Would love to hear more about how you solve for news. I'm very bought in to disabling most push apps, but while I recognise apps like the NYT follow this pattern, I'm not sure I've figured out how to stay alert to the news without it.
My current solve is that I remove all notifications and open the app manually to get updates. That and I wake up to the radio news so I have a sense of which stories to "pull" down to learn more. I'm not really satisfied with this though...
“News” is tricky… It can become its own form of addiction especially during times of “breaking news” when updates could happen at any moment in time. Uncertainty of change makes my brain want constant updates (even of an episode happening thousands of miles away).
I think what you mention around radio news in the morning and manual “pull” updates are great approaches.
I personally rely heavily on newsletters to fill the News gap. I’ll filter them from my email so they skip my inbox and become less “hot”/online. If there are longer articles I want to dive into, I can open them separately and review them in a colder manner.
This doesn’t solve the “breaking news” gap but I think I’ve gotten comfortable missing the immediate news cycle and just finding out a few hours or a day later. For more urgent news I’ll often get a ping from a friend or family member - it’s hard to be fully oblivious to really urgent events even if you don’t check directly. The “urgent news” also often ends up not actually being urgent (thankfully). E.g., Biden had a bad debate performance - did I need to find out immediately? What would I have missed by finding out 24-48 hours later?
Overall I have two main categories of news that I follow: tech news and world news. For Tech++ I use a lot of newsletters - Stratechery, Techmeme, Marginal Revolution, and a handful of other newsletters. I find this has me covered on anything that’s “part of the discourse”. When I was working I could check morning or morning+evening and be very caught up. For now checking+speed reading a minute every day or two is sufficient. For world news, I’ve started to read the paper version of The Economist as part of my 30”. Paper really “cools down” the news. Also since it’s a weekly magazine I find I avoid smaller ups and downs along the news cycle…
Great tips! I'm also a big fan of paper news. One magazine in particular hits my need to feel I have a "MECI" view of things, which helps limit the feeling of fomo: that's The Week, which is a much beloved British brand but has a US edition too in case you're ever curious.
Would love to hear more about how you solve for news. I'm very bought in to disabling most push apps, but while I recognise apps like the NYT follow this pattern, I'm not sure I've figured out how to stay alert to the news without it.
My current solve is that I remove all notifications and open the app manually to get updates. That and I wake up to the radio news so I have a sense of which stories to "pull" down to learn more. I'm not really satisfied with this though...
“News” is tricky… It can become its own form of addiction especially during times of “breaking news” when updates could happen at any moment in time. Uncertainty of change makes my brain want constant updates (even of an episode happening thousands of miles away).
I think what you mention around radio news in the morning and manual “pull” updates are great approaches.
I personally rely heavily on newsletters to fill the News gap. I’ll filter them from my email so they skip my inbox and become less “hot”/online. If there are longer articles I want to dive into, I can open them separately and review them in a colder manner.
This doesn’t solve the “breaking news” gap but I think I’ve gotten comfortable missing the immediate news cycle and just finding out a few hours or a day later. For more urgent news I’ll often get a ping from a friend or family member - it’s hard to be fully oblivious to really urgent events even if you don’t check directly. The “urgent news” also often ends up not actually being urgent (thankfully). E.g., Biden had a bad debate performance - did I need to find out immediately? What would I have missed by finding out 24-48 hours later?
Overall I have two main categories of news that I follow: tech news and world news. For Tech++ I use a lot of newsletters - Stratechery, Techmeme, Marginal Revolution, and a handful of other newsletters. I find this has me covered on anything that’s “part of the discourse”. When I was working I could check morning or morning+evening and be very caught up. For now checking+speed reading a minute every day or two is sufficient. For world news, I’ve started to read the paper version of The Economist as part of my 30”. Paper really “cools down” the news. Also since it’s a weekly magazine I find I avoid smaller ups and downs along the news cycle…
Great tips! I'm also a big fan of paper news. One magazine in particular hits my need to feel I have a "MECI" view of things, which helps limit the feeling of fomo: that's The Week, which is a much beloved British brand but has a US edition too in case you're ever curious.