How Good Is Life is published by Sukh Sandhu Pty Ltd LibraryContact
How Good Is Life sun markHow Good Is LifeGood news, with evidence.
Constructive news habits

Setting boundaries around when you read the news

Evergreen read · 1 min read · Evidence type: Reading habit

Photograph: Green Mountain Campground (35323360054)
Photo: Green Mountain Campground (35323360054) by Bureau of Land Management Oregon and Washington from Portland, America (Public domain), via Openverse

Setting a boundary around when news is read does not mean ignoring difficult events, it means deciding deliberately when to engage with them rather than letting availability dictate the schedule, since a phone that can deliver news at any hour will happily do so at the worst possible one if left unchecked.

A workable boundary is usually specific rather than vague: no news for the first hour after waking, none in the final hour before sleep, or a firm stop after a set amount of time each day. Specific rules tend to hold up under pressure far better than a general intention to cut back.

The point of the boundary is not to know less, since the same stories are usually still read within the boundary, but to prevent news consumption from expanding to fill every spare moment of attention, which is what it tends to do by default without some deliberate limit in place.

Share

Sharing opens the network in a new tab. No tracking scripts are loaded on this page.

Printed from How Good Is Life, howgoodislife.com.

NEXT IN CONSTRUCTIVE NEWS HABITSCurating a news feed that still tells the truthRead next →