Note: I wrote most of this piece last year during my trip to Japan. I decided to put it out with a few edits and a little update at the end.

Information detox 🔗

Summer 2024

It's been around 4 months since I've started my longest information detox. I've found these periods very helpful.

I want to organize my thoughts around this a bit. I'm not exactly sure what should I do now.

I've developed some sort of model of how this works, based on observations. Seems like periodically, once after few months maybe, I begin to feel very overwhelmed. It's somewhat difficult to define this state. It looks a bit like burnout, it has some similar symptoms. I can't focus. My work is very unproductive and I keep getting distracted. Even if I manage to push myself to work on something useful, I often find myself stuck on some trivial problem or just wandering through code, forgetting what I even wanted to do in the first place.

One significant symptom of this state is craving for distraction. Seems like I always want to pick up a phone, go to YouTube or whatever else. The problem is that the distraction doesn't seem to help at all. It feels just like postponing this mental state for later and when I get back from the distraction, it's just the same as before.

When I first experienced this state very strongly, it was during a bit difficult period in my life, working two jobs, my daughter was just born but my wife got sick and had to go to the hospital, which was accompanied by bunch of problems and overall stress.

I felt like I need some clarity, so seemingly out of nowhere, I blocked all social media, news, forums, podcasts and other internet sources, most importantly YouTube, and decided to do just nothing.

Over next few days, I started feeling significantly better, even though not much has changed about my life situation, I just stopped consuming information.

I started observing some patterns and through some experiments I developed a sort of model for how this works.

The diet model 🔗

A good analogy is diet. Basically, our brains consume information like food, and this information needs some processing, it needs to be digested. If we don't process this information well and instead consume more, we accumulate processing debt (like being overweight on information). When this debt becomes unbearable, the brain is unable to work on anything else, and we end up in the overwhelmed state I described above.

Now, here's the crucial thing - not all information is created equal. Some types of information require a lot more processing than others. Things that are emotionally loaded usually require a lot more processing. Similarly, things that are mentally engaging (like learning), too.

Here's some things I learned:

Types of information 🔗

There are things that add to your processing debt. Almost all news, some YouTube videos, especially ones that contain novel information, internet debates, blogs, some podcasts. Politics and negative information is typically in this bucket.

Then there are things that don't change the debt. This is mostly just unloaded information, something that you don't have to engage with very much, or it's easy to process. Memes, jokes, family photos, casual chat, some music, some podcasts.

The important bucket is for things that remove from your information debt. This bucket is frustratingly small, but the biggest item here is at least very easy - it's just nothing. Do nothing and let the mind wander.

Other things that help are physical - walks, exercise, cuddling, yoyoing, juggling. Those are basically "nothing" but accompanied by some physical activity. I also find some cleaning or doing dishes to work, but you have to be careful about decisions - decisions makes the activity engaging, which occupies your mind. You want to free your mind. Don't try to reorganize your flat here, just do something very predictable and boring. Walking is probably my favorite.

This model probably isn't perfect but so far it has worked for me very well. Once I understood it, I could manage how I consume information much more effectively. I started observing which things add to my debt the most.

Managing the budget 🔗

Since processing requires time, and some information requires more than other, it's clear that we can't just consume information willy-nilly - we have some limited budget and have to use it effectively.

Now, the difficult part here is that a lot of information sources are unpredictable in this regard. If you decide to read an article, it's generally unpredictable how much it affects your processing budget. If you go meet a friend, it's unclear if you dabble into heated politics debate or not.

This is very important to manage, because some of these events require extraordinary amount of processing. Single news headline can occupy your mind for few hours and block you from focusing on useful work. It's easy to blow your daily budget in first 20 minutes of your morning.

One obvious call here is blocking all news. News are basically junk food of information. They are biased towards negative, emotionally loaded information and almost universally create inadequate amount of processing debt. Most of the information in news is also not actionable, so it basically just increases the amount of work you have to do without providing any additional value.

Similarly to news, you have to be careful with social media. That one is more difficult because it's less avoidable and more unpredictable. You usually don't know what you're going to scroll to. I think it's helpful to curate your feeds, unfollow people that are unpredictable, activists, people who share news, political messages or propagate some ideology. No matter which ideology, these people have some strong motivator to share negative events related to their agenda, and those are usually expensive to process. That creates a tough situation, where you can't win - either you agree with the person, so you'll get mad because of the event they share, or you don't agree with the person, so you'll get mad because they got mad.

Generally the rule is to be more intentional in what you consume. You have a limited budget, so you can't expose yourself to every information out there. For example, even though I had blocked all news, I still sometimes read something when I explicitly search for articles related to some topic I'm interested in. Even when those news are loaded, it's at least something I explicitly chose to consume, because I care about it. That's much better than consuming it by accident.

I also stopped participating in almost all internet discussions. These can be loaded for a bit of different reason - and that's because you participate in them. When you're engaged in the discussion, it's difficult to rationally observe yourself and asses if this activity is problematic for your information debt and if that is worth it. I especially try to limit any kind of heated debate or argument online. I think this is just not a good way to have these conversations, it's much more effective to do it in person.

Finally, it's good to allocate time for paying of the debt. For me, it's mostly long walks. I can usually feel when I've got enough and I should go outside. I go for a walk every day and I purposefully don't consume anything at that time. Sometimes, when I feel like I need it, I also block some time home alone and do nothing. I turn off computer, phone and just sit in a chair or play yoyo.

The hard parts 🔗

For me, the hardest part (and partially the reason why I'm writing this) is YouTube and podcasts. I periodically block these and then come back, because I find myself unable to work with them effectively at some point. This time, it's been the longest and I have to say that my life improved significantly. I think last few months I have been very productive in work, but now I have to stop and slow down because I got completely overworked. I also want to re-introduce YouTube and podcasts (30h trip to Japan is probably a good time to listen to some) and find some healthy relationship with it.

The problem here is that the information contained is very engaging for me. YouTube especially is extremely good at suggesting genuinely interesting information. I like to consume mostly technical, and this requires some processing, so I think it slightly increases my debt in the best case. There's some unpredictability here, because there's always a possibility of drama. Tech people often have strong opinions.

I also don't want to cut it out completely (like news), because I think it has value. I've already used a lot of the information from those sources in my work and in life in general. I also just enjoy it, frankly.

Whenever I come back from detox, I always observe myself slowly increasing the amount of what I consume in this category over time, until I'm completely overwhelmed again. After some time, the value I get is diluted by average or loaded content, and I find the signal-to-noise ratio too low and not worth the budget.

Undecided 🔗

I'll probably have to experiment with this. I've considered switching to some time based approach. Maybe I should consume YT only on sundays? Or maybe just at a specific time? Or use a daily limit? I just haven't found these to be a good fit for this kind of content. Specific day is just not as flexible. Sometimes this day is reserved for something else, sometimes I have some time to spare on another day.

I find daily limit a good match for Instagram, because it's full of short form content (and I try to curate it to show mostly yoyoing stuff to me). But for something like a podcast, that's difficult. For example, Lex Fridman's interview with John Carmack is 5 hours long. I listen in 2x speed, but even then it's over two hours. That big of a daily limit would be pointless, but I also don't want to necessarily listen to it over few days, it's better uninterrupted.

Or, maybe, it's ok to just do this detox once a year or something?

The option to block those two permanently is still on the table. If I can't find a healthy relationship with them, then I think the value is not worth it. I already consumed a lot and I want to produce more. Life is short and I have a lot of things I want to do. I want to build more things, I have a family that requires and deserves my attention more than some YouTube videos. There are friends and other people I want to meet or share time with.

I think that permanent block is just not practical, though. In the end, I have to stay up to date with my field and have something fulfilling for my technical side. It's already difficult to find somebody who understand at least a little bit about things that I care about in this field, let alone without internet.

November 2025 Update 🔗

After I wrote the paragraphs above, I relaxed the rules, observed myself increasing the amount of content I consume over time, and now I'm back here - I've blocked YouTube again a few days ago, and I'm yet again thinking about how to approach this better.

I guess these things are difficult. Just in this last year, I got so much out of YouTube, because I got interested in some new topics, but boy it's difficult to keep that habit in check, YouTube is just too good.

One technique I found effective is to split selection and watching - I put videos in "Watch Later" with explicit goal of not watching them immediately. This helps me to avoid impulsive decisions that can have big consequence on my information debt. If there's a delay between selection and watching, I can often tell better whether the video is worth my budget.

Maybe it really is better to have a longer periods of YouTube and no-YouTube. A period of more passive information gathering and then a period active work, possibly applying some of the acquired knowledge.

Anyway, I don't have the answers, yet, but I'm starting another detox. Let's see what I learn from this one.