A News Diet
I am torn between my desire to stay informed and my desire to stay sane. I am torn between between my researcher’s thirst for facts and my human being’s thirst for peace. Like a junkie jones’n for a fix, my news habit is insatiable. I try to explain it by minimizing, denying, and trivializing the extent of the issue. I acknowledge the negative impact it has on my outlook, anxiety level, ability to focus, and creativity. Several years ago I started writing a gratitude newsletter to counteract my absolute sadness and anger — the normalization of cruelty is truly numbing. Those times pale in comparison to today. Today’s facts break my heart.
A News Diet
I have recently tried to limit my news consumption in an effort to not live my life at a fever pitch of chaos and desperation. That has somewhat helped. As the news has gotten darker, my soul has not succumb to the darkness and fallen into a state of shock and paralysis. Focusing on science and research, as scary as the science and research are right now, helps. I live somewhere between informed and enraged, remembering to breathe, with a positive trend toward being less enraged.
The Information Diet
Smarter people than I have considered how to best control the way news enters our lives. The have looked at information overload, market-driven analysis that assesses the ways in which what people want drives what/how information is delivered. We all have access to a barrage of information. All day. Every day. Open-source-Internet activist Clay Johnson talks about “conscious consumption” in the bestseller The Information Diet. Johnson discusses “information obesity” in a conversation about the Information Diet on National Public Radio, “Obesity is a complicated problem. Obviously, obesity has to do with access, and obesity has to do with the economic conditions, but it sometimes also has to do with overeating, and the same thing happens with information. I think a lot of people don’t have great access to information and good information … And that means that we have to make empowered decisions and informed decisions about what it is that we’re consuming. It’s the only way to sort of ‘live right’ online.”
In an article about the The Information Diet in the Atlantic, Maria Popova suggests that Johnson proposes a solution that lies in engineering a healthy relationship with information by adopting smarter habits and becoming as selective about the information we consume as we are about the food we eat.
Johnson offers steps to starting an information diet on Lifehacker.com. He suggests: 1. Keeping a journal of information access and use. 2. Cut the cord and build a system to regulate information intake. 3. Set up your system with tools like RescueTime, AdBlock, BlockPlus, SaneBox.
A Way Forward With News
I am trying to get healthy about the information I consume. That is a challenge that feels right to consider. I feel better when I am mindful of how much news I am considering. I have significantly reduced the amount of news I consume. “Cutting the cord” has mainly involved focused use of social media, turning off the TV, and being very deliberate about what I choose to read. The choices are simple. My healthy relationship with news centers on mindfulness and practice.
