I thought I had this all figured out. A few years ago, I decided to get on a high quality low information diet. I would avoid traditional news sites and only follow a small group of highly trusted writers, using a RSS feed reader. I would update and pare back this list regularly and categorize the writers I followed by interest. The feed reader I use is called Feedly and allows me to group my favorite writers into categories like business, family, personal development, photography, comedy, sports etc. The feed reader is very effective at stripping out distractions, especially all of that click bait, and fake news, you see at the bottom of many websites, even on many major news and network websites. My plan worked well. Each evening my feed reader presented me with a personally curated news stream from a group of writers I trust with very little distraction. No clickbait, no banner ads, no fake news.
Then two things happened. Apple launched an app called “News” that I started playing with after a recent iPhone upgrade. Then the election cycle began. This news app is comes set up like a feed reader for the big news sites. I found myself following multiple networks, major newspapers. Any spare moment I had, standing in line, having some lunch, I started filling up with this news app. Then I felt I needed to share things on Facebook or Twitter which led me to click on more stories shared by friends. There was so much garbage out there about both candidates, I’d quickly spiraled into a news consumption addiction. I’d gone from high quality, low information to just information and way too much of it. Not only did my other feed reader start to fill up with unread articles, I also found myself thinking less about what I wanted to create. I was too busy absorbing all of the news to think about much else. As a dieter might say, I fell off the wagon.
It’s Over
The election is now over, so it should be easy for me to walk away from all those network news sites, walk away from all of the name-calling and breaking stories and move on. Unfortunately it will be hard, and I think many people won’t walk away at all. They will want to be up-to-date on the latest political shit show playing out in Washington DC. Others will want to follow all of this news as they feel some responsibility, sense of urgency, to know what is going on as it may impact their jobs, family, their daily life. What’s the harm anyway? You’re just filling up some dead time by looking at your phone.
I believe there is harm. You have to look at what you’re missing by spending so much time keeping up with so-called “news”. You’re filling your brain with a lot of fleeting stuff ( I could insert 100 examples here from Twitter alone) that you have absolutely no control over, and has very little impact on what’s important to your daily life.
Change the way you consume information
For me this doesn’t mean shutting out traditional news entirely. It means immediately changing the way I’ve been consuming news and going back to what works. So, what do I mean by a high quality low information diet? Everyone’s different so what may be high quality to me may be garbage to someone else. The good news here is that we can use the same technology that’s been bombarding us with click bait, fake news, sensationalism to filter those exact things. Here are six high-tech ways I’m doing that and two very low-tech ways.
- Use a good quality RSS feed reader. Basically, the way a feed reader works allows you to follow trusted blogs, specific topics, and writers that are credible. Instead of typing “CNN” or clicking on FoxNews in your browser, you can take a few minutes to follow feeds from sources that you know are legit and won’t fill up your screen with clickbait and banners next to every article. I use Feedly. My feed updates on my phone in a browser or on iPad. All of them stay in sync and I don’t miss a thing from my favorite writers like Seth Godin or James Altucher.
- If you’re more visual, and like a magazine style presentation on your tablet, I recommend flipboard. You can follow the same feeds as on other apps. It syncs across devices and is especially great on tablets.
- Once you setup your feed, don’t follow the major news sites. This will simply just fill up your screen with all of the random latest news stories that you want to cut back on.
- Update your feed readers regularly, cleaning out blogs, topics, and writers you used to follow that no longer interest you. If you’re on your iPhone a lot and still want to use Apple News or Google News just simply delete the major sites that come preloaded and add your favorite writers, bloggers, or reporters. Just like on Feedly.
- Turn off any breaking news notifications on your mobile device. These all lead to the “hot stories” and are a big part of the news addiction distraction. Just because Google adds newsfeeds to your smartphone home screen doesn’t mean you can’t turn it off.
- Stop listening to network, commercial talk radio and start streaming or downloading podcasts.
- Cash in some left over frequent flyer points for a few good magazines. Believe it or not high-quality magazines like Fortune, Wired, and Fast Company still use fact checkers. A well-written article that’s going to press gets more eyes in front of it than something that is rushed out online as a “breaking story”.
- Rediscover the Sunday paper and a hot cup of coffee. If I added up all the time I spent checking CNN and other sites during the election cycle, I could probably free up four hours a week. Use a fraction of that time to learn about what’s going on in your local area as well as get a summary of world events that have at least been vetted by an editorial staff. If there’s a writer you really like, you can follow them in your feed instead of following the whole newspaper, as many people are tempted to do with major news sites.
The most important thing here is to change how you consume “news”. End your need to have the latest information. Wait for quality. Try going on a major news diet, just start following a few writers that look interesting in your feed readers search results, then grow from there. If anything big happens, trust me, the Internet will make sure you hear about it. The rest of it can wait while you get on with your life.
The Frug
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