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Reclaiming Your Time: The Benefits of a Weekly News Habit

Niklaus Gerber
3 min readOct 27, 2023

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The new system I adopted gave me more time and peace of mind.

I am a big fan of the book “Make time” by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky. It changed how I think about productivity and helped me get more value out of my time. One thing that struck me while reading the book was to reduce the amount of news consumption.

I am notoriously bad at keeping up with the news, forgetting about things I read or listened to and having those regretful moments where I feel uninformed and stupid. I worked at a media company for several years and helped design new products. One key goal was to ensure that our readers feel informed, but we also wanted to ensure that we have high engagement on the platform and that readers come often and stay long.

Besides my personal experience, enough reliable research shows that news consumption will impact our productivity and mood, perceived safety, and well-being. This is because the breaking news runs on a very potent myth: You need to know what is going on worldwide, and you need to know now. Therefore, you must recognize the news.

Jake and John recommend reducing the news consumption overall. But what I liked was John thinking of switching to a weekly model. He believes that important news will always find you…

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Niklaus Gerber
Niklaus Gerber

Written by Niklaus Gerber

Strategic leader driving growth and delivering value in industry-leading companies.

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