Why You Should Quit the News | Mark Manson

Interesting read on why you should quit the news, with some history lesson thrown in as well. This one is a lengthy read (45 minutes estimate), so best to read this on your lunch break or after work.

Well, that’s easy. The goal of the news is to motivate you to keep consuming news.

This is something that I only realized the past few months when I tried decreasing my consumption of news. Now I can't stop noticing it. If you look at how they structure the presentation of news in like the morning news shows, they do it in a way to keep you hooked on news.

Same thing on news websites. They want you on their website as long as possible, nudging you to click links left and right so that you stay even longer on their site. If their job was to inform, they've done it, but do they have to try and hold my attention all day? That's the part that gets to me.

I haven't been actively consuming news the past few months. The more important news I've discovered through word of mouth, either from my wife, or my family and friends. They also eventually pop-up on my feed reader from the blogs/websites I follow. So it wasn't like I didn't know what was going on in the world.

One thing I noticed after decreasing my consumption of news is the decreased negativity in my day to day life. I used to always rant to my wife, about the crazy things I hear in the news. Sometimes that is all we would talk about over dinner. That has decreased significantly the past few months. We actually now get to talk about other things that are more positive, which is great.

Link: Why You Should Quit the News

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