild west of video content on Odysee, Bitchute, and Rumble.

I refuse to give YouTube money by watching YouTube ads so I don't use the YouTube app. There are a couple of YouTube "client" apps (which you won't find in Google's official library of Android apps) that you can use to watch your favorite creators which block ads and sponsor pitches (Do you really need to hear another VPN pitch?), the best are currently GrayJay and NewPipe, both can import your subscriptions (and don't require a Google account if you hate Google). In the past, the best apps for ad-free YouTube viewing were Vanced/ReVanced, but these don't seem to be working great now and they've pivoted to hacking the YouTube APK which you have to download from shady websites. No thanks! If you feel bad about robbing creators of ad revenue, DON'T! Creators make a vanishingly small amount of money from those annoying midroll ads that you always click skip on after 5 seconds. If you want to keep your favorite creators creating send them a tip via whatever platform or buy stuff via their affiliate links.

If I ever need to watch a YouTube video on my laptop I use the Opera browser which effectively blocks YouTube ads. 

Documentaries

No surprise, I'm a big fan of documentaries. One of my favorite websites for finding interesting documentaries is Topdocumentaryfilms.com, a categorized and constantly updated database of +3000 free films. I do have a Curiosity Stream membership that I do NOT regret paying $15 for, the negligible sunk cost motivates me to not waste hours in the evenings browsing.

We also have several Limitless Mindset documentaries about health, lifehacking, mindset, science, conspiracy, and personal growth which you can watch here.

Netflix and other streaming services

This game-changing service can be a serious waste of time. How many people have traded a social life, getting in shape, furthering their education, writing a book, or meaningful personal development for hundreds of hours spent in front of the screen streaming commercial-free movies and television programs? Yet I actually have a Netflix account...
What is the lifehack for preventing Netflix creep? I only activate my account for a month at a time, once every 6-9 months, then I go back into my account settings, cancel my monthly billing, and delete the streaming app from my phone. To make sure I don't let it auto-renew, I set a reminder in my calendar to cancel billing the day before it's set to renew. Netflix saves all your settings and your list for a year after you cancel, so I add another reminder for about 11 months out to reactivate my billing.
Funnily, my on-again, off-again relationship with Netflix ended when I got married because my wife is Bulgarian and Bulgarians believe strongly in torrenting everything. So whenever I want to watch a movie or show my wife just torrents it for me.

Movies?

Unless it's going to the cinema with friends on a lazy Sunday afternoon, I rarely watch movies unless I find some philosophical value in them, like the excellent Schindler's List or Valkyrie, which I watched recently.

Lifehacking Listening

Podcasts

Podcasts for me, are a very low-attention-bandwidth-requiring medium. While there are some real quality podcasts out there, they are largely a medium of amateurs, I just don't think podcasts deserve that much attention. This is why I listen to them while I'm working on projects that take up most of my attention, like web development or reading papers on Nootropics. I listen to a lot of podcasts and I practice a regimen here as well:

• In the earlier part of the workday, I will listen to the more content-dense podcasts, that are about more technical subjects like health and web development.
• In the later part of the workday, I switch to lighter podcasts that have a little more entertainment value, so personal development, philosophy, and current events talk shows.

I've tried all the podcast apps and the very best is Castbox.FM; it has every podcast that you might like to listen to and it has a download function for offline listening.

If you like podcasts, we do all our best content in podcast form as well, subscribe to the Limitless Mindset Podcast, for +500 episodes on lifehacking and biohacking, here.

Audio Books

Audiobooks are more deserving content, which is why I reserve them for when I'm commuting, in the gym, or traveling - time when I can devote +50% of my attention to the audio content.
Consider Kindle Whispersync, this is an audio app that syncs the audiobook version of a book to your progress in the Kindle version. I find Audible's audiobooks to be a little expensive so I don't use it much but it's kind of a cool option if you have a long book to consume and spend time in the gym or commuting (this is how I finally got through The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand).

If you like audiobooks but are ballin' on a budget (or don't want to give Jezz Bezos more money), Google's Books app has a narration function that turns any epub or mobi file into an audiobook (if you find their narrations too robotic try the Natural Reader app. Also, the Castbox app has a library of hundreds of free public-domain audiobooks, a great way to acquaint yourself with the classics!

Music

You might think with my obsession with educational content that I never find time to listen to music... Not so! I actually spend probably about 30-60 minutes daily listening to music while writing. On Soundcloud or Mixcloud you can subscribe to podcasts for almost any musical genre which get updated weekly. No need to pay for a Spotify subscription for uninterrupted listening if you get the Youtube-ad-blocking apps I mentioned above. 

Brain.FM

When I need to focus and get creative I listen to Brain.FM and I suggest you do the same! Listen here for free (no signup required)

Brain.FM

 

5.0

Category: Apps & Software

It's a very well-designed, very intuitive app for web browsers, Android, and iPhone that generates lyric-free music that profoundly hacks your mindset for focus, relaxation, or drowsiness. This tool has become an important part of my mindset ecosystem which I use throughout my day to take breaks from information consumption.
As a focus promoter, it's not quite as potent as Modafinil or Oxiracetam but it's quite effective; after 10-15 minutes, you'll find yourself devoting 100% of your attention to whatever is the task at hand.

 Smart Social Media Habits

Facebook

Facebook, criticized almost universally by productivity gurus, can actually be a useful tool if you configure it correctly. Facebook, directly or indirectly makes me a couple of thousand dollars every year so I can't quite justify getting rid of it as many do.

• Stay away from the newsfeed. Life is finite while digital distractions are infinite. To combat this reality of your hybrid digital-meatspace lifestyle, I recommend News Feed Eradicator for Facebook and other social media sites. It turns off the newsfeed that is so ingeniously engineered to distract you. Trust me, you won't miss it. News Feed Eradicator helped me permanently quit watching porn - it's easier to quit when you don't face daily an addictive newsfeed full of sometimes suggestive algorithmically-curated images tempting your click.
  
• Uninstall the Facebook app. Seriously. It's a major time-waster, runs slower than the mobile version of the Facebook website, and it makes some creepy privacy invasions.
  
• Social Fixer, is another app that further limits Facebook's annoying, time-wasting features.

Remove social media widgets from your phone

Your phone will prompt you to install some cool little widgets on your home screen(s), displaying recent tweets, status updates from friends, or whatever. These are very tempting to install and glance at throughout the day as you are using your phone but this is a slippery slope, down the smooth, tilted touchscreen of your smartphone to distraction. Uninstall these widgets, you won't miss them and they slow down your phone.

Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, etc

I seldom browse these sites for content, these sites are not true meritocracies of content but displayers of advertising and the most clickbaity and usually shallow content.

A final word on... Narcissism?

About 10% of my content consumption is watching, listening, or reading my own stuff, which sounds a little weird and narcissistic right? I have some good reasons for doing this...

• It reminds me to choose to be my best self, to be the person I'm displaying to the world online.
• It keeps my knowledge base fresh on the topics on which I'm ostensibly an expert, I don't remember 100% of all of the studies I talk about in my videos or the subtle nuances of how different smart drugs work.
• It keeps me consistent. Every year we see politicians or public figures making asses of themselves by making totally contradictory statements to different groups of people. I avoid a reputation apocalypse due to a slip of the tongue, by reviewing the things I've said before.

If your aspirations include being recognized as a guru of some kind, I encourage you to spend time daily consuming your own content.

Leave a comment

Responding to either of these questions:

a) Which Information diet lifehack are you going to put into effect right away and what are you going to do with your new free time?
b) Do you practice any information diet lifehacks other than those listed above?