A tool to help you find the info mix that's right for you

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I've been toggling between how to fix the news you're producing and how to fix the news you're consuming so far this year. Working out ideas for how we can align our information consumption with our actual desires instead of our habits or addictive behavior is new territory, but feels necessary.

Even professional journalists consume more reporting—so, so, so much more—than we produce. Working with my class to track our information habits this semester, I've learned that if I more actively keep track of what's motivating my information seeking, the more likely I am to fill that need in other, often better, ways. I hope I'm also freeing up mental space for the reporting and writing I most want to do.

My first tool for motivation and habit tracking was a quick Google Sheet. It was a bit of a pain. I couldn't find it fast enough to make tracking my habits in real-time easy. And spreadsheets are not my happy place. Looking at one so many times a day made the tracking feel like a chore.

So I blocked out 3 hours yesterday and built something for us! It's a web-based app, thenewsfix.org. Use the simple form to more easily make diary entries. The summary tab will help you analyze your habits.

I recommend using the diary for a 24-hour period first. My class and I didn't use it to track the content that is purely entertainment for us. We only tracked media we were also using for information. Be as honest as you can about what is pushing you to head to social media or read an article. Is it curiosity or FOMO? Is it a true information need that's driving you, or do you want to be distracted from a tough task? Use this tracker however makes most sense for you.

What can I do with these insights?

It's food for thought. But I hope we can also use this intel about our motivations to build media habits we're more satisfied with. I'm trying out a few different ideas for reflection guides and running some experiments in class.

I'm playing around with mapping insights about what drives our individual info seeking to a sensemaking tool that is a mashup between a balanced diet tool, the Maslow-inspried heirarchy of information needs, our individual values, and a dose of realism.

I hope to also find ways to develop a set of post-consumption actions that might address our motives for information seeking better than consuming information alone. What actions might I want to think about doing if I'm going after content to avoid feeling lonely, for example?

I certainly don't want to feel compelled to take action after every newsletter I read or podcast I listen to. I also don't want the majority of my consumption each day to be passive, so I'm looking for some tools to achieve a balance. We'll see how the effort goes. I'm very open to ideas.

Is this the "right way" to use AI?

Not sure. I certainly would not have been able to build the site without depending on Claude's instructions. I don't know how to code and am intimidated by GitHub.

I used Claude for this tool, but not Claude Cowork. Claude did the coding in Javascript, and I entered it in my terminal. We went back and forth, making changes. Once I had tried the tool on my own laptop, I used Netlify to make the site accessible to anyone with the link and directed the page to a domain I own, thenewsfix.org. It took about 3 hours. Chatting back and forth with the Claude agent was no more than 20 minutes of that time.

It serves the interests of AI companies to make the benefits of their innovations easy to access while hiding the ball on the costs. I don't know exactly how much energy was required to answer my queries. I asked Claude, and first the agent dodged. When I asked again for a ballpark estimate, I got this answer back for how much energy coding this new site required: "running a 60-watt light bulb for about 5 hours or charging your phone about 25 times."

AI companies are unlikely to put meaningful constraints on their ambitions to avoid exploitation of people or resources. In the United States, the government is currently unwilling to engage in meaningful AI or environmental regulation. We're left to monitor and regulate ourselves. I try to use separate AI applications like Claude sparingly and only for things I otherwise couldn't do. It's a less than coherent strategy. If you have guidance for how and when you choose to use these applications, I'd love to hear it.

That's it until next week. Take care of yourself. Happy Paczki Day to all who celebrate!