The Problem With More

The word “more” is everywhere these days.

More content, more tools, more ideas, more posts, more books, more apps, more things to read, watch, save, start, finish and become.

It has become the default answer to almost everything.

Feeling stuck? Learn more.
Losing attention? Publish more.
Worried you’re falling behind? Try more.
Want to matter? Be more visible.

For a while, this made sense. The internet opened everything up. More access meant more opportunity. More choice felt like more freedom and more information felt like progress. It was exciting,

Now it feels exhausting.

Because abundance has a cost. It makes everything feel optional, replaceable and slightly disposable.

The thing you’re reading now can be replaced by the next thing in half a second. The idea that felt exciting last week now sits buried under 47 browser tabs and an unread newsletter called The Future of Granola.

Lovely.

Somewhere along the way, I think we confused availability with value. Just because we can access everything doesn’t mean we can make sense of anything.

We’re not short of information. We’re short of attention.

That’s the strange place we’ve arrived at. The world keeps asking us to consume more, make more, learn more and become more, but how much more can we actually take?

The Grief of Less

I don’t think this is just about content. It’s about possible selves.

Every day, we’re shown another version of who we could become. Healthier. Richer. Calmer. More productive. More creative. More informed. More disciplined. More spiritual, but ideally with better abs.

There is always another course waiting for us. At some point, the sanest question is no longer, “What else could I become?” It’s, “What am I willing to stop becoming?”

That question is harder than it sounds.

In real life, less usually involves grief. You have to give things up, and not just the bad things. Good things too. Interesting things. Possible things. You have to accept that not every idea deserves your time. Not every opportunity needs to become a project. Not every version of you needs to be pursued.

That is especially hard if you’re curious. Ideas feel alive. They tap you on the shoulder. They whisper, “Make me.” They convince you that ignoring them would be some kind of betrayal.

Maybe it isn’t?

Maybe it’s maturity?

Maybe the real work now is not chasing every possibility, but choosing which ones deserve a place in your life.

From Discovery to Taste

We talk a lot about discovery. Can I find the thing? Can I access the thing? Can I save the thing for later, where it will rot in a digital cupboard until the end of time?

Discovery matters, of course. But I think the better word now is taste.

Discovery asks, “Can I find this?”

Taste asks, “Is this worth letting into my life?”

That feels like important territory, because most of us don’t need another thing to consume. We need help deciding what to ignore, what to return to, what to sit with, and what to let change us.

Those questions require judgement, taste, honesty and care. They are much more valuable than another bucket of content tipped into the stream.

And the stream is the problem.

A great conversation disappears into it. A thoughtful essay disappears into it. A brilliant song, a useful idea, a generous insight. All gone, pushed down by whatever came next. The stream turns everything into output.

New today, old tomorrow, forgotten by Friday.

That is a terrible environment for anything that needs time to matter. And most worthwhile things do need time. A friendship needs time. A book needs time. An idea needs time. A community needs time. A conversation needs time.

So maybe the question is not whether we should make more. Maybe the question is whether we are creating for the stream, or against it?

Creating for the stream means feeding the machine.
Creating against the stream means making things people can return to. Things that don’t lose all value the moment they stop being new.

That feels much more human.

Make Better Use of What Already Exists

This is where something like Do Radio becomes interesting.

A live conversation can still matter. Maybe more than ever. There is something powerful about people showing up in real time and talking to each other. No algorithmic nonsense. No desperate performance. Just attention, curiosity and a bit of trust.

But if that conversation disappears the moment it ends, we’ve missed something.

The conversation shouldn’t die just because it’s no longer new.

That’s where the idea for the Do Radio Mentor came from. It matters because it resists disposability.

It says: this conversation has value beyond the broadcast. It can become a reference point. A saved moment. A prompt. A teaching resource. A question someone returns to six months later when they’re finally ready to hear it.

That’s not more content.

That’s better use.

And maybe that’s one of the saner principles for the next decade: do not make more until you have made better use of what already exists.

That applies far beyond media. It applies to the books we bought but never absorbed. The friendships we keep meaning to deepen. The ideas we abandoned too quickly. The tools we downloaded but never learned. The conversations we had, then forgot.

Maybe the answer you're looking for is already here?

Curation Is Creation

We still treat curation as secondary.

Creation gets the glory. Curation gets treated like admin.

I think that’s wrong.

In an age of excess, the person who removes, orders, names, frames and points may create more value than the person who simply adds.

A good editor is not doing less creative work than a writer. A good curator is not doing less important work than a producer. A good teacher is not valuable because they know everything. They’re valuable because they know what matters, when it matters, and how to make it land.

That’s the work now: not just making things, but making sense of things.

And people need that. They don’t need more shame about being overwhelmed. They need to be shown better paths.

Build Shelves, Not Streams

I’ve started thinking about this as the difference between shelves and streams.

A shelf says: this has a place.

A stream says: this is already disappearing.

I think I want to build more shelves. Places where good things can live. Places where conversations can be found again. Where ideas don’t vanish because they’re more than 24 hours old. Where people can move through things with intention, rather than get dragged along by whatever happens to be newest.

Shelves create memory. Streams create anxiety. And the internet has enough anxiety.

So maybe the work is not to make more noise, but to give good things somewhere to live. To slow them down. To make them easier to return to. To let them keep doing their work after the moment has passed.

That feels like a better kind of ambition.

Enough

This isn’t a call to stop creating. I like making things. I like ideas. I like conversations. I like making music.

But I’m trying to become less interested in more for the sake of more. Less interested in feeding the stream. Less interested in pretending that the next thing will finally solve the feeling that there's too much already.

Because in a world drowning in more, enough might be the most radical thing left.

So this week, I’m trying something simple. I'm not adding anything new, I’m going to see what already deserves more attention.
One book.
One conversation.
One idea.
One friendship.

One thing I saved, started, bought or loved, then abandoned.

Until next time,

Jon “Building shelves, not streams” Kaye

Choosing to live more deliberately

P.S.

If you want to explore this idea further, check out the Do Radio Mentor.