The Input vs. Output Edition

Eli Williams and Clara Malley are strategy and story directors at Day One Agency. They’ve just launched the Day One Almanac, and we’re happy to have them here to explain it today.

In October 2024, we went to see Eno: a “generative documentary” about Brian Eno directed by Gary Hustwit. Each showing was entirely unique: one of 52 quintillion possible variations in the footage included and the order shown. But when we went, the film included a scene where Brian sits in a park speaking with the documentary crew about a creative block he had experienced in the past few years. He described sitting down to work after a morning of news reading, email sifting, coffee drinking, etc., and having absolutely nothing in the tank. He’d then made a new rule: no “input” before noon. This means no reading, no eating, no external “input” of any kind. Just himself, his thoughts and his “output”: writing, working, inner monologuing.

Maybe it shouldn’t have been “interesting.” It’s basically the three morning pages prescription from The Artist’s Way. And who among us hasn’t been advised to “digitally detox” or develop a journaling routine by a well-meaning friend (or therapist)? Still, something about the input-output metaphor stuck more firmly.

Why is this interesting?

There’s a broad disparity between average daily input and output in modern life. Most mornings start with digital input of some kind: a scroll through email, social, an off-putting push notification. Then, the rest of our days are filled with increased input of all kinds—unavoidable, elective, mind-numbing, mind-expanding, worthwhile, pointless—much of it engineered to be GMO-style “interesting.” Think: video ads flashing in your face on the subway, irresistibly curated algorithmic feeds, A/B-tested YouTube thumbnails.

There’s a stultifying effect to that kind of informational overload: a feeling of not being able to get a word into your own train of thought. We should know; our work involves a lot of input. So we set out to try something different. In lieu of making a trend report full of things you “need to know and act on NOW”—as agencies are wont to do—we made an almanac.

The Day One Almanac is a selective anthology of our own “output” from over the past year: musings on the tailwinds and bigger-than-you-thought ice floes on the path toward a better future. (Metaphor explanation: we both read Endurance recently.) We focused on the creative integrity and innovation that’s crucial to and yet notably absent from a lot of the “input” we get from contemporary advertising, traditional news media, and social platforms.

Whether you work in one of these industries or not, we hope the input/output metaphor sticks with you, and proves helpful in curbing overstimulation at the hands of the news cycle, screen time, or those terrible clickbait cuisine “how to’s” on the train. Write it down, run it out, draw something. Output is a broad brief.

As we’ve all experienced, advice along the lines of “unleash your inner artist” or “everyone is creative” feels more irritating than inspiring. The output we’ve gathered isn’t loaded with aspirations of grandeur or creative breakthroughs. It’s practical and a bit gastrointestinal. Above all, it’s a helpful reminder that we all see and hear more than we often give ourselves time to understand; that we have more autonomy and freedom with our time and attention than we think. Producing some output just makes you feel better in ways that input—in the form of information, expectation, validation—can’t. And feeling better isn’t that far away from being better. (EW + CM)