Experiment 01: Consume Higher Quality Content
Table of contents
Start Date: Aug 18, 2025 Status: In-Process
End Date: Oct 12, 2025 Length: 8 weeks
Current State (Baseline)
I scroll social media and read any interesting articles I come across, which lately is happening less and less. I read books, but not regularly. I seek out information when I need it and immediately use it. Rather than being an information hoarder, I get caught in cognitive loops. I practically ruminate on knowledge.
Intervention
- Limit social media to 20 minutes/day.
- Shift reading to:
- Peer-reviewed articles
- Curated newsletters & websites
- Books of all types and genres
- Thinking/learning communities (Ness Labs and Linking Your Thinking)
Operational Definitions
- Seed saved: Captured something, added the source, added why I saved it.
- Seed planted: Began transformation by turning the seed into a new note with a link, or working the seed into an existing note.
- Seed pruned: Information deleted.
Weekly Log
Week 1
Aug 18–24, 2025 (expand to view)
Daily Logs
Created Random Knowledge Generator tool in PHP
- Blog Post - 0 Seeds Saved
- Textbook Chapter - 3 Seeds Saved
- Blog Post - 1 Seed Saved
Total Seeds Saved: 4
- Blog Post - 1 Seed Saved
- Blog Post - 0 Seeds Saved
- Blog Post - 1 Seed Saved
Total Seeds Saved: 2
- Blog Post - 1 Seed Saved
- Journal Article - 2 Seeds Saved
- Blog Post from Social Media - 0 Seeds Saved
Total Seeds Saved: 3
- Journal Article - 0 Seeds Saved
- Blog Post - 1 Seed Saved
- Blog Post - 0 Seeds Saved
- Textbook Chapter - 2 Seeds Saved
Total Seeds Saved: 3
No tracking. Rest days.
Weekly Review
This Week:
- Limited social media forced more engagement.
- Structured reading created more unexpected connections.
Next Week:
- Track titles and sources consistently.
- Unsubscribe from half of the newsletters.
- Use Readwise for unscheduled reading.
Field Notes
- 2025-08-18:
- I had an idea for a tool containing all my favorite thinking sites, with a button to get a random article. It seemed perfect for this experiment. I totally vibe-coded it in PHP. And since I don't know PHP, it ate up my time for the day. It was my first time vibe-coding, and it was pretty fun. It was probably a form of procrastination, but I think it'll be a useful tool for the coming weeks. Either way, I love my Random Knowledge Generator!
- 2025-08-19:
- Social media was more productive. With only 20 minutes allowed, I had to focus on actual engagement rather than mindless scrolling.
- Unscheduled reading becomes invisible. When I read outside my designated blocked times, I didn't take notes, didn't log it, and didn't even track it as reading time. This surprised me. When reading isn't scheduled, it becomes completely automatic and passive.
- I signed up for Readwise to sync highlights to my mind garden automatically. Maybe it'll help some with the unscheduled reading. You can even include notes with your highlights so I can reflect when I save.
- Though I didn't plant any seeds while reading one of the blog posts, it still contributed to an interesting connection I made between all three readings.
- 2025-08-20:
- The single academic reading produced more notes than the two blog posts combined, which only yielded one note between them.
- 2025-08-22:
- This is the second time this week that I've been able to connect multiple readings together, even though I chose them spontaneously. Today, I was able to connect the two blog posts I read to the textbook reading I had.
Week 2
Aug 25–31, 2025 (expand to view)
Daily Logs
- Everything I Know about Self-Publishing (Kevin Kelly) — Blog — 2 Seeds Saved
- A Treatise on AI Chatbots Undermining the Enlightenment — Digital Garden Article — 3 Seeds Saved
- Don’t delegate understanding — Blog Post — 1 Seed Saved
- Dainton & Zelley (2022), Applying Communication Theory for Professional Life — Textbook — 0 Seeds Saved (deep-work; foundational)
Total Seeds Saved: 6
- A Public Academic — Newsletter — 2 Seeds Saved
- Cromwell, Haase, & Vladova (2023), Personality and Individual Differences — Journal Article — 0 Seeds Saved (deep-work; foundational)
Total Seeds Saved: 2
- Why You Shouldn’t Take Notes on Papers or Lectures — Newsletter — 1 Seed Saved
- Have You Ever Had That Feeling That You KNOW Something but Can’t Explain? (Bianca Pereira) — Newsletter — 1 Seed Saved
- Torrance (1965), Daedalus — Journal Article — 0 Seeds Saved (deep-work; foundational)
Total Seeds Saved: 2
- What Is Charisma? — Newsletter — 2 Seeds Saved
Total Seeds Saved: 2
No tracking. Rest/health days (autoimmune flare starting 08/28).
Weekly Review
This Week:
- Some friction emerged this week from different modes of reading.
- Newsletters are still dominating my reading. They're producing seeds but I need more variety.
- An autoimmune flare up cut the week short.
Next Week:
- Balance measurement with organic discovery.
- Branch out from newsletters. Add some book chapters.
- Remain mindful of pressure to save seeds.
Field Notes
- 2025-08-25:
- I noticed a feeling of anxiety while reading Kevin Kelly's self-publishing article. Even though I wasn't expecting to save anything from it, I felt some stress halfway through when I had yet to save a seed. The experiment is creating subtle pressure that interferes with my natural reading patterns.
- I finally remembered to use my random article generator and found the Maggie Appleton article. I have a feeling this is an amazing resource I've been neglecting. If I don't use it then it's creation was just procrastination after all.
- 2025-08-26:
- Sometimes I need to let myself fall down rabbit holes. Daily logging is revealing some extremely useful patterns but it's also killing some of my natural curiosity. When tracking everything, it becomes impossible to explore topics freely and get into a flow with the information. Today I chose to abandon logging temporarily and jumped into an epistemic disclosure statements rabbit hole.
- Academic papers and textbooks for my coursework and capstone tend to bypass the seed phase. It's deep work where new information is immediately processed into new notes or existing evergreen notes.
- 2025-08-28:
- Autoimmune flare-up began, limiting my cognitive capacity for remainder of week.
Week 3 - Experiment Evolution
Sept 01–07, 2025 (expand to view)
Daily Logs
- Dainton & Zelley (2022), Applying Communication Theory for Professional Life (Chapters 3 & 5) — Textbook — 0 Seeds Saved (deep-work; foundational)
- Coursework: Cognitive and Cultural Communication Theories — Academic Articles — 0 Seeds Saved (deep-work; foundational)
Total Seeds Saved: 0
Sprouts Planted: 11
Evergreens Grown: 1 (Theory application in educational setting)
Communication Theory Map of Content Created
- Museum of Color — Essay — 0 Seeds Saved (soul-reading)
Total Seeds Saved: 0
Rest Days
Weekly Review
Experiment Evolution - New Reading Taxonomy
Discovered Reading Types:
- Seed-Reading: Newsletters and blog posts where I may be quickly introduced to a new concept. I create a seed so I can come back to it and learn more about it.
- Deep-Reading: Academic, informative non-fiction. Information is immediately processed into new notes or existing evergreen notes.
- Serendipitous Reading: Falling down rabbit holes (I only track the source of the fall).
- Relaxing Reading: Fiction & pulp. For me, horror, dystopia, fantasy, auto-bios of extreme and complex people.
- Soul Reading: Art, poetry, writing from people I deeply resonate with. Very often unexpected surprises from any form.
Updated Tracking (Starting Week 4):
- Total seeds saved weekly with source type
- Total sprouts planted weekly with source type
- Total evergreens grown weekly with source type
- Connections made this week
- Relaxing Reading: What and duration
- Soul Reading: What it was and how it fed me
- Rabbit Hole: What caused the fall & topic
Field Notes
It's 1am, Friday morning, and the last day of reading for week 3 of my planned 8 week experiment. Course reading and work took the entire week, and sitting here in the quiet of the witching hour, my favorite time for personal relaxation, is the first time I've had to read something just for myself all week.
I choose an essay from Emergence Magazine, Museum of Color. I'm a painter. I have a deep love of natural pigments. I devoured the article, taking in every word, and saving no seeds in the process. This wasn't a seed bearing article, it was a soul feeding article. I didn't need to save or capture anything (other than bookmarking it so I can read it again).
At first I thought this was a sign that it's time to wrap up experiment 01 early and declare it a rousing success. Changing my information diet did so much more than expected. I expected both a higher quantity and quality of seeds, notes, and insights, which my new diet did produce. However, it's also changing the way I take notes and seeds just aren't a great indicator of these changes.
Because I saved no new seeds this week. Instead I planted 11 new sprout notes, created a map of content, and grew one evergreen note. The entire first semester of my program is focused on theory. So this week was spent building the "Communication Theory" MOC with the first 12 theories, covering cognition and culture. I made a connection on how one of the theories could be used in an educational setting, which grew one of the sprout notes into an evergreen with my own added insights.
Bonus: I've also noticed an improvement in my attention span since moving away from the click-bait nature of social media.
However, after giving it some further thought, I think I would rather tweak the experiment some and see what else I might learn about this personal taxonomy that I'm excitedly watching emerge.