20230624 : content categories...

In the past decade more than anytime earlier, our media (print, traditional tv, internet, social media, OTT, etc) they have all evolved and become more and more complex with more choices.

While these categories of content have existed in the past also, they have increasingly got merged (amalgamated) making it hard to distinguish them with hard boundaries.

There might be many more, but I broadly bucket them into 3 categories:

1. Entertainment

2. Information

3. Noise/ Disinformation

4. Purposeful time 

Even news, which is supposed to be only information, depending on the channel, has various percentages of disinformation and entertainment.

Of them #3 is the hardest thing to identify. Usually it is very difficult to identify it in isolation. We can Only recognise that it is mostly noise and disinformation when we consume similar content from different sources for a period of time and are able to recognise the patterns in them and be able to contrast them.

The first two categories however are easier to identify. Even though we don't have to have a specific number in mind, it is possible to understand a rough % of mix of entertainment v/s information it has.

Why is this important to identify, recognise and understand?

We all have accepted and adopted an ever increasing digital life revolving around devices - be it smart TVs, smart phones, tablets, gaming devices, VR and AR devices in future.

Thanks to the pandemic, the gift COVID has left with all of us is increased online time and increased device dependency (addiction in most cases).

Another very important gift it has left for us (under the guise of flexibility/ convenience, productivity increase) is "work from home" (a personal indiscipline of sorts)

Usually, whatever work has to be done gets done. We somehow don't compromise on that front - I don't know why we do that! (For argument sake, let us call all such purposeful time as #4> purposeful time. 

What we are really doing in spending more time with content on devices is "robbing" our personal time - time we would otherwise spend with family, time we would spend with friends, time we would spend pursuing hobbies and interests, most importantly - " me time" doing anything.

I think this is the sacrifice we are generally doing, without realising we are accomplices in this robbery! 

I realised this maybe a little over a month ago. It was not new information - we all know this. However, in this shape I guess, it was a new realisation of what I was doing.

From then on, everytime I spent time doing anything online with devices (which is probably >90% of my waking time 🙂), I make a mental note of which of the 4 categories of content I am spending my time on .

Personally, that simple question "what am I spending time on" helped me recognise the patterns, tendancies and actual time I was spending on pure entertainment, identifying if I am spending time with noise/ junk or informative things or something purposeful. 

Over the last month, I have reduced watching series, shows, movies, news and increased watching interviews, talk shows, documentaries, ted talks etc.

That doesn't mean I am completely off entertainment either. I do watch movies once in a while - and I enjoy watching movies. I just have become more selective and when I watch it, I know what I am watching it for. Sometimes it is just plain and simple "chill and enjoy time".

So, "what are you spending time on?"...