I Reviewed My Digital Consumption and Dropped Most of It

May 2026 was an interesting month for me. One moment I abruptly realised that I need to drop everything and re-evaluate what the hell I am doing and where am I going.

One of the decisions that came out of that tactical pause - is to stop consuming almost all types of digital media.

This is a list of what I removed from my life for the duration of a bit over a month now:

1. Instagram - deleted app from my phone (account is still there)
2. Telegram - I discovered that, you could archive every channel but keep them in chat folders. Now my main screen when I open the app contains only my personal messages and a couple of active group chats
3. WhatsApp - I barely use it
4. Email - added/modified filters my inbox - unsubscribed from many newsletters, the remaining are now hitting their respective folders
5. RSS - moved as much as possible to Reeder App (not using it yet regularly, not sure if I will and if so, how?)
6. News - complete stop
7. Perplexity AI News Summaries - complete stop
8. Blogs/Substack on technical and non-technical topics - complete stop
9. YouTube - complete stop (only background music occasionally)
10. Read-it-Later - deleted most of it articles, the rest are neatly organised in my 2Do per topic
11. Notifications - I barely had any notifications on, only the critical ones. Still there were a few more I did silence
12. Apple Messages - I discovered you could “Hide Alerts” per sender, so I silenced a ton of fluff there too
13. Links sent to me (videos/articles/blogs) - didn’t open. I did get a few video summaries from videos sent to me, and honestly, I could have done without it 🤷
14. Stopped satisfying (well, ok almost, it is a work in progress) my curiosity about random things. It is very easy to look things up when random ideas pop into your head, I try to reduce that
15. Stopped checking messages in the morning and evening before sleep
16. Closed all browser tabs on all devices (what a relief)

What I did consume:

1. x3 books
2. x1 season of TV show (10 episodes)
3. x1 Movie

I wish I could say it was smooth sailing but no, there were a couple of relapses, one of which turned into an experiment.

Relapse 1

One day I spent about 45 minutes catching up on one YouTube channel by a tech commentator who has interesting thoughts and cracks some good jokes. (no, it’s not you Primeagen, I can’t watch 30min reactions video about 7min videos made by others).

I then read a few articles about AI…and privacy. None of them were pleasant. Both, videos and articles certainly caused an unnecessary spike in cortisol.

Relapse 2

Another morning, I somehow got hooked on one post, then another, and the next thing I know I read 3 more articles, I had no plan on even seeing. I got drained before noon. Bad. Bu then, I thought to make an experiment out of it. Just keep doing the same until the rest of the day, noting down what I did and for how long.

At the end of the day, I looked at the list and it was abundantly clear that:

• Most things had nothing to do with my goals for the day
• I was tired waaaay more than any of the previous days
• I did not feel satisfied since I didn’t make any progress

I slept well, though. Luck, I guess.

What Changed

After living like this for over a month, there are interesting indicators I am starting to notice. Mostly pretty positive, I think:

1. The fact that this post came to life. It is not the first one, and I keep adding more ideas what to write about. I didn’t write for 10 years (and I wanted to do so too many times to count!). Maybe, just maybe this means…more creativity? I am not sure, I will keep observing.
2. Anxiety is lower. Not on the two days I described above, but generally it went down.
3. Less irritation, or perhaps a much faster return to the baseline.
4. I started Urban Sketching. I actually found an email from 2019 where I was asking an architect for an advice on how to start. Took me SE7EN years to finally start this little hobby. I am absolutely terrible at, but it’s gloriously fun!
5. I haven’t missed anything big, on the contrary I had extra time to think about the important stuff, about life, e.g friendships!¹
6. I wrote…prolifically mostly about my past and found fascinating connections in my biography that I never saw before. Some of it led me to relax a bit more about things I was stressed in the past, and some led me to forgiving others and myself.
7. My sleep has improved. It was a bit of rough patch in the past 6 months, but I am happy to admit to myself it is much better now
8. I now wake up around 05:30 and hitting the park for calisthenics workout.
9. More energy. Nuff said!
10. Most days feel more fulfilling, and isn’t life about that? Enjoying the ride?²

The curious thing is that I thought I knew what is it to live with very low levels of information/media consumption. There were years where I barely read any news and it certainly felt good. I woke up at 6am hitting the gym at 06.30, meditated, read books and finished my tasks for the day before starting work. But still, I consumed… podcasts, blogs, lots and lots of technical writing, books non-fiction, and fiction, once-a-month Instagram reel marathon…

But this time it is different. OK, it feels different. The surprising thing - there is so much stuff going on inside one’s brain that with all the layers upon layers of informational noise - one simply has very little chance of hearing anything. Now, it feels like I did hear something.

Some silence in a world filled with static and noise can be a liberating experience. I am an avid hiker - I know that well, but turns out similar silence can be achieved in a city too - it takes work and effort.

Managing Media Consumption Habits

Roughly I see these steps that I took

1. Identify all information types and sources you encounter every day (list at the start of this post)
2. Understand how to and then put controls in place so that you see only what you chose to see in advance in a specific place (e.g the way I cleaned up Telegram channels and newsletter subscriptions)
3. If it is not possible to put controls in place - remove this information source all together (deleted Instagram app)
4. Wait, observe, repeat the cycle as needed

This is habit and lifestyle change. Not an “information diet” or “digital detox”, which are both temporary.

Closing Thoughts

Of course, it is important to know about things that may impact you directly and react in a timely fashion. Living “under a rock” is not always optimal. But that doesn’t mean you need to chase news every day (unless it is your job).

Today it is very possible to have an AI agent fetch you summary of things that you care about (hallucinations, though, maybe 2 agents needed, the second to check the first?) once a… week, or even a month? In other words - minimising the amount of effort and time you spend on filtering the noise.

Perhaps one day I will do exactly that.

But until then…

I will keep listening to silence (under a rock).

🤫

Notes