Stop Reading the News

As a person who is struggling with information overload, this is something I am looking for. But I was hoping for more insights on how to balance being in the know and how to filter out unnecessary or negative news that can affect your mental health. Three quarters of the book is why news is bad for you. As a former journalist, some of the reasons are a little eye brow raising for me, but there was no doubt the way news is being reported and consumed needs more balance. Alas, this book doesn't offer as many solutions as I like.

Some years ago I've decided to stop consuming news, at least in the most common ways: newspapers, televised news, news websites, ... preferring to rely on friends, second hand advises found through different networks and deeper analysis.

I did this because I felt being constantly in this "news flux" heightened my anxiety about the world and its course. Nowadays I'm also considering backing off totally from social medias because I find they provoke the exact same thing by spreading only negative and anxious news all the time.

So this book wouldn't really change my mind as this was something I was already doing. However it gave me a lot of arguments for what I was doing, and I could totally relate to the expressed benefits. In a time where we are bathed in more and more "news" and with those becoming more and more generated through AI, I think they are doing way more harm than any remote good. I feel that as a whole we are becoming more and more anxious and prone to a black and white vision of the world, while thinking that we are better informed than yesterday.

If you feel you're getting stressed by the news lately, I'd suggest to give this book and its ideas I real try, it might do you tremendous good!

"The more news you consume, the more frequently you’ll come across confirmatory information, even if your opinions are false. These days the news no longer functions as a test probe, poking holes in inaccurate opinions (as was formerly the case, when there wasn’t much news around); rather, it cements them."

Very useful. If you are a regular news reader, you must go through this and save your time.
This is one of the most informative and probable time saver book for you.
Not just time saver, it makes your life way better by convincing you that you should not read or watch news.
Initially, you feel the topic is absurd, but you can absolutely trust the things being explained and can live a very good life if you follow these guidelines.
It doesn't say you should absolutely not read news, it gives practical ideas as to read only relevant news. “Relevance Costs Money”. If something you are getting for free, it wont be useful for you most of the time.
It is said that if you are not paying for the product, you are the product.
In case of news, you are the product whose attention and eyeball time is sold to advertisers.
This book is an eye opener for all of us.

yeah, no.

dobelli has some good points (news focuses often on the bad and sensational) but the way he frames everything and makes an idiot out of everyone who doesn't follow his news-free lifestyle is just making me not want to listen to Anything he says, even if it is one of the better points

“My year has twelve months, yours only eleven because you read the news and lose time” oh shut up Rolf
“if you really care about something, dont give it attention, work or prayers, only money”
“it is idiotic to concern yourself with things you can't change”
“any ideology is stupid”
then some screaming at clouds about celebrities being people who don't deserve it instead of inventors, casually dropping the alpha male ideology of women choosing higher status partner... if a book on the same topic with similar points was written by someone else, maybe it would've worked. i was hoping to find out something about the psychology of news, the inner workings of the journals headquarters or some studies backing up what he says. guess im gonna have to find that somewhere else