THE SALTWATER CURE FOR INFORMATION OVERWHELM

A letter from the East End about finding balance in a world designed to drown us

Read on Substack here

During my beach walks, I watch the morning light hit the water beyond Accabonac Harbor. The rhythm is hypnotic — waves rolling in, pulling back, each cycle clearing the sand for the next. This summer, as I also watched my mother's mind fragment under the weight of neurocognitive decline, digital manipulation, and endless scrolling, I kept returning to this image. Our minds need the same kind of natural rhythm, the same clearing and renewal. But somewhere between the promise of connection and the reality of algorithmic capture, we've lost the ability to cleanse our minds entirely.

I've been thinking about what it means to live creatively in a world designed to consume us rather than nourish us. About how the same frameworks we use to understand physical health—quality in, quality out—might be exactly what we need to reclaim our mental landscape. I call it the QiQo ratio, and it's been changing how I think about everything from the content I create to the way I structure my days.

When the Cure Becomes the Poison

I'd been encouraging my mother for years to put down the iPhone and go outside, but she, like so many others, had already become severely addicted. Her Alzheimer's and other mental disorders turned what should have been helpful technology into something predatory. Facebook and AI romance scam bots soothed her loneliness with manufactured dopamine hits, and it ended up costing her everything—her savings, her cognition, her freedom.

These aren't just individual failures of willpower. Research consistently shows correlations between excessive screen time and increased rates of depression and anxiety. Studies on ‘information overload’ demonstrate measurable impacts on decision making and cognitive function. We're living through a mental health crisis that nobody wants to connect to the most obvious culprit: what we're feeding our minds.

It's not just screen time—it's screen quality. And the solution isn't digital detox retreats or meditation apps. It's understanding that mental health works exactly like physical health, with the same fundamental principles we already know by heart — quality in, quality out, or QiQo (kee’-koh).

The Framework We Already Understand

Drive down the back roads out here — from the farmlands in Bridgehampton to the winding road to Louse Point—and you'll pass runners, cyclists, people walking their dogs, and farmstands full of fresh produce, all of us instinctively understanding that our bodies need both quality fuel and quality movement. We know that there's input (healthy food, junk food, supplements, water, whatever else we put into our bodies) and output (cardio, weights, yoga, nature walks, or whatever else we do with our bodies).

We have this basic understanding that both the quality gradient and the ratio balance between input and output create our physical health profile. Obviously, factors like genetics can sway outcomes, and it's not as simple as calories in, calories out—avocados and salmon serve us differently than aspartame and energy drinks. But overall, it's intuitive.

Our minds work the exact same way.

What We Feed Our Minds

Mental input comes in forms that mostly fall into entertainment and information categories. Books, music, movies, conversations, classes, podcasts, social media. Just like with food, some of these nourish us and some deplete us, with most falling somewhere along a spectrum of quality.

The highest forms of mental input—what I think of as brain nutrition—give us space to think, process, ponder, ask questions, and reach our own conclusions. They teach us about the world and ourselves. Whether it's reveling in Charlie Parker or Toni Morrison, coffee with our smartest friend, or a podcast that challenges our assumptions, this is fuel that helps us grow.

The quality hierarchy isn't absolute—what serves one person might drain another, and what works in one season of life might not work as well in another. But generally speaking, there's a clear spectrum of brain-food, and some is clearly better than others…

Real conversations top the list. Face-to-face dialogue about meaningful topics, where you're processing information in real time, responding and reacting, laughing, connecting, and walking away energized and changed. Research on social connection shows that these interactions activate multiple neural networks simultaneously, improving both emotional regulation and cognitive function. And like mom always said, pick your friends wisely. We are the average of our 5 closest friends.

Art and music experienced in person come next. Galleries, live shows, anything that lets your brain inhale and exhale creativity in real time. Studies on aesthetic experiences show measurable changes in brain chemistry — increased dopamine, reduced cortisol. We gravitate toward the art and music that moves us personally, becoming more aware of our authentic selves in the process.

Quality literature gives our brains space to create what characters and settings look like, and how voices sound. We fine-tune these details using our stored memories of people, places, and experiences. Neuroscience research demonstrates that reading fiction increases empathy and theory of mind—our ability to understand others' mental states.

Intentional learning serves a clear purpose — to expand our minds. Whether it's masterclasses, TED talks, good podcasts, or nonfiction books, this input creates new neural pathways and strengthens existing ones.

Then we hit the neutral zone: TV and movies. Screen-based by nature, but they can still move us emotionally or shift our perspective if done well. The key is intentional consumption rather than passive scrolling.

And at the bottom: news and social media. News used to serve a civic function — a little evening news program and the Sunday paper would inform our weekly conversations with friends. But the economic model collapsed, and journalism became dependent on digital advertising revenue. This created incentives to prioritize engagement over accuracy, leading to increasingly sensationalized content designed to trigger emotional responses. Social media amplifies this problem exponentially, using sophisticated algorithms to identify exactly what will keep each individual user scrolling longer. It’s literally not our fault that we can’t stop scrolling — we’re swimming against a rip tide.

Important note: What constitutes "high-quality" input varies significantly based on individual needs, cultural background, and life circumstances. The hierarchy I'm suggesting works generally, but your personal experience should always take precedence.

 Also, just a reminder that art galleries and libraries are free, YouTube has some great free educational content, and live music can be free as well if you know where and when to show up. Check out seasonal events like HarborFest and the American Music Festival in Sag Harbor.

What We Create from What We Consume

Output is what we do with all that input — the creative processing that transforms consumption into creation. It could be the garden you planted after reading about perennials, the song you wrote after a meaningful conversation, or the photographs you took during your walks through the Quogue Wildlife Preserve. Research on creative expression consistently shows that regular creative activity (just like regular physical activity) reduces stress hormones, improves immune function, and increases overall life satisfaction.

There's no hierarchy here, just authentic expression. Art, music, creative writing, if that moves you. Any design work that serves your soul rather than just client demands. Building, inventing, and problem-solving in various ways. Or one of my personal favorites, multi-media journaling, or what some have been calling “Junk Journals” lately — clipping images from magazines, gluing them into a journal, and writing and sketching around them, building on the patterns, colors, and content of the clippings.

The key is finding which forms of expression resonate with your particular cognitive and emotional processing style. Visual arts help process spatial and emotional information. Writing organizes and clarifies thoughts. Music and movement integrate physical and emotional experiences. Building and crafting satisfy our need to transform ideas into tangible realities.

For people who resist this because they "aren't creative," just start where you are. Have conversations about things you've learned. Rearrange your living space thoughtfully. Ask questions and research answers thoroughly. Take photos of things that interest you. Add color to something. The goal isn't to become an artist in a cultural sense, but to engage in active processing of the information you consume. We’re all artists in a personal sense if we open that mental door.

When the Balance Tips

Doom-scrolling isn’t a benign activity. What happens when low-quality input starts crowding out everything else, minimizing or eliminating output entirely? We feel it in our minds and bodies, just like when we eat badly. I think of it as TMI constipation — the trash information we've consumed acts like huge blocks of processed cheese in our bodies. We can feel it. We need fiber and vegetables, and some movement of our bodies to feel human again.

Research on information overload shows measurable impacts on decision fatigue, attention span, and emotional regulation. Studies of heavy social media users demonstrate increased rates of depression, anxiety, and dissociation. Our minds are aware of their own health if we can attune to them, just like our bodies are.

The fundamental issue is that we're now living within systems designed to capture and monetize our attention rather than serve our wellbeing. Social media platforms make money by keeping us engaged, then selling that captured attention to advertisers. News organizations prioritize engagement over accuracy because that's what drives revenue. We're not failing at willpower — we're succeeding against sophisticated psychological manipulation.

Throw in some inflammatory political content, reality TV consumed right up until we fall asleep, and zero creative output because we're too drained, and we end up suffering mentally. Depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and dissociation often follow. We go to therapy, try medication, explore breathwork, or ketamine — all potentially helpful, but few approaches consider the role of information consumption and creative expression in mental health.

Finding Your QiQo Balance

The solution isn't perfection or rigid rules, but consciousness. Start with awareness: track your consumption for a week without judgment. Notice how different types of input affect your mood, energy, and sleep. This becomes the foundation for intentional choices.

Match consumption with creation. If you spend an hour reading or watching quality content, spend an hour creating something. This naturally limits consumption while ensuring adequate processing time.

Quality over quantity, always. Better to have one meaningful conversation per week than to consume hours of podcast content passively. Better to create one authentic piece of work than to consume endless content about creativity. This approach can actually be time-saving at the end of the day, which is a rare occurrence for most self-improvement hacks. Eliminate all that scrolling and discover how much time you really do have left in your day.

Start and end with output. This is one of my personal favorites, and you’ll see it everywhere, from Julia Cameron and Mel Robbins to Tim Ferriss, lots of wise influencers suggest this method. Create something before consuming anything each day, even if it's just ten minutes of journaling. End your day the same way—create something before sleeping, skip the scrolling. This creates bookends of intentional creation around your day.

Use physical boundaries. App blockers, website filters, phone-free zones, and times. We can't rely on willpower alone against systems designed to override it. Or go totally rogue, ditch iPhone, and get a landline. This is something we needed to do for my mother, and while I was writing out a little address book for her to keep numbers in, and talking about doing important Google searches at the library as needed, I became a little envious of this setup.

Connect your choices to your values. When our input and output align with our deeper purpose, we naturally develop resistance against low-quality mental consumption. The meaningful path becomes the obvious path.

The Deeper Pattern

Sitting here looking out at the water, I keep thinking about resilience. Not the Instagram version—the real thing. How driftwood doesn't wallow in having once been a majestic tree, but shimmers silver in the sunlight, rebuilding dunes by simply existing. How the salt marshes filter and purify, creating habitat for countless species through the simple act of being what they are.

We are saltwater creatures trying to survive in a plastic world. The cure isn't always to reject technology or retreat into purist fantasies, but to remember what we are and what we need. Quality input, creative output, natural rhythms. The same wisdom our bodies already know, applied to our minds. QiQo.

Your mind isn't a garbage disposal for the internet's marketing campaigns, anxiety, and outrage. It's a sacred space where your unique perspective and creative potential reside. What you feed it shapes not just your productivity, but your fundamental sense of being alive and purposeful.

The QiQo framework offers us something simple: a way to treat our mental consumption with the same intentionality we bring to physical health. In a world designed to overwhelm and extract, choosing quality input and prioritizing creative output becomes a quiet form of resistance.

Start where you are. Notice what you're consuming. Create something today. Trust the process. The tides know their rhythm without thinking about it. So do you.

What do you think about QiQo? What does quality input look like in your life? What creative outlet calls to you? Hit reply and tell me—I read every response. And if this resonated, consider sharing it with someone who might need to hear it.