Time to produce versus time to consume

One heuristic you can use to decide how to spend your time is by comparing the amount of time that went into making the thing you're contemplating consuming.

A livestream often has zero preparation; many podcasts of the regular-cast-riffing-on-each-other variety also are done off the cuff. One step up might be a podcast or a blog post that is a reaction to some current event. A step up from there is a podcast or article that takes a broader view and requires both more time to write and deeper knowledge to craft. A step up from there, and you're into magazine articles, and then one step up you're at books.

A good book, excluding the "book of the month" club type fare that is rushed to press to meet quotas and so on, is the distillation of months or years of thinking and research. The production process itself takes the better part of a year at least.

To wit, a good book is the densest form of knowledge and wisdom we have yet discovered. There's a reason they have remained relatively unchanged even as the rest of our media consumption has been turned upside down by the internet in the last 15 years. (A Netflix TV show coming out this year is a different beast than something that was on even cable TV in the 90s. A book from 1980 and a book from 2020 would be basically indistinguishable. But then again, a book from 1880 would not be all that different either; see: Lindy Effect)

This also applies to watching things: a good movie packs more story into less time. If you have the choice of how to spend scarce time, a movie will almost always be a better bargain.