Information Diet: what did you 👀 this year?

The internet is endless…

Humanity makes a lot of stuff:

• 4.4 million new blog posts are published, every day

• 30,000 hours of youtube video is uploaded, every hour

• 149,513 emails are sent, every minute

Our challenge in the modern era is filtering what is worth our attention. We are what we consume, and high-quality inputs result in better thinking.

So at the end of each year, I review my information diet — what I spent my time consuming, and what made it into my brain, in an effort to not get mentally fat.

These are just some of the golden nuggets that I enjoyed or transformed my thinking.

Here’s a recap of my favourite books, newsletters, podcasts, courses, and videos from last year.

(all released during 2022, unless stated)

Books

• Make No Small Plans, Elliott Bisnow

• How to Win Friends & Influence People, Dale Carnegie (re-read, 1936)

• The End of the World is Just the Beginning, Peter Zeihan

• The 2-Hour Cocktail Party, Nick Gray

• Anything You Want, Derek Sivers (2011)

• Zero to One, Peter Thiel (re-read, 2014)

• The Network State, Balajis

Newsletters

• The Great Online Game, Packy McCormick

• The Only Crypto Story You’ll Ever Need, Matt Levine

• The Three Sides of Risk, Morgan Housel (2020)

• The Mirrortable, Balajis

• What is Money, Anyway? Lyn Alden

• The Arc of the Practical Creator, More to That

• Convince, Paul Graham (re-read, 2013)

Podcasts

• #295 - Philosophy and the Good Life, Sam Harris Making Sense

• Alex Danco — What is Web 3.0 All About? Infinite Loops

• Devouring Founder’s Biographies, Self-Belief, and the Power of Podcasting, Jorgenson’s Soundbox

• #264 The Story of Edwin Land and Polaroid, Founders Podcast

• Billion Dollar Business Philosophies With Hubspot Co-Founder Dharmesh Shah, My First Million

• Money, Wealth, and Personal Holding Companies with Michael Karnjanaprakorn, Where it Happens

Courses

• Corporate Finance MBA Spring 2022, Aswath Damodaran [free]

• The Duffer Brothers: Teach Developing an Original TV Series, Masterclass [paid]

• Examined Writer, Lawrence Yeo (More to that) [paid]

• The Business of Newsletters, Jack Raines & Nathan Baugh [paid]

Youtube (2022 releases)

• Adventure/Storytelling

  • I Spent 100 Days in the Metaverse, Ryan Trahan

  • Why I Travelled The World To Give Elon Musk This, Zac Alsop

  • Why Switzerland Has 374,142 Bunkers (and likely more), Johnny Harris

• Explainer

  • We tracked what happens after TikTok songs go viral, Vox

  • The text-to-image revolution, explained, Vox

  • The Great Crypto Scam, James Jani

  • why Japan's internet is weirdly designed, Answer In Progress

• Quirky

  • personality reveal, ice cream sandwich

  • The Apple Store in a Nutshell, Joeseppi

• Geography/History

  • NATO - Summary on a Map, Geo History

TV (Documentaries/Movies/Series)

• Standup

  • Trevor Noah, I Wish You Would

  • Ricky Gervais: SuperNature

• Documentaries

  • Downfall, The Case Against Boeing

• Movies

  • Everything Everywhere All at Once

  • Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

• Series

  • Severance

  • Dark

  • The Boys

My Posts

I started out by exploring popular crypto projects, with explainers on whether Cardano was legitimate, and if Polkadot would survive.

Then markets took a nosedive and crypto imploded. First Do Kwon and the LUNA collapse, followed by the $32 billion-dollar FTX fraud, and the crazy SBF aftermath before getting arrested.

I covered lots of shorter, fun topics too like Steve Jobs's weird diet, Spotify’s plan to replace musicians with AI, the origins of billion dollar brand Spanx, and Google’s bizarre original name.

This is only the beginning! In 2023 I’ll be expanding youtube topics covering technology, business, creators, and more. If you have any ideas of anything you want to see, I’d love to hear from you as it will help guide my plans :)

Thanks for all your support — the best is yet to come! 🚀

- Paul

If you liked this piece, make sure to subscribe by adding your email below!