Balance your Info I/O

These thoughts were inspired by a video interview with Josh Fechter.

What is your info I/O?

What do you do all day? Take a moment to reflect on how much information you consumed today. Consumption of any kind is common and easy. Scrolling, browsing, and viewing are the natural instincts of a digital generation. In 100 years, we’ll be remembered as the “scrollers and browsers” of the Digital Age just like we remember the hunters and gatherers of the Stone Age.

The hunters and gatherers had metrics to measure their activities. They could weigh their hunt or count their foraged fruits. Do we have a metric to measure of common activities? I’ll propose we use what I call our “info I/O.”

Your info I/O is the ratio of activities which input information into your mind and activities which output information from your mind.

Here are some fun fractions to envision my point.

Most elementary school years become a complete blue once the drama of high school hits. Yet one insight from my lovely 6rd grade teacher Ms. Shelly still shines through. One day Ms. Shelly told us about learning styles. She told us we comprehend different amounts of information based on how we engage with the information. Listening was low on the list and reading was a bit higher, but teaching was by far the highest. Activities which involved outputting information from our brain helped us comprehend it much better than purely input-based activities.

Point is, listen to my 6th grade teacher and engage more with the information you input. Write more journals, draw more sketches, and tell your friends what you’re learning about.

Why should you care?

If you don’t care about learning, then close the tab, but if your interested in remembering the billions of bits you input each day, try outputting a bit.

Ask yourself, how’s my Info I/O today?

How can I effectively output this input?