Digital Content Multi-Vitamin

We all know that in order to stay healthy, our body needs to take in a certain amount of essential vitamins and minerals each day: Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Iron, Magnesium, etc.

Similarly, the mind needs to regularly experience certain feelings and emotions to stay healthy: inspiration, awe, laughter, learning, beauty, etc. I find it useful to think of these feelings and emotions as mental vitamins. If we become deficient in any one of them, we begin to feel off.

Most of us know that vitamins and minerals are best consumed naturally through the food we eat, and a well-balanced diet can achieve that. But life often gets in the way and makes it difficult to eat all the right foods all the time, so we find great use in supplements, like multi-vitamins to fill the need when diet alone cannot.

Similarly, it is best to get the emotions and feelings we need through life experiences: time spent with family and friends, travel, play, taking on novel challenges, etc. But with the busy nature of our lives, this too can be difficult to attain all of the time. So in the absence of having desired experiences on a daily basis, we can turn to selected content to serve as our mental supplement to fill the need. We might think of this as a digital content multivitamin. This is unlikely to be achieved by accessing a given platform and mindlessly scrolling or clicking on recommendations as they arise. If we are to create our own digital content multivitamin, we need to first consider the emotions and feelings we need and then curate lists of content that help us achieve each of those feelings in the desired daily dose. 

Some examples to consider (not exhaustive):

Mental vitamins:

• Inspiration

• Motivation

• Awe

• Laughter

• Novel Information

• Compassion

• Beauty

Content sources:

• Quotes

• Pictures

• Music

• Videos

• Speeches

• Affirmations

• Meditations

• Movies

• Books

• Recalled memories

• Jokes

• Poems

• Articles

It is important to recognize that we are more likely to get our daily need if we keep this content well-organized and easily accessible. Maintain playlists, bookmarks, or note documents with links; when you need your daily dose of laughter, inspiration, or beauty you’ll have your own self-packaged mental multivitamin to consume.

What steps can you take today to begin creating your own digital content multi-vitamin?