My Curated Digital Bubble

3 min readFeb 8, 2021

Random Observation/Comment #698: This is a Digital Civil War. We’re divided into our bubbles.

Understanding Attention

You’ve got a limited amount of time and an even more limited amount of attention in your day. The more decisions you make, the more tired you get. I’ve considered disconnecting from my phone — there’s a list of 30 for that ( 30 Value of Disconnecting). And ways to do it — 30 Ways to Disconnect (plus in Podcast form). But what do I actually do when I indulge? How is my bubble intentionally personalized? What apps do I use? What do I do on my phone?

Understanding the Medium

For each of these inputs, I have a different level of attention. For example,

Audio is almost always playing during commutes, cooking, and jigsaw puzzling.
Videos are usually played when I’m working out on the rower or Peloton.
Reading and responding is done mostly during work hours.
Scrolling is used as leisure and zoning out (hopefully under 2 hours a day).

Each of the subjects, I think, have been optimized for those mediums in order to bring me the most joy and absorption. Do you pay this much attention to your interfaces? Should you?

Audio

Stitcher — Podcasts — So this seems like a lot, but I do listen to a lot of podcasts and this is already a very pared down list

News — Consider This, The Daily
Economics — The Indicator, Planet Money
Science — Short Wave, Science Rules, Star Talk, Science VS
Tech / business — Pivot, ProfG show
Stories — Levar Burton Reads
Fun — Make My Day
Improv — Hey Riddle Riddle, Hello From the Magic Tavern
Gameshows — Go Fact Yourself, Ask Me Another, Wait Wait
Dungeons and dragons — Dungeons and Daddies, Adventure Zone

Audible — Audiobooks — Enjoyable science fiction books mostly when doing jigsaw puzzles

Video

YouTube — Comedy news (Colbert and Trevor Noah), cooking videos, random entertainment, table tennis, British TV shows (“Lie to Me” is short and funny, “Taskmaster” is awesome)
TED (app) — Inspirational videos — At least one a day

Reading

Email newsletters — Substack subscriptions — crypto (the Defiant, Bankless, EthHub, Fintech Blueprint), enterprise blockchain, and work related
Medium — Following startups newsletters and random thoughts
NYTimes — Frontpage and latest with Coronavirus/Vaccines, Weekend stories are great
Google News — Colorado and NY local news with big headlines
LinkedIn — This is a great resources for reading curated work-related news
Reddit Frontpage — World news / WSB (although this is now flooded with non-sense)
Slack — Certain work channels and certain networks have great recommended links
12 minutes — App for reading book summaries

Scrolling / Images

Instagram — Posts and stories — I like feed posts more than stories. I think reels are sometimes entertaining — This is how I stay updated with friends besides poking them randomly by text.
Twitter — Mostly crypto personality recommendations
Facebook — Rarely, maybe to post now and again

Responding

Slack / Discord — Sharing and responding for work
Messaging platforms — Conversations with a few key groups of friends from old companies or cliques
Email — This is getting more and more rare, which is great because they’re more urgent/important

Querying

Google -> Wikipedia — I’ve gone down some crazy wiki holes
Google Maps — All things related to real world searches

I highly recommend writing out how you spend your attention and energy. Consuming content is great for inspiration and knowledge, but don’t forget to build and contribute back.

~See Lemons in my Bubble

Originally published at https://seelemons.com on February 8, 2021.