“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.” — Anne Lamott
Over the past year, I’ve made a change to how I consume content. Everything is at 1x now: podcasts, YouTube videos, audiobooks. All of it.
I also made a rule for myself: if something isn’t worth consuming at 1x, it’s not worth consuming at all.
Let me explain why this makes sense for me, and why it might for you too.
At some point, consuming content at 2x speed became a badge of productivity. “I only listen to podcasts at 2x” gets said with the same energy as “I wake up at 5 AM.” Impressive, I guess?
But why do we want to consume things faster? The answer, if we’re being honest, usually comes down to FOMO or anxiety (or a mix of both). The feeling that there’s too much to consume and not enough time. That you’re falling behind if you’re not optimizing every minute. The queue never empties. Finish one podcast, three more dropped today. Clear your YouTube watchlist, the algorithm refills it overnight. There’s always fucking more.
But more of what, exactly? More hot takes? More content that you’ll forget by next week? There’s always another backlog to get through. The productivity hack becomes a treadmill. But the goal shouldn’t be consuming more. It should be consuming better.
Life happens at 1x. Every conversation you’ve ever had. Every walk, every meal, every meaningful experience. None of it comes with a speed dial. We’re biological creatures wired for real-time processing. When someone speaks to you in person, you don’t get to fast-forward through the parts you find boring.
There’s something strange about trying to shortcut how humans communicate. A podcast is just a conversation you’re eavesdropping on. The pauses, the rhythm, the way someone builds to a point. That’s all part of it. Speed it up and you get the words, sure. But you lose the texture.
Your brain needs empty space too. This is the part we’ve collectively forgotten. Boredom is a feature, not a bug. It’s where our best ideas — like starting this blog! — come from. It’s where you actually process what you’ve learned, make connections, have original thoughts. Constant consumption, even sped up, leaves no room for any of that. You need to be bored.
The irony is that consuming faster often means processing less. You’re optimizing for throughput when you should be optimizing for understanding. All those 2x podcasts blur together into background noise. What did you actually retain? What changed how you think? It’s empty calories. It’s fake productivity.
Which brings me back to the rule. It forces a question before you press play: is this actually valuable, or am I just consuming it because I can speed through it? So much mediocre content gets a pass because we can 2x it. “It’s only 20 minutes at double speed.” But that’s still 20 minutes of your life. Why spend it on something you don’t even think is worth your full attention?
And yes, some content genuinely has filler. But if most of a podcast needs skipping, why are you listening to it at all?
The rule becomes a quality filter. When you commit to 1x, you get ruthless about what makes the cut. You unsubscribe from podcasts that are mostly filler. You stop watching videos just because they’re in your feed. You become selective instead of “efficient”.
And here’s what will happen after you make this change: you’ll start enjoying things more. When you’re not racing through content, you actually engage with it. You think about what someone said. You pause and let an idea land. You’ll actually remember it later.
This is about intentionality. It’s about asking what you’re trying to get out of all this consumption in the first place. If the answer is just “more,” maybe that’s worth examining.
Try it for a week. Put everything back to 1x. You’ll probably consume less. You’ll enjoy it more. And you might find some silence in between, and realize that the silence was what you actually needed all along.
Terrible Software 