Stop Watching the News. Stop Reading the News.

At the beginning of this year (2021) I decided to stop consuming any sort of news, whether it be video or written. The years of endless negative information started to become exhausting and I began to question if “staying informed” was actually benefitting me. While making a mental pros versus cons list, I realized that the cons were stacking up and the pros were almost nonexistent.

Stressing over all of the terrors in the world would only make sense if you had the power to fix them. But 99% of things are out of your control—the political division, wars in the Middle East, the number of deaths from a virus, natural disasters—all things that you have no control over. Your increased cortisol or your reduction in sleep isn’t helping anyone. In fact it is just hurting you. As Epictetus said “Some things are in our control and others not…if you suppose that only to be your own which is your own, and what belongs to others such as it really is, then no one will ever compel you or restrain you”. Abandon what lies in fortunes control, and stick to what lies in your own control.

You waste your precious time watching the the news daily. Don’t believe me? Go watch or read news from two years ago and find out for yourself. You will come to find out that none of it is relevant to your life today. Many of the things never came to pass. Do you remember the impending war with North Korea or with Russia? Wars do happen, but false alarms and panics happen much more often. I remember at least 3 in the past 4 years.

“To be completely cured of newspapers spend a year reading the previous weeks newspapers.” Nassim Taleb

If you spend an hour a day consuming the news, you have wasted an hour a day. If you instead spent that hour reading books of substance, that’s about a book a week. That’s 52 books in a year. That’s 2,080 books in a 40 year span.

While my decision to stop paying attention to the news was motivated by freeing up my time and mental energy, it was also motivated by my disdain for media companies. Every major media platform is biased, lacks nuance, and they speak to people as if they are dumb. They are incentivized to lie and blow things out of proportion in order to get you to pay attention. Every time you click, they get paid from advertisers.

You may click just to see the ridiculousness, to see the lies or the extreme bias. However, just doing that you are contributing to their number. You are paying them—even if only pennies—with your attention. They will mislead you. They will purposely make you angry. “Trump Said This…” “AOC Did This…” “ANTIFA Is Going To…” “White Supremacists Are…”. It doesn’t even have to be true. They get paid regardless.

Over time you will start to believe the caricatured version of life they present. Republicans are all white supremacists. Democrats are all ANTIFA socialists.

Or you could turn the TV off and realize that most people are complicated and nothing like their caricatures. You could put the newspaper down and realize that your world goes on regardless of whos in office. And guess what, the big things that will end up affecting you, you’ll find out when they happen. People will tell you the important things.