As toddlers, we were innocent. Both in our actions and in the way we thought. 

Growing older, we lose that innocence. 

Two primary forces, our parents and the school system, started to shift the way we thought.

They engrained in us how we’re supposed to:

• think

• act

• be 

We love to criticize the education system for teaching us nothing.

We love to complain about how the political system is fucked and doesn’t give a damn about the individual.

We love to condemn everything about society and how it raises children.

Of course, the Western world doesn’t work perfectly. There are reasons why we bash it so often.

This is not about the education system though. Or politics for that matter.

It’s also not about our parents, who (hopefully) just did their parenting job as best as they could.

This newsletter is about a third major influence that isn’t talked about as often. 

It’s what you are reading right now. 

Everything in the modern day and age is content. 

And it’s so much more powerful and influential than you think it is.

I grew up in a perfectly normal household with two loving parents.

I went through twelve years of standard education in school.

They didn’t want me to play video games all the time, they didn’t tell me to start watching porn, and even school told me that junk food was bad.

Not once did these influences tell me that it’s a good idea to start smoking joints. 

To drink alcohol “to failure”. 

To get addicted to nicotine pouches.

Still, I did. I didn’t do it alone, my friends were right by my side, but we didn’t come up with that shit either.

Where do you think the influence to do those things came from?

Content.

The music we listened to told us how awesome it is to get drunk, smoke weed, and fuck girls. 

(we didn’t get to do the last one, but we sure as hell wanted to)

Our collective introduction to YouTube opened up the world of gaming when we were 10.

Everything we thought was cool, how we acted and behaved, all stemmed from content consumption. 

We didn’t even have TikTok. I never even used Instagram.

Content has the potential to be much more influential than school, society's programming, and even our friends and parents.

Content can touch you in a way nobody else can. For some reason the people on the internet understand you.

They get how you feel, what you want, and how to solve your problems.

You aren’t that unique. 

You may have yet to find like-minded friends in school and have no interest in any conventional career paths.

But on the internet, there are millions of people thinking in similar directions, with similar interests and similar opinions. 

I just told you how content pulled me down into a rabbit hole of bad habits. 

The beautiful thing about content is that its influence can also benefit you more than your parents, friends, the education system, or some therapists ever could.

At least it can lay the cornerstones for your self-improvement journey.

• I wouldn’t have started meditating and going to the gym if my parents told me to.

• I wouldn’t have quit porn, video games, and junk food because of a fat teacher telling me it’s unproductive and unhealthy.

• I wouldn’t have started writing because I suddenly just felt like it.

Because some guys on the internet slowly brainwashed me into thinking differently. 

Into taking the actions everyone else I knew thought was stupid. 

You don’t just start swimming against everybody else without good reason.

This is the power of content and how it ruins and saves millions of lives.

What is content?

You already know the answer: 

Everything is content.

Everything you see digitally is content, and frankly, we don’t see much else apart from screens these days.

This is why it’s so powerful, it’s everywhere.

You simply can’t hide from or avoid it if you want to live a normal life.

Everything on social media is content. 

Everything on the internet is content. 

Television is content, music is content, the radio is content, books, newspapers, advertisements, everything is content.

And everything you consume, may it be so small, influences you.

• A random good song lights up your mood. 

• A billboard on the street gets you thinking about junk food.

• A YouTube video that strikes a chord inside of you makes you change your entire life trajectory. 

The consumption of content to relax, or for pure enjoyment/entertainment doesn’t exist. Not without changing the way you think.

If you now hit the repeat button on useless and even “bad” content, you end up where most of the population is.

1. You obsess over a fictional Japanese cartoon show that becomes your life.

2. You start paying for 20 different OnlyFans girls, working minimum wage to afford to see their tits.

3. You mastered a video game over a few years, playing it 12 hours a day while ordering junk food from the cheapest places you can find.

How did that happen? 

You got exposed to useless content, probably as a kid (a random TV show, your first 18+ video at 11, watching YouTube gaming videos for hours), and got hooked. 

Yes, it sounds extreme. But people live this way. 

And the only influences they received to go in that direction came from screens.

If you are reading this, you’re (hopefully) not going to be down that bad.

But maybe you’ve come to realize how content influenced you to do stuff you’d never have thought of without consuming.

To be more in control of your content consumption, as well as get the absolute best out of consuming, here are the action steps to do so.

How to be better at consuming

Let’s get one thing out of the way first: 

Not consuming at all won’t be an option for you. It’s not for me anyway. We want and have to stay connected with the world.

Even though periods of strict content avoidance are immensely beneficial for your mental health, clarity of thoughts, etc., it’s not a long-term solution.

So we have to make the best out of consuming. 

The aim is to only consume content that is:

• beneficial information to improve ourselves

• interesting and fascinating, making our brains start to create ideas

• useful for other people so we can share it with them

Is it a sin to watch a movie for “entertainment purposes” with your girl every once in a while? 

No. But you get the idea.

The first part of this newsletter is aimed at doing this for you. 

You have to understand how everything you consume influences your thoughts, actions, and outcome of life.

You have to be aware, mindful, and attentive to whatever you consume.

In action steps, this is what you have to avoid:

1. Doomscrolling. 

It’s so useless. Chasing cheap dopamine won’t get you anywhere. Whenever you catch yourself scrolling, stop for a moment.

Put down your phone. Take a deep breath. Focus on what you are doing and consume mindfully, calming your brain.

2. Consuming from multiple sources at a time. 

Stop looking at your phone when watching something else. 

Stop having multiple tabs open at once. 

Stop listening to stuff while trying to focus on something else.

3. Consuming whenever you feel like it.

Schedule learning sessions.

• read books for half an hour before bed

• set time slots for watching YouTube videos

• dedicate specific times for reading newsletters, content on X, or any other type of media you consume

Avoiding these things will make you consume intentionally.

Learning from mentors used to be exclusive, often being locked behind a paywall or a lack of educational perspectives. 

Now, the internet is full of mentors you have access to for free.

No matter your interests, you’ll find mentors online speaking and teaching about them.

Why mentors though? Why not just consume what you come across?

The power of following a select few mentors cannot be understated.

The internet is the most crowded space there ever was in history. Navigating all the information on it is impossible.

For every thesis out there, every fitness program, every lifestyle, and every philosophical or spiritual thought, you can find contradictions to those.

As long as you resonate with a mentor online, if they talk about topics you find interesting, and provide you with methods to improve your life, just follow them.

Follow their advice, and what they teach, read the same books as them, and do the same things they do.

(of course, don’t act like a sheep. You get what I mean)

There is an old rule that goes:

“Don’t listen to the people that don’t have what you want”.

Instead, listen to the people who have what you want.

You can do this with the three areas of self-improvement:

• physical: physique / fitness / physical health

• mental: mental health / spirituality / mindset

• other people: relationships / influencing others / money

Find a mentor with the physique you want.

Find a mentor with the mindset you want.

Find a mentor with the relationship you want.

Who you choose to be your online mentor and which topics you want to get educated in depends highly on your individuality.

It doesn’t matter. It’s your choice.

But keep in mind: They have what you want, so they know how to get it.

You don’t know more than they do. 

Follow their advice, try it out, and see if it works for you. 

Most likely, if you like your online mentor, the things they teach will work for you.

Where can you find these mentors? 

On the internet: Podcasts, YouTube, and Newsletters are the best long-form sources of content. Outside of the internet, books are the way to go.

You should only consume long-form for the sake of learning. Short-form makes you feel good, long-form makes you better.

Find 1-3 mentors for all of the biggest goals you currently have. 

Follow their advice.

Consume minimally from other sources and trust the people who have what you want. 

This is classic advice. 

You can consume all you want from every high-quality source of content there is. You still may never learn a thing, if you never act.

Information isn’t meant to be hoarded in your brain. You’re not training for a quiz show.

This means that you:

• don’t have to remember every single detail of the podcast you are listening to

• don’t have to grasp every concept in the book you’re reading 

• don’t have to agree with every opinion of your mentor(s)

Every piece of content is pulling you in a direction. 

It’s influencing you on a deeper level than your short-term memory.

But only if you take action on the things you learn.

Ideally, you have already planned your content consumption sessions.

After every session, take a moment.

If you listened to a Huberman Lab Podcast, maybe it’s a zero-cost tool/protocol.

If you watched a video of Sam Sulek, maybe it’s a specific exercise you want to try in the gym.

If you read a Dan Koe Newsletter, maybe it’s a networking strategy.

Write this lesson down, I like to do this in a journal.

Then, make the effort to formulate an action step (if your mentor didn’t give it to you already):

• “Before going to bed, I am going to try this breathwork protocol for 3 minutes”

• “On the next arm day, I am going to try this exercise for my triceps”

• “Tomorrow I will send out 5 warm DM’s in the way Dan Koe suggested”

These are exact action steps you can take with virtually no other effort than having to do them. 

Of course, you don’t need to have a clear action step after every session of learning.

Sometimes a simple idea or concept they presented to you is so interesting you can’t get it out of your head.

Let’s say I mention “lucid dreaming”, not explaining anything about it. You may have heard of it before, in this case, it might catch your attention.

You can’t formulate a clear action step out of that, even though it’s seemingly stuck in your head.

In those cases, either research more about it or turn on your own brain if it’s a somewhat abstract concept.

Learning by doing works. 

You just have to:

• consume

• act

• iterate

• repeat

As I don’t have any offer to sell you (at the time of writing), I can honestly say that paid products are worth your money.

I’m not talking about books here. They’re often free on the internet somewhere anyway.

I’m talking about the products and services your mentors sell, the premium versions of their free content.

Everybody who has never bought an online course/program before will fear throwing their money out of the window. 

They fear it’s a scam, it’s not worth the bucks, and it’s not going to get them the result they paid for.

I felt like this myself. Until I purchased my first online product: A chess course (as I was super into chess then).

I bought it from my internet mentor who had built up my trust in him over months (personal branding 101).

It was worth the money. Every product I bought from mentors I trusted was worth it. This is because of two reasons.

1: The product is good. 

Everybody posting their content on the internet has a reputation to keep up.

Purely negative feedback is practically death to every creator.

Their entire income is on the line. You know how celebrity shitstorms work. The same can happen to a lower-status creator, your mentor.

Which makes the creators want you to get results. 

They want you to build even more trust in them, so you buy even more content in the future. Or so that you refer their offers to others.

They are going to make the product worth the price, even though they might seem expensive.

2) Your commitment is through the roof.

You paid money for the product and you like/trust your mentor to begin with. 

You took some time to decide if the product he offered was right for you, maybe they even convinced you on a one-to-one coaching/sales call.

You are ready to spend the necessary hours and work your way through the offer/course/coaching program, whatever it may be. 

You don’t want to see the product you bought let you down. 

You want to see it work.

Ergo, you (and the creator because of reason one) will do your absolute best to make it work. 

I experienced this myself with the chess course I mentioned.

It was $40, on sale.

I:

• was afraid of wasting money

• bought it anyway

• put work and effort into improving my theoretical and practical knowledge of chess

• improved, aka got my dream result

• my online mentor got a happy customer who’d pay him another ~$200 in the future

When you buy the right products, it’s always a win-win.

The “right” products could be different for everyone, depending on who their online mentors are.

The rule of thumb goes like this:

Not the one with the largest following (even though seeing lots of social proof makes one’s ego deflate).

Not the one with the best marketing campaign.

The one whose content you like and learn from, you’ll enjoy his product the most.

At least to begin with. 

Once your first online purchases are done, you’ll start to get a feeling for how much money you want to spend on offers from people you don’t know that well.

I currently purchase one online course a month. 

As you might have guessed, the most recent one was Dan Koe’s “2 Hour Writer”, which seems to be the go-to “start on X” course. 

No affiliate, but it’s pretty good.

Some people buy a lot more courses, but most people never buy anything.

Whatever level you’re at, be aware that the money in your bank account isn’t doing anything right now.

It’s chilling, waiting to be spent in 4 years on a car payment.

Don’t do that.

It’s the highest-achieving ROI there is.

Without the chess courses, I’d still be stuck on an amateur level, leaving chess unfulfilled. 

Without Dan Koe’s “2 Hour Writer”, I’d still be posting 8 tweets a day, not engaging, wondering when the algorithm is going to come and save me.

Paying for content is a shortcut.

Hopefully, you can see I am genuine in my opinion here.

And I’d love for my younger self to understand that not everything online is a scam. 

Thank you for reading.

I hope this helped you get a better understanding of how content influences you and how you can get the most out of it.

See you next week,

~ Improvement Wolf