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Are you wasting your life consuming the news(2)
This is part 2 of my 3-parts series about news consumption. Click here to read part 1.
After graduating from University I read “The 4 hours Workweek” by Tim Ferris. In this book Tim explained why he stopped watching the news:
“News is a waste of time, it is full of negativity. The important news will reach you anyway. So don’t waste time on it.”
At that time I was confused: How could any intelligent person not listen to the news?
I soon concluded that Tim was just another snake oil salesman and changed nothing about my behavior. In contrast, I should consume the news even more intensely in the next years. No wonder, because a lot should happen in the world: Fukushima, Euro crises, refugee crises, Issis, Brexit, Trump, and so on.
It was not until around 2018 that time I started to realize that my news consumption habit had some serious downsides: Actually, I wasted a lot of time, watching and reading the news, because I used it as a way to procrastinate from my work.
In retrospect, I also see that it made me a more negative and anxious person that got a lot into unnecessary conflict about political topics with people.
At that time I was also thinking a lot about the polarization of society that has been…
