I need to reset my brain. One way that I’ve successfully done this in the past is by doing a 30 day ‘News Fast’.
For the next thirty days I won’t read any newspapers. I won’t watch any news programs or news reports. I won’t read any online magazines that deal with current events in any way*.
For the next 30 days I’m checking out of the madness.
“Won’t you be uninformed?”
Yes, absolutely.
Here’s the thing. We take in all of the insanity of the world in the pursuit of ‘being informed’. We take it all in, but we don’t really do anything with this knowledge. Yes, this horrible thing may be going on in this or that part of the world but what am I actually going to do about it? I mean actually do about it. We take in all of this awfulness but it doesn’t make us any better as human beings. It only distracts us from the things that we could be doing in our own lives to make the world a better place. It sucks up our limited bandwidth, and poisons our ability to make changes at the micro level. Changes that might help our interactions with our friends, our families, our local communities.
So I’m getting off the rollercoaster for a while. For now it’s just thirty days, but I’ll check in periodically.
- Day 1 / Saturday, May 14th, 2022
- Day 164 / Sunday, October 23rd, 2022
*I will still listen to a few select podcasts (‘Honestly’ with Bari Weiss and ‘Making Sense’ with Sam Harris) that may occasionally touch on current events, but my thinking is that this is long form content that involves deeper thinking about specific issues.
Update: I’ve started a new (at least) 30 day news fast. You can track it here.