No News

Today I woke up and I read the news, for the first time in 30 days, actually, 31 days. For the past month I had cut out all the news from my life: no The Guardian, no Business Insider, no LinkedIn, no Delfi, no Steven Colbert, no John Oliver, not even The Economist. They say, news is a good thing, you should read news, stay informed. What could be the harm of that?
Well, I was getting way too informed. As I’ve pretty much cut out the social media usage since moving to China in the early 2017, news had became my new escape. Especially, given that most news sites are not blocked in China, unlike social media (Facebook, Instagram). I’d wake up and first thing I would do is read couple of The Guardian articles on my phone, which inevitably would involve one Trump profanity and one natural disaster story. That’s how my day would start. Then, while eating breakfast, I’d watch an episode of Steven Colbert Late Show on YouTube. It’s funny, but again, half of the jokes would be about Trump or one of his goons doing something stupid. On the way to work, I’d read another article or two about Tesla adventures, what the stock is doing, what Musk is saying about Tesla “shorters” and how many Model 3's have been shipped the last week. But here’s the thing. I don’t own a car, I don’t plan to buy Tesla any time soon, I don’t work in the green tech industry and I don’t own their stock. So why on earth would I read articles about Tesla every single freakin’ day? I had no answer to that, besides that I just got used to treating it like my modern day soap opera that plays out in real life. Sometimes, reality really is stranger than fiction. And all this before 10am, you get where I’m going with this.
In short, I’ve noticed that I had a serious form of news addiction and one thing I really don’t like is the lack of self-control on anything. So, instead of trying to invent the wheel again, I went back to some good old and tested methods-30 day challenges. It means doing something for 30 days straight to build a new positive habit or get rid of an old habit. Couple of years ago, I’ve done multiple 30 day challenges and it was fun, targeting all the areas where I felt I was not fully in control or enjoying them just a bit too much. So I cut out coffee for 30 days (3 cups a day, every day, since I was 10), then I cut out all the wheat products for 30 days (chocolate chip cookies, yum), after that I cut out all milk products for a month (I love cheeeese), then no porn for a month (no comment) and so on.
So in August, I set myself a 30 day challenge-no news, which I successfully completed last night at midnight. I’ve no idea what Trump has been up to for the last month, how many earthquakes have hit Japan, or if there have been any terrorist attacks in Europe. And my personal favorite-no news on Brexit. That mother-load of self harm inflicted by otherwise quite sensible folks of The United Kingdom. The only news I was allowed to consume was second hand news-told by other people to me, in actual conversations. At night, I would ask my girlfriend, did anything interesting happen today in the news. Most days the answer would be, nah. But few highlights from the past month that I do remember include an airport guy in US who stole a passenger jet and crashed it into the sea (did he?), Aretha Franklin and John McCane dying and that’s about it. That has been totality of my news consumption for the past month.
The benefits that I hoped to achieve from my news detox were two-fold. First, get back the physical time to do something more useful with it. Based on quick estimates, I’d spend in aggregate at least an hour a day reading news. Amazing, what could I do with the extra hour? Don’t hold your breath, it’s not that ground breaking. My extra hour a day of no-news reading ended up going towards watching two new TED talks per day, followed by extra 20 or so minutes reading a book at night. Not rocket science, but slightly more meaningful as in my opinion most TED talks focus on real issues and insights instead of click-bite stories, plus nothing opens up your mind and kicks in the imagination than reading a good book. In the last month, I ended up watching 50+ TED talks and finishing two books (Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu and Factfullness by Hans Rosling). Yes, I know, it should have been 50 books and 2 TED talks, but I’m only human.
My second reason for cutting back on news was to improve the physiological wellbeing, in other words, feel a little bit less shit about myself and the world. It’s not secret that most news even among reputable publishers focus on the negatives that are happening in the world, simply for the reason that audience is more drawn to such stories. Just look at the three news stories that got filtered through to me: two famous people deaths and a suicide. Hmm, I figured, starting a day with reading several articles about how shit everything around you is was not helping me to get going and get stuff done, because, what’s the point. Well, the point is, that life actually is better than ever. It just does not feel that way. We’re healthier than ever, richer that ever, smarter than ever, there are less wars and less violence, more education and more equality than ever before. It’s a fact, not an “alternative fact”. Everything is actually great, except the news. On this note, I highly recommend to read Factfullness by Hans Rosling, as he explained it best.
My final departing thoughts on the no-news challenge. I highly recommend you to try it. Not to save an hour here or there (if you’re like me), but to save your sanity and see the world around you for what it really is-glorious never ending machine of progress and ingenuity.
My next 30-day challenge, no alcohol for a month. It’s already on. I was at a birthday party last night and at 23:58 I took the last sip of champagne and said goodbye to this beautiful grape juice and all its cousins. Actually, it’s not “a goodbye”, it’s “see you later”. 30 days later.
p.s. Just as I posted this, I scrolled down my old posts and saw that I’ve done something similar to this already back in 2016, and wrote about it too, here. But then it was just a week, now it’s a month. Slightly different insights as well (feel free to judge for yourself).
