In a world drowning in data, we often focus on output: what we create, what we post, and what we achieve. But what about the input?
The sheer volume of information, entertainment, and distraction thrown at us every second is unprecedented. We are constantly consuming—from social media feeds and 24/7 news cycles to endless streaming options and notifications. This constant stream of digital input is the invisible force shaping our mental landscape, our energy levels, and even our sense of self-worth.
If we want clear thought, focus, and genuine self-improvement, we can no longer afford to treat our minds like a passive dumping ground for whatever the internet throws our way. It’s time to practice Input Hygiene.
What Is Input Hygiene?
Think of it this way: You wouldn’t eat junk food all day and expect to feel energized and healthy. The same principle applies to your mind. Input Hygiene is the conscious, deliberate process of curating what you allow into your attention. It’s about protecting your mental space from low-quality, toxic, or simply overwhelming information.
Why It Matters Now More Than Ever
Combating Digital Fatigue: That feeling of mental exhaustion isn’t just from work; it’s often from the relentless cognitive load of processing endless, uncurated information. Reducing noise frees up energy for things that actually matter.
Protecting Your Baseline Happiness: Constant exposure to curated “highlight reels” on social media or sensationalized news narratives can warp your sense of reality and hijack your mood. Filtering your input helps you maintain a healthy, balanced perspective.
Cultivating Deep Focus: Your brain is constantly being trained to handle tiny, rapid bursts of information (the scroll). Improving your Input Hygiene retrains your attention span, allowing you to engage in deeper work, reading, and thought.
Three Simple Steps to Better Input Hygiene
1. Audit Your Information Sources
Take a mental inventory of everything you consume on a typical day. Where is the majority of your input coming from?
Identify the “Junk Food”: What sources consistently leave you feeling anxious, jealous, or simply drained? Unfollow, mute, or block them. Your news feed is not a moral obligation.
Seek “Nutritious Food”: Actively seek out sources that inspire you, teach you a new skill, or provide balanced, well-researched perspectives. Think: books, long-form articles, thoughtful podcasts, or accounts that genuinely add value.
2. Implement “Digital Intermittence”
Just as intermittent fasting gives your body a break, digital intermittence gives your mind a break.
The First and Last Hour: Commit to making the first hour after waking up and the last hour before bed device-free. Don’t start your day reacting to the world’s demands or end it scrolling. Use this time for reflection, reading, or planning.
Scheduled Checks: Instead of checking email or social media whenever a notification pops up, schedule three specific times a day (e.g., 9 AM, 1 PM, 5 PM) to engage with them. In between, the apps are closed.
3. Control Your Defaults
We often fall into poor habits because they are the path of least resistance. Change the default setting of your devices and environment to support better choices.
Silence the Notifications: Turn off non-essential push notifications for everything except direct calls and texts.
Move the Apps: Remove distracting apps (like social media or games) from your home screen and put them in a folder buried on a third screen. The slight friction makes you think twice before opening them.
Make Knowledge Accessible: Put a physical book, a notebook, or a hobby project right next to your couch or bedside table. Make the healthy input the easier choice.
The Takeaway: Your mind is the engine of your life, and the quality of your output is entirely dependent on the quality of your fuel. Start treating your attention with the respect it deserves. Start practicing Input Hygiene today.
Remember when you were a kid and you could run around all day with nothing but some friends and the great outdoors and the possibilities seemed limitless? What ever happened to that time? In my youth the internet did not yet exist, we watched very little television and the radio seemed to embody all the mysteries of the universe. I did not grow up with wealth and many common child distractions were out of reach until my teens, when I started to earn some money of my own. Yet I don’t feel like I missed out on much. I may have never seen Disneyland as a child or had a large collection of Star Wars toys, but I had the wilderness and freedom and my imagination.
I sometimes wonder if my own son has the same ability to make a magical world out of nothing except his mind and his environment. He often seems dependent on video games, television and direct parental interaction. He does not generally like to play outdoors and seems to only enjoy his friends in small doses. Though he is often absorbed by the desire for video entertainment and physical toys, I still see his ability to create something from nothing. It seems hard to compare my background to his since my son always has some kind of stimulation available to him. This is where I see that to him, a lack of stimulation just means not having something new. Sometimes this is what he wants, and he will retreat to his room and arrange his stuffed animals, build a blanket fort, or just lay in his bed cuddle his dog and listen to music. Other times he gets this creative drive and hunts down a toy or game he hasn’t played in months and tries something new with it. Another sign of this innate creativity is when he breaks out the Legos, or Minecraft or a sketch pad and just creates new buildings, cities or drawings for hours straight. I think that having the time to just dump hours into random creative expression is one of the key elements of sustaining creativity that we adults tend to miss out on.
It seems that, as we age, the weight of responsibility and the stress of day to day life suppresses our once active imaginations. Perhaps our adult brains see the skill as less practical and so as we stop flexing this muscle, it atrophies in favor of more pragmatic thought processes. Is there anything we can do to slow this process down or reverse it? Do we want to? What would be the cost? I feel that the ability to think outside of the box is useful in almost every scenario. If we want to be more successful, wealthy and healthy, imagination is a skill set we should definitely spend some time cultivating. As a manager, one’s problem solving ability is related to their experience and ability to creatively apply it to new situations. As a real estate investor, one may be denied financing by dozens of banks or go through several realtors who believe that a second or third property cannot be purchased with non-standard or creative financing. Sometimes professionals are so blinded by the standard way of doing things, they are blind to the other less common options. As an athlete who wants to lose weight or eat healthy, one must often come up with creative ways to remain on track and stay disciplined when others are not supportive or temptation is around every corner.
Please do not confuse imagination and creativity with discipline and motivation. Imagination can solve problems by envisioning a solution or be the spark of inspiration for a lucrative idea. Discipline is how you follow through with these ideas and stay with them until completion. Even if you are an artist, maybe inspiration helped you make a painting, but discipline makes a career with income. If you are a writer then you know that creativity is an outline that will never be a book without discipline.
For the purpose of this post lets define imagination as your ability to solve unique problems and generate new ideas. Your brain has gone stagnant from years of the nine to five grind, cooking dinner, doing dishes, laundry, and changing diapers. Now you want some of that child-like desire for something different, something new, something that is uniquely yours. Maybe you want something more interesting for dinner, maybe you want to be more in tune with your kids, or maybe you want to creatively outsource all those household chores. Whatever your goals, I hope you find some value in the following suggestions for improving your imagination.
Reading books, especially fiction, exposes you to new worlds, ideas, and perspectives. It can stimulate your imagination by allowing you to visualize scenarios, characters, and places. I prefer fantasy and science fiction to get my fix. If I get transported somewhere for original ideas I certainly don’t want it to be in the real world. Also as a wanna-be fantasy author I feel that that genre fits my goals the best. I also find value in video games and tabletop role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons for priming that spark. Playing video games with my son is especially enlightening as he still has that random creative perspective I’m looking for that can’t really be re-created any other way.
Carry a journal or use a digital app to jot down your thoughts, observations, and ideas throughout the day. This practice can help you notice interesting details in the world around you and induce creative thinking. This is especially handy for a prospective author or when you are the Dungeon Master for a Dungeons and Dragons group. I once saw a pair of small birds harassing a crow and jotted down this idea for incorporeal fey spirits that would possess animals so they could attack humans encroaching on their land. It’s amazing which images and ideas can trigger random thoughts. I also used to keep a journal by my bed so that I could write down my dreams and draw upon ideas from my subconscious. I seldom remember my dreams anymore and that’s just sad. It’s a sure sign of stress and a rigid lifestyle and a great reason for me to follow my own advice in this post.
Practicing Mindfulness and Meditation can help clear your mind of clutter and stress, making room for more creative thoughts. Mindfulness encourages you to notice details in your environment that you might otherwise overlook. Meditation can quiet the background noise in your mind and open you to a higher state that encourages inspired answers. Eckhart Tolle compared the perfect meditation to being in touch with an infinite intelligence that some believe is a direct connection to the divine. Check out my happiness posts for more information or better yet check out Tolle’s books like the Power of Now. Keep an open mind. I’m not even close to being a religious person, but I can attest to the practical value of effectively managing your inner voices.
Engage with various forms of art, such as painting, music, theater, and dance. Participating in or even just appreciating different forms of artistic expression can inspire new ideas and ways of thinking. Some personal examples for me include the Black Magic Crafts YouTube channel. I was inspired by the creation of tabletop props using styrofoam and cardboard. I never did anything lucrative with it but I had fun building some environments for D&D miniatures and especially loved building some little play areas for Hot Wheels with my kiddo. Music is something I have always enjoyed listening to. Some of my favorite bands for inspirational listening include Led Zeppelin, Metallica and R.E.M. Another surprisingly inspirational activity for me as a fantasy writer was Salsa dancing. I remember when I finally became good enough to improvise moves on the fly and create my own combination instead of just a single choreographed routine. It was like this bell went off in my head and I thought ‘oh this is how sword fighting is sometimes described when two opponents are using variable forms, chaining combinations and countering each other’. I also gained a keen appreciation of footwork and balance while dancing that I never quite obtained with martial arts.
Puzzles, strategy games, and brain teasers can challenge your problem-solving skills and encourage you to think in innovative ways. In addition to a variety of video games, we also play board and card games like Risk, Settlers of Catan, Magic the Gathering and Dominion to name a few. You never really think about how much strategy is involved in something that seems like a roll of the dice until you lose six times in a row to your wife while playing Risk. Other games help one to understand the difficulties of resource management and competition when settling a new area. I got the idea for a ‘mana-flow’ game mechanic for one of my half built role playing games from playing MTG.
Experiencing new places, cultures, and people can broaden your perspective and inspire new ideas. If you can’t travel far, try exploring new areas in your local community. Hiking is my favorite mode of exploration. It helps to clear my mind and I can’t help but imagine myself in a fantasy setting, especially when surrounded by the towering trees and majestic vistas of Sequoia and Yosemite national parks. Exploring Japan opened my eyes to a new world of hidden temples and amazing sculpted gardens woven into the middle of towering skyscrapers in such a way that you feel transported to a new world. The multi-floored train stations with grocery stores underneath and department stores on top give one a unique appreciation for the economy of space.
Sharing ideas and working on projects with people who have different skills and perspectives can spark creativity. Collaboration can lead to the combination of ideas in ways you might not have thought of on your own. No matter how experienced or diligent you are, other people will always be able to surprise you. Everybody brings their own experience to the table and innovation can arrive even amidst the strain of conflict. I remember leading a work group on a couple different occasions where other members brought up ideas that I thought were so stupid and wasteful it blew my mind. I had to stop and check myself, however, because these people were respected professionals, and their brains worked in such a way that to them, these were legitimate issues. I had to assess my own values in those situations. I can’t say that my overall opinions about wasting resources changed, but we compromised, and learning occurred on all fronts.
Improving your imagination is a process that involves curiosity, openness to new experiences, and the willingness to explore and experiment. By incorporating these practices into your life, you can develop a richer, more creative imagination. So travel to new places, meet new people and try different food. Experience what life has to offer and soak it up. Put yourself in the shoes of others and envision their wants and needs and how you can help them achieve their goals. Above all seek out that inner child, and learn from them.
Going from my 20’s to my 30’s ended up being one of the most psychologically traumatic times in my life. I was nursing some pretty significant disappointments with myself and the world in general while transitioning from a stressful job as a 911 dispatcher to another stressful job as an air traffic controller, and going through a divorce at the same time. Being a dispatcher is not a job that promotes a positive outlook on life or a lot of faith in your fellow humans. Being an air traffic controller is also not easy, and training is the worst part. I’d like to say this work-related tension caused my divorce, but the truth is that it was a long time coming and my state of mind just made it happen more quickly. My epiphany was that I had spent so much time catering to other people that I had almost completely neglected what I wanted. I had lost myself and what I wanted to be and harbored a deep sadness and resentment. I needed to fix that state of mind if I wanted any real chance at inner peace. In the hustle and bustle of our daily lives, finding true happiness can seem like a distant goal. I spent the next few years recovering, trying to figure out what went wrong, and how to prevent future unrest. I learned a few things along the way and I’d like to share them with you. I’m going to dig into how to manipulate your state of mind into something more productive, positive and overall happy.
Negativity is a slippery slope. Once you start down that road, a path many of us were trained to follow as children, it colors everything that happens around you. I would like to suggest that you can alter your perspective through mindfulness, which is really just paying attention to how you feel and why you feel that way. Eckhart Tolle, a renowned spiritual teacher and author, emphasizes the importance of living in the present moment. In his books, “The Power of Now” and “A New Earth,” Tolle explores how embracing the present moment liberates us from the grip of negative thoughts and emotions. I found these books quite helpful in changing my emotional state for the better. I had adopted a habit of brooding about the past and ultimately wasted large amounts of time feeling sorry for myself. This was ultimately self-destructive. The idea of being in the “Now” involves being fully present in the moment, cultivating awareness, and accepting thoughts and feelings without judgment.
A basic example of how this works is through meditation. You have a focus while you meditate, such as your breathing, or the flame and the void, if you’re a Robert Jordan fan. As negative thoughts intrude you don’t suppress them, instead you acknowledge them and then just mentally place them outside of your focus (or into the flame) knowing that they are there but they do not affect the present moment. This draws into focus things that are affecting the present moment, and there are internal conversations that take place. This is where Tolle emphasizes the difference between your actual self and your whiny little biological self. Whiny is not his wording, I think he calls it the “pain body”. This annoying voice tells is incessant and distracting, but your true self knows what is truly important. It takes a long while to handle this noise, but trust me it eventually becomes instinctual. Once you finally overcome the past and future background static, you still have an inner self-talk that sounds like this: I have to pee, something smells bad, I’m hungry and thirsty, this floor is hard and I need a cushion, dude you can wait until I finish this 5 minute meditation!
This may seem like it’s somewhat time intensive, it does take a while to reach the proper state, and at first it is not as easy as it sounds. Once you get some practice, however, say 2 to 3 weeks 10 to 15 minutes a day, it becomes more natural and the benefits become more apparent. You can eventually learn to center yourself quickly, which is really important in my profession. I can be on the radio talking to a dozen aircraft, feeling the panic coming on, the cold sweat, the tunnel vision, then I take a deep breath, embrace the “Now” in the moment between transmissions and immediately put myself in a better head-space. I think many people in stressful professions learn to do something like this instinctively, or they don’t last long, and the toll on their body and mind is much higher.
The idea of self-talk is something I never really considered before my low point, but I have learned to appreciate the value this tool has to offer. Anyone who is serious about self improvement is familiar with the famous book “The Power of Positive Thinking” by Dr Norman Vincent Peale, but this idea has been around since the ancient Greeks and possibly before. There are many modern versions of this “Secret” but the basics are simple enough to understand. Your thought processes are often a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you think you are destined to live in a trailer park collecting welfare checks in back woods Maine, you will likely end up there. If you deny this version of reality and decide you will live in a Southern California beach town in a million dollar condo, the new reality becomes much more likely. I consider myself to be living proof of this concept.
Positive self-talk can take many forms. You can repeat affirmations in your head over and over, write down your goals and how you will achieve them, or put a picture on your desk of a kitten looking in the mirror seeing a lion in the reflection. Doing all three of these and more will ultimately increase the effectiveness. I also find listening to positive and inspirational music to be very effective. There is a reason why “Eye of the Tiger” is on so many workout playlists. I jokingly refer to all this stuff as self-brainwashing. In my mind that is basically what we are doing, brainwashing ourselves with the thoughts we allow most often. The fact is our brain responds to repetition and molding. If you tell yourself something consistently and repeatedly with enough conviction your subconscious will start to believe it and work behind the scenes to make it a reality.
During my recovery years my self-talk was more affirming than goal oriented. I would say things like “I will get through this” or “I am not defined by my past mistakes”. Later, when I had recovered a bit, I got cocky and had grand affirmations like “I will be independently wealthy in 5 years.” That particular goal got derailed by reality and several other factors which I may or may not reveal in future posts. These days I am fighting the ever creeping chains of cynicism disguised as pragmatism but I still have more specific and realistic versions of goals such as “I will retire from my current job at 51 years old”, and “I will pay off my home and 2 rental properties by 60 years old.” Accomplishing both of these are by no means a sure thing, but they are something to shoot for that will require more than me sitting on my butt and coasting through life.
Be careful of situations that can sabotage your efforts. It is difficult to maintain a positive outlook if you are surrounded by negativity. If your friends and family are unrepentant cynics you may need to distance yourself, and a long vacation may not be enough. If you work in a job like a 911 dispatcher where no one who calls you has anything good to say, you may want to consider a new career. Dedication can overcome these challenges, however, constantly being exposed to negativity will encourage backsliding. Don’t watch the news, the networks don’t make money spreading good news. I haven’t watched it for over 20 years and I don’t feel like I’ve missed out on much. I find that my co-workers will give me a summary of current events whether I want it or not anyway. If there is something interesting I can always find a less biased, less sensationalized version of it online.
The main thing I’ve learned over the years, for myself anyhow, is that happiness takes effort. Kind of like marriage or a career, things don’t tend to trend upward without some direction and a sense of purpose. There are a plethora of tools available to anyone with the will to use them. I encourage you to read, listen, talk and educate yourself. Give meditation a try, it may not be for you, but every bit helps. Keep in mind positive thinking doesn’t imply ignoring challenges or denying reality; rather, it encourages us to focus on solutions, opportunities, and the good aspects of our experiences. I will consider posting book reviews and recommendations in the future if people are interested, until then, stay motivated, stay happy.
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