Take note: How to waste less time on the internet

We all waste far too much time online. There’s overt time wasting, like the mindless auto-queued videos on TikTok, and less obvious time wasting, like time spent browsing Hacker News and reading semi-technical blog posts.

“But Matt,” you might say, “those articles are useful. They provide me with information that helps in my job. It might even make me rich one day.”

But how much information do you consume each day? Every article or post you read and every video you watch is a morsel of data, and (assuming you’re at least a little selective) something that might be useful to you later on.

But how much can you really remember? Try it right now. Can you recall anything useful from a single article or post you read yesterday?

You could argue that all that information is absorbed somewhere in your subconscious, but if you can’t recall it then it’s very unlikely to have a practical use, and all that time spent reading is effectively wasted.

Going analogue

I recently abandoned my PC’s notetaking app and began keeping a notebook at work. Despite containing the same information, my handwritten notes were somehow more memorable, and it was easier to flip through the pages and find previous notes when I needed them. I also found myself jotting down discussion points ahead of sessions, making me better prepared.

After a successful office rollout, I decided take my experiment home. I realised I could barely remember the thought-provoking posts and technical content I encountered each day, and it seemed paper notes might help.

I cracked open a fresh notebook and kept it nearby at all hours of the day. My notes were nothing more than bullet points - only the most interesting and useful fragments of books, podcasts, articles, videos, and conversations.

Within a day, I had filled a page and a half of A4. I didn’t appreciate how much was going in one ear and out the other each day! With only a quick skim through recent days’ notes, I could tell you the following:

• As of July 2025, 70 percent of ChatGPT messages did not relate to work, and only 4 percent concerned computer programming.

• Madogiwazoku is a Japanese term for an employee who is given meaningless work, sometimes as an alternative to retirement, but often in an attempt to bore them into quitting.

• A semi-supported CSS attribute, text-wrap: pretty, can help to distribute text between lines and avoid ugly layouts and orphans.

Why does it work?

I now have a useful bank of information for blog posts and general reference, but how exactly did writing things down help? Is there a placebo effect, or is there something fundamentally different about committing words to paper?

I considered this over a week or two and landed on the following thoughts:

• The notebook is more available. I love Obsidian, but when I’m away from home, at work or in a coffee shop, there’s a lot of friction to unlocking my phone, opening the app, finding the right file, and typing on a screen. My notebook and pen are just there.

• I’m more selective about what I write in my notes. Space is limited, I only have so much time to write, and it takes more effort than typing. Copy and paste is no longer an option. Therefore only genuinely interesting, useful, and accurate information makes the cut.

• Writing is slower than typing and forces me to properly parse the information, focusing on the gist and phrasing of each point and sentence. I’m convinced this improves recall over typed notes.

• The notebook is linear - it’s not divided into files and folders like digital note systems. If I’m writing a new note or flicking through the pages, I can see previous items that would otherwise be hidden.

The week in review

That’s all well and good for now, but my notebook system is relatively new. What happens when the novelty wears off? I could be left with a book full of scribblings that I forget just as quickly as their digital equivalents.

I’ll need to experiment with a long-term solution, but I’ve found a nice rhythm in the short term. Each week, I take 20 minutes to read back through everything I’ve written. The act of revisiting the notes is enough to help them to stick in mind, but I also highlight key points in three colours:

1. Actions. Notes that warrant implementation, which make their way onto my to-do list - for example, I took away the above CSS snippet and experimented with formatting for my blog posts at the weekend.

2. Data. Information that could inform me in my work or writing - like those OpenAI metrics, which might find their way into a future blog post. They live in the notebook, highlighted so they’re easy to find.

3. Mindset. This is the category I still need to experiment most with. It contains points that I’d like to consider more, or incorporate into my own thinking. For example, I noted a few lines from a podcast where Craig Mod discussed his thoughts on self-worth and scarcity mindset.

I still spend roughly the same amount of time as I did before scrolling through X posts or reading articles, but the information is less transient. Between writing it out manually and my weekly review, I’ve built in more time to consider what I find interesting and commit it to memory.

Ultimately, this means I read fewer posts and articles, and from time to time I have to put up resistance against the perceived opportunity cost of all the other content I don’t have time for. The internet has trained my brain to worry that the next post in the feed could have been life-changing.

But that’s the reality of the world in 2025 - there will always be more data available than one person could possibly ingest or remember. The important thing is to extract more value from the information you do consume.

Most articles along these lines recommend a complete digital detox, but I don’t think that’s appropriate or realistic in the modern age. The internet does hold useful information and you would be disadvantaged without it. The challenge - and the way to avoid succumbing to so-called brain rot - is to avoid jumping from one post to the next. Slow down and take things in.