How Do I Filter the Daily News?

00:00:00.000 | [Music]

00:00:04.720 | All right, let's move on to a question now from Andre.

00:00:07.480 | Andre says, "How do I filter the noise of morning news,

00:00:11.760 | such as the stock market or politics,

00:00:14.360 | and quickly get back into deep work without missing anything important?"

00:00:18.880 | Here's how you filter. You don't look at it at all, Andre.

00:00:24.000 | If you're a hedge fund manager,

00:00:28.960 | or you work on the staff of the president, okay,

00:00:32.360 | you need to be up to speed first thing in the morning on the stock market and

00:00:36.400 | politics. If you are not either of those things, we'll be okay,

00:00:40.960 | Andre, without you being up to speed and having your take.

00:00:45.560 | There is not going to be some crisis that happens where they say, "Oh my God,

00:00:49.000 | I hope Andre is on this," because, you know,

00:00:51.640 | Omicron is coming or the stock market is moving. It's okay.

00:00:55.800 | You can focus on things that are going on in your life that really do require

00:01:00.400 | your attention and significantly reduce the

00:01:04.880 | amount of time and energy you invest in news.

00:01:07.560 | And something I've been saying recently,

00:01:09.200 | and this is very specific to our current moment,

00:01:13.200 | I think we are in a current moment now where most of us should be and should not

00:01:18.040 | feel bad about doing a massive reduction in our news consumption.

00:01:23.280 | Now I know an informed populace is important.

00:01:25.320 | This is not a general piece of advice. I don't think in general,

00:01:28.600 | you should completely be disconnected from the world and the world of news.

00:01:31.520 | But I think in this current moment, you should.

00:01:33.320 | There's a mental health imperative that's going on right now.

00:01:37.560 | The news will degrade your energy.

00:01:41.760 | It will degrade your focus. If you're already prone to anxiety,

00:01:45.520 | it's just going to pump jet fuel into that anxiety.

00:01:49.560 | And to what end? You are not on the front line.

00:01:53.640 | Most of you setting policy for COVID.

00:01:56.560 | You were not on the front line trying to get bills passed in Congress.

00:02:00.560 | You were not on the front line of the wildfire trying to get those fires put out.

00:02:04.520 | We probably need to take a bit of a breather from this period we're coming out of,

00:02:09.440 | of incredibly intense news.

00:02:11.440 | So go to extremely minimal news consumption.

00:02:15.960 | And that's what I would recommend.

00:02:17.680 | What that means can be different for different people.

00:02:19.800 | I get a print version of the Washington Post. I glance at it most days.

00:02:25.080 | That's basically my news.

00:02:27.480 | And then my readers or listeners will send me articles that are relevant to

00:02:30.480 | specific things I write or think about. And that's interesting. And that's cool.

00:02:33.680 | Like, Hey, look at this interesting study that came out about Facebook or

00:02:36.920 | something like that. But I'm very, very much out of the news right now.

00:02:41.000 | And it's been great for me. I feel a lot better.

00:02:43.800 | And so this is a good excuse to give that advice to everyone else.

00:02:46.720 | We need to take a breather from news. And again,

00:02:49.120 | the world will be okay temporarily without us being completely up to speed.

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How Do I Filter the Daily News?

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