Is it time to give up on the news?
Being ok with being bored.
I became a news junkie on September 11, 2001. It was my second day of college and the world changed.
It's hard to explain to younger generations how unsettled that time was. We didn’t know what was happening and every time you hit refresh on cnn.com, something new came up.
Checking the news felt like a small degree of control in the midst of total insanity. It was easy to begin a regular and quasi compulsive habit.
But to what end?
The news is always new by definition. As it has become more corporate, there is always 'product' being manufactured. But like cheese puffs which taste delicious but do nothing to satiate an appetite, so much of the news offers little to nothing of value.
Alain de Botton in a recent interview with David Perell suggested "I think you're not really a responsible adult until you don't know certain significant things that people around you think of as very important."
His point is that we must curate our mental content rather than letting it be filled by the 'news-industrial' complex.
What happens to our brains when they are constantly crammed full?
They have no time to recover.
Moreover, they don’t have the unstructured space to move through something. How many times does an idea or answer come to mind when out for a walk or in a shower?
We need these down spaces for mental recovery.
So - I’ve been working over the last month or so to make the news far less appealing.
First - I’m treating all social media as 'the news.' I/we have to beware places with infinite scrolling content.
Twitter or Reddit are especially dangerous because they can feel like learning. But they are not. They allow you to look in on someone else's question or problem. But nothing is asked in return - it does not require you to consider or contemplate what you are reading.
Two - I continue to restructure my phone to make it much less enjoyable. I am working to shift my phone from an entertainment device to a toolbox. A toolbox is super helpful - it’s full of things I use to get something done. But it is heavy and clunky so I don’t carry it with my all the time. And I certainly don’t feel the need to open it 60x a day.
Here's what I've done so far to make my phone more like a toolbox
Make the screen black and white to make it less visually stimulating
I've grouped apps by purpose. Work apps live on their own page. My browser lives on its own page, 5 swipes away (legitimately inconvenient)
I've blocked access to all websites that offer endless scrolling content. No socials, no news. Anything that I would naturally pull out when bored.
Essentially zero notifications (only for messages)
This is helping. I've seen my screen time stats fall way down and the # of pick-ups each day shrink.
By setting my phone aside and out of sight at home, I'm much less tempted to pull it out.
All this also forces me to use a real computer when I want to use the internet. That is physically less convenient and requires me to walk to a computer and leave people behind.
Third - I am more carefully curating what news I do ingest. I am down to 1 financial newspaper and 1 general newspaper per day and 2 weekly news ‘magazines.’ I’m prioritizing journalistic quality (not sensationalism) and balanced coverage.
More than anything, I am working on being ok with being bored.
It’s a slow process….