Article: You Are Not Obligated to Follow the News Every Minute of Every Day

The more the world seems to spiral out of control, the more important it is to control what you read about it.

You can consume better news…

In the late 2000s, with a liberal arts degree in a field I ultimately had no interest in pursuing, I, like many millennials, entered the world of work as the global economy slowly began to recover from the Great Recession. Having spent four years in college studying math and computer science, and much of my free time DJing and running my college radio station, I emerged into the post-Great Recession world feeling distinctly unprepared to understand the post-Great Recession world — and distinctly unfamiliar with the pre-Great Recession world. That led me to The Economist, which, prior to the summer of 2009, I had never read. Since my goal was to learn about the rest of the world, reading The Economist seemed like something I should do.

In many ways, what comes off as a statement of braggadocio among Davos-going elites is actually a powerful equalizer, a tool for bringing news and ideas from every corner of the globe to every other corner of the globe. A decade on, I’ve certainly learned a lot about the world from reading The Economist. However, the most important things I’ve gained from reading a chunk of this weekly “newspaper” (as it calls itself) every day has less to do with the content or perspective and more to do with the way it’s presented.

The Economist is packaged and delivered only once a week. That forces some healthy structure around my news consumption, helping liberate me from, for example, compulsively inhaling trivial updates about the American political horse race — the “who’s up” and “who’s down” politics-as-sport coverage, the agenda-setting political “conversation” on Twitter, and the permanent BREAKING NEWS chyron on CNN. Left unchecked, political news can easily soak up every minute of every day. That’s even more true, of course, for the relentless (and relentlessly unsettling) coverage of the coronavirus.

Meanwhile, the fact that The Economist is written from a global perspective has broadened my understanding of the scale, complexity, and mystery of the world. Our own lives and daily struggles can be all-consuming. Reading about a political protest in a small country I’ve never heard of is a helpful and humbling reminder of the lives and struggles of others. Most people in the world don’t have time for the stories that obsess us today, and if we’re honest, we probably don’t have much time in our lives for theirs. But it helps at least to be aware that there’s more to the world than our usual media diet might suggest. That’s especially important today, with many of us confined to our homes, watching through our phones and laptops as the reality we thought we knew crumbles around us.

Reading The Economist, in short, has convinced me that we can all build more fulfilling days by consuming better news. “Better news” isn’t limited to a certain publication. For you, it might be the Financial Times, The Atlantic, The Guardian, WIRED, or — a personal favorite, even though I’m perennially a half-dozen issues behind — The New Yorker. It might be the same publication you always read, but delivered to your door in a plastic bag or to your e-reader in a single daily or weekly edition, ideally without hyperlinks and without the capacity to send you breaking news alerts. It might be a daily podcast or a weekly TV program.

Whatever it is, it’ll certainly cover Donald Trump and the latest developments about COVID-19 — it would be pretty irresponsible not to, even though we might wish to escape them both — but it won’t only cover Donald Trump and globe-swirling pandemics. It might also cover Indonesian election results, say, or Malawian mobile phone use, or Japanese financial forecasts. Or, it might focus on something your mayor recently announced, or who’s running for your local council, or different ways for you to lend a hand to your neighbors.

Don’t get me wrong: In the months to come, I will gobble up media coverage of all things coronavirus. This pandemic appears likely to be one of the most significant developments in modern human history. Even if we wanted to, few of us could escape the news about it. While the same can’t be said for most of the palace intrigue and micro-scandals that define American politics these days, I’m sure I’ll continue to consume these stories, too. Not only because I find it endlessly fascinating, but because I care about it, and I believe we all have a responsibility to be informed citizens. Even if we weren’t living through a particularly extraordinary moment in human history, that would be true.

But the fact that I can’t get enough of this type of news is precisely why I need to set limits on how much of it I read, watch, and listen. That doesn’t mean turning it off forever. It doesn’t mean giving up on interesting stories or juicy can-you-believe-it?! headlines. It doesn’t mean running away from the latest coronavirus-related developments.

It just means consuming all of it a little less.

And you can consume news better…

When I manage to build self-imposed barriers around my news intake, I find my days are substantially less anxiety-prone and noticeably more fulfilling, without any decrease in how “up to speed” I feel about the events of the moment. In fact, waiting until a story has time to develop probably improves my knowledge of the facts and sharpens my understanding of their significance.

Implementing these self-imposed barriers hasn’t required any dramatic changes. I’ve simply tweaked the what and the when of how I consume media.

These days, the what is a little less of the breathless drama and outrage and rumor-mongering that will be forgotten or supplanted by more breathless drama and outrage and rumor-mongering tomorrow, and a little more of the publications that require some work to process.

It’s a little less time “doomscrolling” coronavirus headlines first thing in the morning, and a little more time focusing on activities that I control, like reading a meaningful book or meditating.

It’s a little less of the latest gossip from the Trump White House, and a little more of the stuff that leaves some substance in its wake, such as a deeply researched podcast series that helps illuminate how America ended up where we are today.

It’s a little less skimming of endless headlines and tweets in quick succession, and a little more diving deeply into a smaller number of stories.

It’s a little less mindless flipping to Google News or BuzzFeed at the first hint of boredom, and a little more time with my own thoughts.

That’s the what. The when of my media consumption is simple: It’s just a little more structured and contained than it used to be. Other than reading a few articles from the latest edition of The Economist, which I usually do each morning, I aim to avoid most of the day’s political and pandemic news until later in the day, when I’ve completed my heavy thinking and most important work. That’s it.

The particular boundaries I’ve chosen might not work for you. My current situation gives me some built-in advantages. When it comes to building a bit of structure around my intake of U.S. political news, for instance, it helps that I live in London, five hours ahead of the updates emanating from Washington and New York. (As a former congressional staffer, it helps even more that I no longer work in politics. When the news is your job, you never really get to disconnect.) As for coronavirus coverage, I’m lucky to be able to control many aspects of how I experience it: I have the privilege of working from home and the luxury of having a job that doesn’t require anything more than decent Wi-Fi.

None of these tweaks to my media diet leave me metaphorically (or literally) off-the-grid. When it comes to phenomena like the coronavirus that impact every single person on earth, it’s unrealistic — not to mention irresponsible — not to keep up with what’s happening. Even before the virus began its traumatic and terrifying spread around the world, we were living in scary and surreal times. And just when we thought things might not be able to get scarier and more surreal, they have. Of course we’re going to be reading and talking and thinking about it constantly.

The argument here is not to build an alternative reality or cover your ears and pretend like everything’s fine. The argument here is entirely the opposite. The better you calibrate your news intake, the more informed you’ll actually be. The less you let yourself be yanked around by the emotional roller coaster of Twitter rumors and Reddit conspiracy theories, the more clearly you’ll actually understand the events around you. Most importantly, the more effectively you structure how you consume news, the more capable you’ll be of devoting your time and attention to taking care of yourself and the people you love.

The uncertainty of the present moment has left many of us desperate to reclaim a sense of control. When we check Twitter compulsively, or when we binge-read anxiety-inducing news stories, we feel like we’re taking control by collecting more information. In reality, though, the information — and the algorithm that delivers that information to us — is the one in charge. We’re not going to find any answers or any peace of mind in the seventeenth browser tab or the third hour of online perusing.

Every time we pull-to-refresh, the world feels a little more out of control. One of the few things we, as individuals, still control is how we interact with it. As Stanford professor Robert Sapolsky, who has spent decades studying how stress impacts our bodies and minds, writes in Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, “In a world of stressful lack of control, an amazing source of control we all have is the ability to make the world a better place, one act at a time.”

But you can’t consume it all.

Over the next few days (perhaps after you finish teaching your grandparents how to use Zoom), think about what little tweaks you could make to improve your news intake. Could you avoid Twitter or Instagram until the afternoon (or the weekend, or forever)?

Could you turn off breaking news notifications on your phone so you’re retrieving news when it fits your schedule, rather the news retrieving your attention at its convenience?

Could you commit to not consuming political news outside of a fixed window of time?

Could you, as the writer Cal Newport recently suggested, “check one national and one local new source each morning” — and then leave it at that for the remainder of the day?

Instead of scrolling through catastrophic headlines yet again, could you make a conscious decision to switch to a more measured outlet? Or read an engrossing novel? Or listening to a compelling podcast? Or get lost in a biography? Or work on a puzzle? Or track down a volunteer opportunity in your neighborhood? Or call your parents, even though you just talked to them that morning and have nothing new to report?

The economist Herbert Simon observed that “a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” We’ve never had access to more information — and many of us have never had more time to consume it. To fight the poverty of attention with which we’re all challenged these days, you don’t have to give up the news. You can just do a little less news. And the news you still choose to do, you can do more intentionally.

When it comes to how you reframe your media diet for these unsettling times, there’s no perfect solution. We’ll all go careening over our self-imposed news guardrails from time to time. There are no hard-and-fast rules, except that, no matter how hard we try, we won’t be able to consume it all.

Even with these caveats, it’s remarkable how clarifying, invigorating, and fulfilling it can be to begin building boundaries on what news you consume and when you consume it.

You need far less of it than you think — especially in the middle of a global pandemic.

This article is adapted from my new book, Reframe the Day: Embracing the Craft of Life, One Day at a Time. I am donating all profits from preorder sales to the coronavirus response efforts of Direct Relief.

This article was originally published on Medium.