Input Efficiency

I believe the most effective way to absorb information is through output.

Information you've read, heard, or seen doesn't do much if you leave it sitting there — it's just a pile of disconnected fragments. Only when you talk about it with someone or write it out does that information get organized and truly integrated into your thinking.

There's a growing tendency in our era to treat the sheer volume of information consumed as the key metric. But if you genuinely want to increase your input, I'd argue the bottleneck isn't "how much information you've been exposed to" — it's "how much of it you've actually written out (or spoken) yourself."

Input in the AI Era

The arrival of the AI era has made this picture more complex.

AI agents like Deep Research can instantly process unprecedented volumes of information and extract the essence. These are tools that explosively increase the amount of content you come into contact with. But I've come to realize that simply increasing exposure no longer translates to genuine input.

Because information without output only ever becomes temporary, fragmentary knowledge. On the flip side, content you've actually written out sticks with you in a remarkable way. When I wrote a white paper on the future of supermarkets, for example, that material became deeply structured knowledge in my head in a way that has stayed there.

AI is certainly a useful tool, but that doesn't necessarily mean it extends your own capabilities. For creative work, or when you're trying to sharpen a distinctive perspective, over-reliance on AI can be a double-edged sword.

For genuine learning and growth, what matters isn't the volume of information — it's how much you express it in your own words and deepen your thinking through that process. That fundamental principle hasn't changed.