I was on a call with a colleague, walking through some Wardley Maps I’d drawn for various AI tools. Partway through my overview, he stopped me and asked a question I’ve heard a couple of times before: “How do you find out about these things?” I paused, realizing that the answer has less to do with any magic trick and more to do with habits—essentially, what I choose to read, watch, and listen to on a daily basis. In other words, it comes down to my information diet.

We live in an age where AI can answer questions, recommend content, and even generate entire articles for us. You might lean on these AI tools for quick answers, but at the end of the day you are still the one reading, watching, and listening to information sources. The critical question is: are those sources high quality? Or are you unwittingly on the receiving end of the Gish gallop? If you’re not familiar with that term, the Gish gallop is a rhetorical technique where someone overwhelms you with a barrage of arguments (often of dubious quality) with no regard for accuracy. In an era of infinite content—much of it auto-generated or spammy—it’s dangerously easy to get galloped by misinformation or superficial noise.

A stylized illustration of an 'Information Diet' pyramid. The pyramid is divided into four layers from bottom to top: books, speech bubbles, and newspapers at the base; social media icons and short-form content in the middle; the Twitter bird icon in the upper tier; and a microchip labeled 'AI' at the top. The design uses muted shades of beige, blue, and orange to convey different types of information sources.

The Importance of a Healthy Information Diet

Just like your body needs a balanced diet of nutritious food, your mind needs a balanced intake of information. The core message I want to share is that for your day-to-day work and life, it’s vital to cultivate a healthy information diet—especially if you work in tech or any fast-moving field like AI. Even if you don’t work directly on AI, there’s a good chance you’re using it indirectly. If you’re not consciously mixing the right information into your brain and applying it to your day-to-day decisions, you risk stagnating in your approach. In the tech world, things change quickly and the moment you stop learning is the moment you start losing your edge.

Think of it this way: you are what you eat, and by the same token “you are how you search.” Feeding solely on easy, processed info—the equivalent of junk food—can leave your knowledge malnourished. Sure, an AI-generated summary or the top Google result might be a quick fix for a simple question, or a Yahoo News headline might leave you feeling like you’ve gotten a real picture of some type of new advancement in some space, but be cautious about making that your main sustenance. One information scientist aptly compared AI’s instant answers to fast food: convenient and tasty, but not the healthiest choice in the long run. But this goes beyond AI and into your everyday information intake habits: If you only consume bite-sized, context-free tidbits (think of those sensational one-line news alerts or random social media takes), you’re likely missing the vitamins and fiber of deeper understanding. A healthy information diet means balancing those quick bites with more substantive meals—the reports, articles, books, and conversations that challenge and grow your thinking, and add to your repertoire of skills.

Quality Over Quantity: Beware the Flood of Junk Info

Having a healthy info diet is as much about avoiding bad info as it is about finding good info. The term “Gish gallop” I mentioned is a warning sign: when you notice you’re being inundated with a firehose of arguments or facts of questionable quality, step back and assess. This can happen when scrolling through algorithm-driven feeds that prioritize engagement over accuracy—you get spammed with clickbait, outrage, and half-truths all mixed together. It can even happen when using AI tools if you treat their output as gospel. AI might confidently present information that is incorrect—but I would argue there’s a worse scenario than blatantly incorrect info (which can be fact-checked), and this is when you’re getting answers and information that is woefully oversimplified. (Remember, these models predict plausible answers; they don’t guarantee truthful ones, or further ones with all the necessary context for you to understand a topic, unless you ask the right questions—more on that later…). If you rely on these without critique, you might end up with a head full of fluff or outright falsehoods, which is the intellectual equivalent of subsisting on cotton candy.

So how do you ensure quality? One way is to slow down and cross-check information instead of accepting the first answer. It might take a bit more work (like reading a full article or checking multiple sources), but doing so gives you the ability to compare evidence and form your own judgment. Think of consuming information like eating: grabbing fast food on the run (a quick AI answer or a single Twitter thread) is fine once in a while, but you don’t want every meal to be from the drive-through. AI-generated overviews are like drive-through burgers—quick and hot, but not very nutritious. Taking the time to read in-depth sources or multiple perspectives is more like cooking a balanced meal at home: it’s slower and requires effort, but you know exactly what you’re getting. This extra effort “gives you back the ability to examine multiple sources… and leaves open the possibilities for learning, discovery and serendipity” that a one-and-done info snippet would never provide.

In short, be vigilant about info quality. If something smells fishy or too hypey, question it. Develop a bit of a BS filter. Over time, you’ll get better at distinguishing a well-researched piece from a regurgitated press release, or a genuine expert opinion from a performative rant. (Oh hey, maybe this blog post is a performative rant—check and question your sources!) High-quality inputs lead to high-quality outputs in your own work and decisions—garbage in, garbage out, as the saying goes…

Curate What You Consume

Since there’s an infinite amount of content out there, a key skill is curation—deliberately choosing what to read/watch/listen to. Don’t passively scroll whatever the algorithm shoves at you. Take control of the menu. For me, a big part of curation is on social platforms. (I miss old school Twitter for this.) Over the years, I’ve sought out credible voices in the tech industry and followed them to essentially build a custom “feed” of quality insights. Folks like Camille Fournier, Will Larson, Michael Lopp, Kelsey Hightower, Nicole Forsgren, Bryan Liles, Gergely Orosz, Laura Tacho, Abi Noda, Sam Schillace (to name just a few) consistently share valuable perspectives on engineering leadership and emerging technology. By following leaders of this caliber, I ensure that my timeline isn’t just the outrage-of-the-day or viral memes, but rather snippets of wisdom, links to great articles, and heads-up on new tools worth looking at. In other words, I let respected experts and practitioners populate my brain’s newsfeed, not random influencers or click-chasers.

Social media can be a double-edged sword. It’s where a lot of breaking info and niche discussions happen first, but it’s also a source of endless junk. The trick is aggressively filtering who you follow. (Sidebar: this is a great trick to use with Slack/Teams channels and email in your inbox as well—aggressively mute/leave channels to reduce noise, organize them with something like the PARA method, and follow some tips on how to get control of your inbox—I learned all these things from people I follow…) If someone consistently adds value (teaches you something, makes you think, points you to good resources), keep them. If they mostly spout hot takes or amplify noise, mute or unfollow. The information you consume is just as important as the food you eat—doomscrolling Twitter aimlessly is the mental equivalent of chowing down on candy bars all day. I try to limit the empty calories and focus on accounts and publications that are more like a balanced meal.

Curating your information diet goes beyond just who you follow on Twitter. It also means picking good long-form sources to balance out the short-form stream. For example, I subscribe to a few weekly newsletters (like Gergely Orosz’s Pragmatic Engineer) and industry blogs that summarize what’s new in tech. These act like a hearty weekly dinner—more substantial and organized than the constant snacking of social media. I also make time for books and deep-dive articles when I can, because often the best insights come from longer, more structured content that an author spent months or years refining. (Only the best ideas tend to survive the gauntlet of writing a full book or peer-reviewed paper, so those can be high nutritional value, so to speak.) By reading books or listening to hour-long podcast interviews, you force yourself to engage with ideas at a deeper level than a tweetstorm or headline can offer. It’s like the difference between a full-course meal and a quick bag of chips.

Finally, remember that your peers and community are part of your information diet too. Find the people in your network who are always tinkering, always learning, always sharing cool stuff they discovered. Every office or friend group has a few of these “information chefs” who love to cook up new ideas. Take advantage of that—ask them what they’re excited about lately. If you’re active in any Slack/Discord groups, forums, or local meetups, pay attention to what those trusted folks are buzzing about. Often I learn about the next big library, or a handy AI tool, from an engineer in my team or a friend in the industry who says “Hey, have you seen this yet?” Those conversations can be golden. They’re like getting a recommendation for a great new restaurant from a friend: personalized and usually reliable.

Keep Your Mind Open to New Ideas

If you only consume the same type of information over and over, you’re going to get the same results. A healthy diet has variety—some new flavors and cuisines in addition to your comfort food. Likewise, a healthy information diet means embracing things that are unfamiliar or even initially uncomfortable. Human nature being what it is, most new ideas and technologies get some pushback at first. Maybe it’s skepticism (“That’ll never work here”), maybe it’s discomfort (“This is too different from what I know”), or plain inertia (“I don’t have time to learn that”). But if you dismiss every new development out of hand, you’ll wake up one day stuck with a very outdated worldview.

I encourage you to push beyond the initial pushback and keep going a little further than feels natural. Often, once you get past that first hill of resistance, you start seeing the value on the other side. We’ve all seen colleagues who refused to learn the new tool or ignored the new trend; a year or two later, they find themselves playing catch-up. Don’t let that be you. The tech landscape moves fast. “If you’re not moving forward, you’re falling behind,” as one engineer wrote about avoiding stagnation. We see this over and over: cloud computing, DevOps, containerization, serverless, machine learning—pick any tech trend, and early on there were plenty of naysayers saying it’s all hype or not worth the effort. But those who took the time to explore new approaches often reaped huge benefits, while the skeptics were left scrambling to adapt once the change became inevitable. A very current example is AI-assisted development. When GPT-based tools first emerged, a lot of folks (understandably) pushed back: “Can we trust the code it writes?”, “Won’t this take our jobs?”, etc. Yet here we are a short time later, and such tools have gone mainstream. In fact, three-quarters of workers are now using AI in their jobs, one way or another (if this Microsoft study referenced in that prior link is to be believed—again, check and question your sources!). The initial fears and objections are giving way to “Okay, how do we actually leverage this properly?” Those who kept an open mind early on are now ahead of the curve in using AI to be more productive. The point is, don’t reject a new idea just because it’s new. Sample it. Even if it ends up not to your taste, at least you made an informed decision. And if it does turn out to be the next big thing, you’ll be glad you got a head start.

Keeping an open mind also means sometimes venturing outside your usual bubble of information. If you’re a software engineer, it can be useful to occasionally read something from, say, a design blog or a product management podcast, just to see how adjacent fields are thinking. If you’re deep into AI, it might pay to read what skeptics or ethicists are saying about it, not just the cheerleading press releases. A diverse information diet ensures you’re not lopsided in your understanding. It inoculates you against groupthink. Sure, most of the time I read my preferred tech sources, but every now and then I deliberately read an opposing viewpoint or an analysis from a different domain. Despite working in AI, I recently read The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want. Did I agree with 100% of that book? No. But much of it did resonate with me, and it has helped me to hone my BS filter when I see some new, over-hyped headline about something that’s going to “change everything.” Forcing yourself to read things that run counter to your world view or challenge the prevailing mainstream media hype is a bit like eating your vegetables—not always the most immediately fun part, but it makes you stronger in the long run. (And steering away from AI hype for a second, if you want some critical thinking and de-hyping of quantum computing, especially as it relates to un-founded fears about it “breaking cryptography,” take a look at this paper which is dense and mathy, but basically dissects how factorisation exercises in quantum computers have been a sleight-of-hand magic trick, or watch 30-minutes of this YouTube video at 14:49 from Security Now which explains these quantum factorisation sleight-of-hand tricks in a relatable way.)

Beyond the Headlines: Choose Trusted Voices

Another aspect of a good information diet is knowing who (and what) to trust, especially when it comes to news and analysis. We’ve all seen how a story can get distorted as it’s rehashed across the internet. A company might release a nuanced research paper, and by the time it makes it to a Yahoo News headline, it’s been dumbed down to “Scientists Create Monster AI That Will Take Your Job!” Getting your tech news solely from generic mainstream outlets is like trying to sustain yourself on popcorn—it’s mostly air, with a bit of salt and butter. It’s easy to fall for sensational headlines and bite-size news that lack context, because they’re designed to grab attention, not to inform deeply. So when possible, go beyond the headline. If something interests you, click through and read the details (or find the original source). Often the reality is more complex—and more interesting—than the blurb.

Let’s use a non-tech analogy. Say a new Ghostbusters movie comes out. Who are you going to trust with a review? Perhaps one of the following:

  • The Today Show: a quick segment on morning TV with a cheerful host reading talking points.
  • Rotten Tomatoes: an aggregation of many critics’ and viewers’ opinions, averaged into a score.
  • A like-minded friend who already saw it: someone whose taste in movies usually matches yours.

For me, the choice is obvious: I’d call up the friend (or read their texts about it). Why? Because I know how they think and I trust their perspective. The Today Show might give a superficial take aimed at a broad audience (“It’s a fun summer romp for the family!”)—that’s like a headline with no depth. Rotten Tomatoes is more informative, but it’s an impersonal crowd score. My friend, on the other hand, will tell me candidly, “Yeah, it’s a decent throwback but the plot was weak, I know you hate those cheesy jokes so you’ll probably find it mediocre.” That’s actionable intel for me.

Translate this back to technology and work. When you’re evaluating a new programming framework, a new SaaS product, or any new “shiny thing” in tech, consider the sources of info in a similar vein:

  • Official marketing or mainstream media (equivalent to the Today Show): quick soundbites, maybe biased towards positivity (or in the case of AI doomers, stoking your fears and distracting you from real-world current day problems), not deeply technical. Useful for a high-level gist, but not entirely trustworthy for making a decision.
  • Aggregated opinions (equivalent to Rotten Tomatoes): for example, a Stack Overflow thread, a collection of reviews, a Gartner Magic Quadrant. These give you a broader sense of consensus or common pros/cons. Better, but can lack context of your specific needs.
  • Trusted peers or experts who’ve tried it (equivalent to your friend): a blog post by an engineer who implemented the tool in a project, a conversation with someone at a meetup who has hands-on experience, or an in-depth YouTube review by a respected techie. These sources are often the most valuable because they can tell you the nuances—the “gotchas,” the unexpected benefits, how it compares to similar tools, etc., all from a point of view you recognize as honest.

Whenever possible, put more weight on the voices that have proven trustworthy and aligned with your context. In my case, if a Camille Fournier or Kelsey Hightower shares an opinion on a new infrastructure tool, I’m inclined to listen closely. If randomsocialmediauser123 hypes the same tool with zero track record, I take it with a big grain of salt. This isn’t to say famous or well-known folks are always right (they aren’t), but over time you learn which people or outlets tend to have signal and which are just noise.

And if you don’t have a go-to friend or expert on a topic? Consider becoming that person yourself. Dive in and experiment so you can share first-hand knowledge. It’s the principle of “trust but verify” in action: take in others’ opinions, but validate through your own exploration when you can. Not only will you get a better understanding, you’ll also be contributing back to the information ecosystem with your findings—maybe writing your own blog post or giving your colleagues the real scoop around the proverbial water cooler.

Final Thoughts: You Are What You Read (So Choose Wisely)

Circling back to that question that started it all—“How do you find out about these things?”—the answer boils down to cultivating and maintaining a healthy information diet. In the age of AI, this is both more challenging and more important than ever. More challenging, because there’s an overwhelming buffet of content being served up, not all of it healthy or even true. More important, because the pace of change is blistering; falling behind can have real consequences for your career and understanding of the world.

The good news: you are in control of what you consume. Be intentional. Feed your mind with high-quality information from a variety of sources. Balance the quick bites of AI-generated answers or social media chatter with the slower digestion of books, articles, and thoughtful conversations. Curate who you listen to, so that you’re hearing from people who inspire and educate you, not just echo chambers that amplify hype. Experiment and taste new ideas, even if they seem strange at first—you might discover something game-changing, or at least you’ll expand your palate. And above all, stay curious. A curious mind naturally seeks out better information and resists the junk food of shallow content.

If you do all that, you’ll have an information diet that keeps you sharp, informed, and ready for whatever comes next. And when a colleague or friend marvels at how you’re always ahead of the curve, you can smile and say, “I just watch what I consume.” In the end, the quality of what you put into your brain determines what you get out of it—so choose wisely. Bon appétit!