The key seems to be to tend to your inputs, make sure they’re decent quality and on topics you care about, then create time away from inputs to ruminate and ponder. Reading outrage-of-the-day content won’t give you better software engineering insights in the shower. But reading hyped-tech-trend-of-the-month content might.
Conversely, if your mind is constantly engaged in other people’s thoughts, it won’t have time to create its own. For me personally that means avoiding external stimuli for the first 2 to 3 hours of the day (doesn’t always work).
A favorite quote on the topic whose source I never remember: The news doesn’t tell you what to think, it tells you what to think about.
Hamming talks about this effect as The Open Door Policy in his wonderful you and your research talk – https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html
The key seems to be to tend to your inputs, make sure they’re decent quality and on topics you care about, then create time away from inputs to ruminate and ponder. Reading outrage-of-the-day content won’t give you better software engineering insights in the shower. But reading hyped-tech-trend-of-the-month content might.
Conversely, if your mind is constantly engaged in other people’s thoughts, it won’t have time to create its own. For me personally that means avoiding external stimuli for the first 2 to 3 hours of the day (doesn’t always work).