Reading less news, more facts
I don't do New Years resolutions because they hardly ever work and if they are good ideas you should start these projects when you get the idea and are in the mood. That said, if I made a resolution it would be to read less news and more facts this year. I actually began this project last year.
I used to have this link in my browser that opened up a massive list of different news-sites, based on the theory that if I read the news from enough sources I'd filter out some kind of objective truth about what is happening in the world. Of course this isn't what happens, most news comes from the same source anyway - the news site is just an aggregator nowadays so you should choose the one you feel will point out the news that is important to you. News are also sensational in nature so even if you know what events have occurred you won't get the whole story and no one bothers to get back to you if they are wrong or new information comes up. Last summer, after a friend of mine extolled the virtues of "The Economist" I bought a couple of issues from the newsstand and took the time to read each issue, realizing that this was the kind of news I wanted. I wanted intelligent and non-sensational reporting about important issues but also with analysis and background. I'm now a subscriber and read every issue with care - usually it takes most of the week. That doesn't matter because the news is old anyway, the news has been chosen to be relevant even 1-2 weeks later and comes with the aforementioned analysis and background it needs. I still want to know if something important has happened, and because of this I still read a few sites every day. I go the Helsingin Sanomat ( http://www.hs.fi ) which is our countries largest newspaper, they have a great website and good reporting. There I get finnish news and some of the most important international ones. I also skim either New York Times' website ( http://global.nytimes.com ) and/or the BBC News page ( http://news.bbc.co.uk ) for more international news. Last I go to TechMeme ( http://www.techmeme.com ) which collects the latest rumors and information in the tech and Internet-industry - mostly because that is one of my fields of interest. That's a lot less than the nine (9!) sites that I used to skim/peruse before (BBC, HBL, Google News, NYT, Techmeme, Yle, HS, Der Spiegel and Reddit). I read the news sites by skimming instead of actually reading very many articles. Yes, I am a recovering procrastinator and information addict... I have a few additional news flows too, I follow several twitter-feeds for both breaking news and news that become old faster or isn't important if I'm busy. I'm trying to cut down on those too because it's too easy to procrastinate and find some weird little tidbit fascinating when you should be doing something more important. Like study, or clean up your desk - like I had planned to today...Anyway, the idea is that I want more intelligent and thoughtful news that is truly important instead of distracting pop news and also learn real things and not just little interesting tidbits. For that you need longer articles and longer deadlines for the writers. I also hope to learn more in-depth about fewer subjects so I'm not mistaken about the depth of my knowledge, its easy to read a few wikipedia-articles and think you are an expert but actually you don't even realize the depth of your ignorance. Maybe you too could benefit from rethinking your news-reading habits?
