Many years ago, when we wanted to read the news, we used to wait until the next morning since newspapers only came on every morning. In those days, not everyone could afford to buy a newspaper every day. In our villages, there will be a commonplace in every street. People in that street share the cost of various newspapers. A person used to manage these subscriptions in the street and subscribes to the newspapers. Every morning, newspapers would arrive at the commonplace. When we had time before going to school, I would go there and read the news.
If we wanted to read other kinds of magazines and books, we used to have a library in our village. As kids, we went there on Sundays and read newspapers that did not come to our street, magazines and other books.
Fast forward to around 2016, when India saw a massive telephone network boom. Many things began to shift online. Newspapers and physical books slowly gave way to digital life. YouTube gained popularity with video content. Later, TikTok arrived. It disrupted the video content market with short-form content. Other social media platforms started implementing their versions of short-form content. : reels, shorts and many more names.
Short-form content also brought problems with it. You quickly get pulled from one video to the next before your brain processes the information from the previous video. This continues until your brain gets tired like your cell phone reaches zero percent battery.
The following day, you might feel tired, moody, and unmotivated, with little interest in accomplishing regular tasks. Again, when you open your favourite social media app and start consuming similar content, you will feel happy and fall back into the same cycle. These platforms are designed to keep us returning, using every psychological trick to hold our attention. The cost? Our focus, productivity, and overall well-being.
I am not an expert on this topic, but I am not immune to this type of thing. I struggled personally — at work, with less productivity; in my personal life, failing to communicate well with loved ones; and in my spiritual life, feeling disconnected. It was overwhelming.
I came across something called personal knowledge management. I am trying to implement it in my daily activities, one step at a time. While I am still learning, and implementing PKM, it has already started showing results, and I’m excited to share this approach with you.
I don’t say stay away from social media, block it, kill your smartphone, and live under the rock. Instead, I encourage you to be more mindful about the content that you are consuming. The next time you watch a video, read an article, or listen to a podcast, don’t jump straight to the next thing. Take a pause for a moment. Observe your thoughts. Take a pen and book if you like the classical way or take any note-taking app (Apple Notes/ Samsung Notes / Google Keep / Evernote / Obsidian / Notion) and write down your thoughts.
This simple practice of jotting down your thoughts can help you build a personal knowledge base, something you can refer back to instead of letting valuable insights slip away. This way it reduces anxiety or the urge to go to the next video or any other type of content.
In this article, I tried to talk about starting to build a Personal Knowledge library and how we can slow down content consumption. I ask you to try a simple exercise: after consuming any form of content — whether it’s a video, an article, or a podcast —take a pause and capture your thoughts. Use whatever tool you like, be it a notepad or a small diary. Let’s start turning our daily content into meaningful insights. I’d love to hear about your experience, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.
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