--- title: "Treat Your Inputs Like Your Diet" description: "Why your information intake and the people you let into your work deserve food-level discipline, plus the 20-second voice note habit that saves every idea." canonicalURL: https://aaronlynn.com/force-multiplication/treat-your-inputs-like-your-diet/ date: 2026-09-29T14:00:00.000Z --- ![Clay render of a person at a dinner table choosing between two plates: one piled with tiny glowing smartphones and alert bells served like fast food, the other holding a neat stack of books and a steaming mug.](https://assets.aaronlynn.com/emails/newsletters/cnt-6472/junk-information-diet-two-plates.webp) _Tonight's special: outrage, deep fried._{.center} ## 1. Treat Information Like Food You already watch what you eat (hopefully). You know the rule: what you put into your body determines what you get out of it. The exact same rule applies to your mind — [what you let in determines the quality of what comes out](https://aaronlynn.com/productivity/inner-game-mindset/filter-on-inputs/). And most people are on a junk information diet. News alerts. Doomscrolling. Feeds engineered to serve you whatever makes you angriest. None of this happened by accident, by the way. Decades ago, the news business made a deliberate choice to get more sensational, because outrage holds attention and attention sells ads. They opted in deliberately. And when social media became mainstream, it opted to follow the same model. So, it is on you to opt out. Here's what that looks like: First, cut news entirely. Not "less news" — none. If something genuinely matters, it will find you. Second, re-learn how to enjoy the slower sources — biographies, good fiction and non-fiction, long conversations with people who actually know what they're talking about. Fair warning: the slower sources will feel bland at first, the same way real food tastes bland after years of sugar and processing. Give it two weeks. Your palate will return. ## 2. Wise People Don't Solve Problems, They Avoid Them Information isn't your only input, either. There's a saying I think about a lot: **wise people don't solve problems, they avoid them.** Look at the recurring friction in your work and life. The client who needs everything explained three times. The project that's been "nearly done" since March. The person who only calls when something's on fire. Almost all of it traces back to a small number of upstream choices — who you let into your work, what work you commit to, and who you surround yourself with. Choose well upstream, and most of the downstream firefighting never has to happen. This is a close cousin of [The Spoiled Prince](https://aaronlynn.com/productivity/next-level-productivity/), the carefully cultivated art of letting low-level problems resolve themselves. So how do you actually put this into practice? Once a month, as part of your monthly review, do an input audit. Two passes: - One pass on your media diet — what did you let into your head this month, and what needs to go? - One pass on your commitments and people — what did you say yes to, and where is the friction actually coming from? Then prune. ## 3. Capture Ideas Before They Disappear Your best ideas don't show up at your desk. They show up in the shower, on the school run, halfway through a walk... and they decay in minutes. "I'll write it down later" is where good ideas go to die. So the fix isn't a better notes app, it's faster capture technology: a 20-second voice note, the moment the idea appears. My go-to app for this is still [AudioPen](http://aaronlynn.com/go/audiopen/). You hit record and ramble in half-sentences, and it turns the rambling into clean, structured text you can actually use later. Add on some advanced integrations and you can have the cleaned up version appear in your task manager inbox or even in Slack. The developer, Louis, is awesome too. He keeps shipping new features, like an AudioPen keyboard on iOS that replaces WisprFlow for voice-typing into any app. The workflow is simple: - Record during the week. - Clear once a week at the end of the week. More small AI workflows like this in my [_The Complete Claude, Claude Code & AI for Work Productivity_](https://aaronlynn.com/courses/ai-for-work-productivity/) course. ## 4. Courses I have a range of online courses that teach business people what they need to know about productivity and AI: [**1. Next Level Productivity**](https://aaronlynn.com/courses/next-level-productivity/)\ A practical, straightforward course that teaches you how to achieve elite-level personal productivity in today's constantly interrupted world. [**2. The Complete Claude, Claude Code & AI for Work Productivity**](https://aaronlynn.com/courses/ai-for-work-productivity/)\ A comprehensive course taking you from beginner AI concepts like prompt and context engineering, to cutting-edge AI productivity using terminal-based AI tools like Claude Code for non-coding office work. Usable with ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and other current LLMs. [**3. The AI Agents, Automations and Agentic Workflows Guide**](https://aaronlynn.com/courses/ai-agents-guide/)\ This non-technical course shows business people and non-coders how they can build and use AI agents in ChatGPT and Zapier. [**4. The AI Playbook**](https://aaronlynn.com/courses/ai-playbook-for-ceos/)\ This is my longer premium course on how businesses can deploy AI tools and technology across their processes and teams. [**5. ChatGPT for Managers**](https://aaronlynn.com/courses/chatgpt-for-managers/)\ See how AI can solve complex management challenges in less than 30 seconds. Full prompt library and examples included. That's it for this week! — Aaron > Related course: Next Level Productivity — $97 — /courses/next-level-productivity/