Days Nineteen, Twenty, Twenty-one, Twenty-two, and Beyond: Final Scorecard

Well, I think this experiment is at an end. No, not the news experiment--that's going strong. The blog experiment.

I'm glad I gave it a try--and who knows, maybe I'll be back with a less-frequently updated blog with actual interesting stuff to say--but I'm not sure my chosen topic was the most fruitful choice for daily updates. I thought it had a chance, but I found very little to say after the first ten days or so. I mostly reiterated what was in Dobelli's original piece.

Anyway, final scores:

• Quitting the news: A. I quit, I haven't gone back, and I have no desire to go back. On the occasions that a headline makes its way towards me (a stray radio headline; the crawl across the bottom of the TV screen; a Facebook comment; stupid cut-in 11:00 news promos during primetime), I am usually more annoyed than intrigued, and the content only justifies my decision with its insipidness.
• Benefits of quitting the news: A. I've picked up more interesting reading and found some good new websites.
• Using my newly found free time well: B. Still need to get better at this. Reading news does not have to be replaced with reading other stuff. Maybe with the spring and summer coming, I can convince myself to be more outdoorsy.
• Blogging: C+. I don't think my posts were as interesting as I thought they'd be, and I don't think I was able to spend enough time to craft them rather than just draft them. This format's not for me.
• Knowing blogging's not for me: A. Hey, it goes along with the whole theme of giving up the news--spend time on the things that are worth it for you. Right here, right now, with this topic, it's not worth it for me, so I'll spend the time on something better.

Anyway, that's the whole story. Overall, I think it's been a worthwhile change, and I hope it'll be a catalyst for bigger and better things.

Day Eighteen: The Day After Day Seventeen...

...and before Day Nineteen, when I should have another post.

Day Seventeen: Zen

I've also been reading about zen and meditation lately, and it's amazing the parallels between the ethic behind quitting the news and the zen mindset.

I am not a Zen master (or even a Zen beginner), so this is all based on my very limited understanding of the philosophy. However, it seems that living in the moment, being mindful of everything that's happening, and realizing that right now is the only moment that matters are all tenets of Zen (so far as Zen has tenets); while news goes against all of those. It takes your mind away from the present and from what matters. It is, to me, the very definition of mindlessness.

Zen is about exploring the limits of your own mind and how you relate to the world, what your place is. News is about bombarding you with messages and information from outside yourself, chosen by people other than you, and delivering a viewpoint to you. News tells you what your place is, even if you don't agree.

I guess I did have a few more newsy posts in me. I think I will shift to talking about news substitutes in the future, though.

Day Sixteen: Long Day

Been a long day and I have nothing to write. Other than it's a whole lot easier to avoid the news when you don't really have time to think.

Day Fifteen: Modern Community

No, not the best sitcom mashup ever. Although that would be one pretty awesome mashup. I'm actually talking about community in the modern world.

Davy Jones' death got me thinking about it. At first, I wondered if by not reading news, I was in for a lifetime of not knowing when certain famous celebrities die. Would it get to the point where I was like "Hey, I hope the next Terminator move stars Arnold" only for someone to answer "Arnold's been dead for six years, where have you been?!?"?

Then I realized that would never happen. I mean look at poor Davy. Not the biggest of celebrities anymore, yet I knew the day of his death that he had gone. Primarily through Facebook, but also through an in-person comment.

That led to me thinking, hey, maybe I need to give up FB to be truly news-free (still haven't decided on that, but continuing to allow FB for now, with the newsreader apps blocked so I don't see others' headlines). But then it hit me--suppose I give up FB. It's not like everyone else is going to give it up. That virtual community will still exist, and it will still supplant actual community with or without me.

Online social networks supplanting actual community. I know I'm not the first one to have that thought, and people have been bemoaning the demise of community since the popularization of television; nevertheless, I found it interesting to think about.

Now I need to get working on that mashup...

Days Thirteen/Fourteen: Week Two Scorecard

Week two scorecard. Same as the week one scorecard.

Well, maybe a bit better. I'm feeling like the turning of a corner has stuck. I don't really have that itch to be checking any of my news sites. And I'm feeling good about not reading things that make me miserable (intentionally or not). So that's all good.

Still not filling my time the best way, although that's getting better too. Been reading higher quality stuff, so that's good (I'm hard at work on Borges' complete fictions, which are blowing my mind and giving me lots of ideas). A bit too much checking the websites I still check, though. I'm going to concentrate on stamping that out next.

As for it seeming like a limited-time experiment, that feeling's starting to go away as well.

Not sure there's a whole lot more to say about the lack of news. I thought it was bad for me; cutting it out made me realize even more that it's bad for me; I'm feeling better and more creative; game, set, match. I may have a few more thoughts on the whole concept of no news (and who knows what else might hit me in the meantime), but I think I'll start using this space to talk about some of the material I'm filling the news hole with.

Unless I have a relapse.

Day Twelve: What I Don't Miss

Luckily, at this point, I don't seem to be missing much of anything. However, there are some things I didn't really miss from the beginning.

Politics. I so don't miss this. Politicians lying and spinning statements and events in ways that make you wonder exactly how stupid they think people are. It's such a show at this point. It's ridiculous. I hate all the politicians, all their artifice, and the mockery our government has become.

Political discourse. Along the same lines as the first, I also do not miss what passes for discourse these days. The loudest voices dominate, and they stake out a position based on self-identity rather than facts. The other part of discourse I really don't miss is the media's insistence on giving equal time to both sides of an issue, no matter how inane it is (I'm looking at you, evolution vs intelligent design).

Gloom and doom. Don't miss the pessimistic stories about the upcoming economic, political, and environmental cataclysm. Some of it may come to pass, but constantly reading articles about it really doesn't help.

And one thing I do miss...

Sports news. I miss it a little bit. But I hate March Madness, so it all works out.

Day Eleven: Stuff

This whole post is, of course, with apologies to the late, great George Carlin.

As you grow older, you accumulate a lot of stuff. At first, it's kind of cool--stuff is great. You buy books and games and music and electronics; eventually you get some big stuff, like a car or even a house; and then you fill the house with more and more stuff, like pots and pans and bedroom sets and couches and bookcases. Meanwhile, you continue to buy and otherwise obtain the little stuff--more books and games and knick-knacks and random other stuff that clogs up everything.

And eventually, enough is enough.

But this doesn't happen only with physical stuff. It happens with informational stuff, too. Again, as you get older, you learn more and more, you cram piece after piece of random information into your brain (and nothing falls out, really, but some of it becomes a whole lot less accessible). You start out with the basic stuff, useful stuff, like multiplication tables and grammar, eventually you get into more advanced stuff, but all the while, you're also accumulating random stuff (locker numbers, passwords, what spot you parked your car in) and useless stuff (your favorite news story goes here).

And eventually, enough is enough.

For both physical stuff and informational stuff, at some point, it's time to clean house. At least with the physical stuff, you can get rid of it; for the informational stuff, the best you can do is control your intake so that it's the quality stuff that you're consuming. For both types of stuff, the key is to pare down to what's necessary: to simplify as much as possible, but no more (to quote a smart guy). Focus on what matters.

For me, this is what cutting out news amounts to.

Postscript--Although it doesn't really fit into the flow of the post, there's a third kind of stuff--emotional stuff. It also accumulates as you get older, and, like the informational stuff, there's not much you can do to get rid of it--once you have it, it's yours for life.

Day Ten: Turning a Corner?

I had a few good signs today.

First, I've noticed my thinking has gotten a bit clearer. I feel more creative, and ideas seem to be coming easier. This could all be the placebo effect, or a result of a normal cyclical pattern--I've had plenty of times in the past while still reading the news where I would have a patch of exceptionally clear thinking. Either way, I'm definitely at the beginning of a fruitful period of thought right now.

Second, I happened to hear the radio announcer say something about it being Super Tuesday as I was flipping through stations on the way home. My reaction was anger. I didn't want to hear about it. I had forgotten that it was Super Tuesday and I didn't want to be reminded. A week ago, I think hearing the same news would have whetted my appetite to hear more. Today, it had the opposite effect.

Third, I'm not feeling the anxiety over the stock market that I expected to be constant so long as I was without the news. There were a few moments last week when I wanted to check, but overall, I'm pretty calm about the whole thing. I have to admit, this surprises even me.

Fourth, calm is really the word. I have an overall sense of calmness that has started to come over me. The news twitches from last week are severely lessened--generally, I don't really care at this point, and that's a good thing. News now feels like noise on an emotional level rather than just on a rational level. That's going to be key for this change to be a lasting one.

I remember reading somewhere that it takes 28 days to form a new habit. If things continue to progress the way they have so far, the news should be a distant memory by then.

Day Nine: Hate Reading

Not as in "I hate reading" but as in hating things and reading them anyway (or really, because of the hate). I've found cutting out news has stopped me from doing a lot of hate reading.

It's a weird but real phenomenon. I would look for articles that I knew would provoke a reaction in me, whether because of the writer (poor logic always gets me going, for instance), the opinion stated, or even the comments by the usual suspects. Sometimes I would read the comments to see others tear the writer apart; sometimes I'd read them for the same reason that I read the article--to hate them.

I'm not sure what drove me to do this. However, I am sure that the content producers know that people have this tendency (some more than others). I look at a place like Slate, the types of headlines and stories they put together, and I'm amazed I didn't realize the blatant manipulativeness of it sooner. I knew that their headlines were supposed to be provocative, but I never thought deeply enough about it to see the extent of the manipulation.

When the profit motive becomes a driver for news sites, this is the result. It's more noticeable in the headline news segment of the business, or even the local news business ("What common item in your house can kill you in under twelve seconds? Tune in at 10 to find out!"), but it also exists in those news sources that present themselves as more serious. It all gets back to the idea of simulation--the selection of stories does not represent reality, but rather an elaborate front, one shaped by ideology, greed, and cognitive biases.

Day Eight: My Nemesis, the Lazy Sunday

Maybe I spoke too soon. Today is killing me.

I don't even know what I'd expect to find if I went through my news sites right now. It's not like I'm looking for anything. It's just something to do when I don't feel like doing anything else. Maybe that's the root of the problem.

I backtracked to last Sunday's post to see what I was feeling then. I wasn't having any issues. I think that's because it was my first day, and it was a novel idea, and I was like "Oh, I'll write a blog about the experience, it'll be cool!" That novelty's gone now, leaving me with nothing but a vague feeling that I should be going through my familiar website ritual.

That's about all I've got for today. Not much to say and a yen that I have to work through.

Day Seven: Week One Scorecard

One week down, the rest of my life to go.

As I mentioned in my day six post, I'm not yet using my extra time as well as I hope to. There are still too many news-like reflexes in my behavior, and too much wasting of my extra time.

However, I have done some good stuff: read Of Mice and Men and American Nerd: The Story of My People (how's that for a pair of books?); a fascinating interview with neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran; interesting thoughts from some of the smartest people in the world about their favorite deep, elegant, or beautiful explanation (a recurring theme: "everything is the way it is because it got that way"); and a variety of New Yorker articles. I have more planned, including picking up Borges again, learning some new science, and maybe writing some fiction of my own.

As for news: I've seen and heard few headlines here and there (actually remarkably few, given how ubiquitous the news is turning out to be) but have successfully avoided most of it. I pretty much know nothing about what's been going on for the last week other than Davy Jones dying (from a status post on Facebook).

I miss it and I don't. I do sometimes have a nagging feeling like I may be missing something, but I don't feel the rush to go back to reading the news. The biggest issue is that this whole thing seems temporary, like I'm going to pick the news up after 30 days of an experiment or when Lent ends or something. I'm not (at least that's not the plan). I need to get out of that mindset, or else I will fail. The change needs to be a complete change in lifestyle, so there's not even a chance that I would want to check news. It shouldn't be a question and it shouldn't be an effort. I haven't succeeded to that degree, but that's asking a lot for only one week.

Overall, I give myself a B+. Not bad, but room for improvement.

Day Six: Transference

I've noticed that there are two facets to giving up the news. The first is the news content itself. I'm doing pretty well with that: I've been avoiding it mostly successfully, and I don't miss it as much as I thought I would. The second is the act of compulsively checking things for updates. Here, I'm faring... not so well.

Even without news, there are plenty of places to check and recheck for updated information. The websites I've allowed myself have frequent updates, so I check those a bit more often that I used to. Of course, there's always email, though that's not too much of a problem at home. It's a bit more of a problem at work. Also at work, we have a system that updates when people are adding content to our wiki, and that makes a perfect target for checking frequently. Luckily, work's been busy the last week so I don't really have too much time to fixate on the feeling of not being up-to-date with my information.

Should I give all these up? I think the answer is no, but I also need to temper that need for the quick fix that has been cultivated by instant news (and the internet culture in general). To be fair to myself, it's not the case that all my non-news-reading time has turned into compulsive checking of other things (or even of watching videos on Procatinator), but some of it has.

One thing at a time. Once the news embargo becomes a bit more normalized, I'll start working on some of the other fast-twitch bad habits the news culture has helped spawn in me. Until then, I'll cut myself a bit of slack.

Day Five: Simulacra and Simulation

Another earlier memory I have, this one of young adulthood, is of reading a certain novel (I wish I could remember its name) during my senior year of high school. Whatever that novel was, I loved it. I can't even remember the plot, but it was generally about life in small-town America on the eve of one of the World Wars. The plot wasn't the point. It painted such a vivid picture of a close-knit community and a simple life, and that picture is still with me years later.

In my more stressed moments, I daydream about moving to a small town, where I can walk to work and I know everyone and they know me. In some ways, it's not much different from when I was in school, in the midst of a place with a great sense of community.

I don't want to say that news singlehandedly destroyed community, but I think it represents something larger which has taken its toll. When we put energy into the news, that's energy that does not go somewhere else, somewhere more immediate.

Which leads me to think about the idea of simulation. I haven't read Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation (it's on my list to get to soon), but one of the things it discusses is the progression of real things to things that represent reality to things that are disconnected from reality. We are at the point where reality has been replaced completely by representations.

I think news has helped with that progression. News does represent reality, but it represents a twisted version of reality. The same way a photograph can be altered so that it is both real and unreal at the same time, news sources filter the entirety of world events so that they represent a distorted reality.

Maybe in some way, getting rid of the news is bringing me one step closer to that daydream.

Day Four: The World of a Child

I had a thought as I was driving to work today. When I was a kid, I didn't care about the news. The only things that concerned me were those in my immediate life--school, friends, family. If it wasn't important for everyday life, it wasn't important. And the world felt wide-open.

As I grew older, the world closed down, even as it got larger. The paths that I saw branching before me as a kid closed off, one by one. The oft-repeated "You can be anything you want to be" was gradually revealed as the falsehood it is.

Things that seemed like the be-all and end-all when I was a kid became small potatoes as an adult. Looking back at those "life and death" moments, you realize just how unimportant they really are in the grand scheme of things. Unimportant now, and unimportant then.

What does this have to do with the news? The news makes you feel unimportant. It shows you have little or no control over the happenings of the world, and it convinces you that these things over which you have no control are things that you should be expending energy on. Why wouldn't they be important--they're on the news!

All those "life and death" moments you have as a kid are important. They were important then, and moments like that are important now. Individual moments, individual relationships, the comings and goings of everyday life.

I felt a bit of that today. I felt a bit of the feeling that the world was opening again, in a good way. I can't be sure it's connected to my skipping the news, but I think it is.

Day Three: Withdrawal, or the News Kiosks Strike Again

"This is stupid."

Or so my brain told me this morning on my commute. "You don't read that much news, this doesn't make much difference. What are you even trying to do?"

The withdrawal was starting. My own mind was rebelling, making completely contradictory arguments. If I didn't actually read too much news, and it didn't really matter anyway, why did I want to start reading it again?

This definitely has the feel of kicking an addiction. Well, what I imagine kicking an addiction must feel like; I've only really ever had a Coke problem (the fizzy stuff). And although news is similar to junk food, I'd say this addiction has more in common with kicking smoking--it's very visceral. I'm constantly wanting to type "nyt" into my address bar, wait for the autofill, and go to the Times home page, even if I don't really want or need to be there. It's a mindless habit, the comforting white noise humming in the background of my web browsing.

I was able to put down the mental mutiny at first. Work was a bit slower today, offering me more opportunities to miss being able to check headlines. Even that wasn't too bad, though. What did me in was lunch.

I really need to control the automatic reflex I've picked up of looking at the newspaper kiosks on the way into the cafeteria. My first trip for coffee was fine--I was aware of myself and didn't look. Unfortunately, I was rushing to lunch, rushing leads to old habits, and I caught a glimpse of the headline splashed across the page: "GREEK TRAGEDY".

Oh no! What happened? Almost certainly the news has something to do with the flailing Greek government. But what happened? Did the European nations make some important decision? And what effect did it have on the U.S. stock market?

My mind raced with all these questions, none of which had answers that would change how I lived my day-to-day life. And when I thought about it in those terms, I was able to push the curiosity away. For now.

Day Two: Temptation

My first work day with no news. The day started with another examination of what counted as news, brought on by my long commute. I listened to the classical station a bit, and then: NPR news break! It took a good ten seconds before I even realized I was listening to a news update--I heard a bit about the Taliban taking responsibility for something--and I switched the channel once my brain caught up with my ears. Music, for a few seconds, followed by the morning's headlines. I was quicker this time, switching immediately, to... more news headlines.

Okay, that was it. On went the iPod--no news updates there.

Once at work, I had my easiest choice of the day, removing the New York Times as a homepage from my browser. Not much ambiguity there.

On the way to the cafeteria for coffee, I found myself reflexively turning my gaze towards the newspaper vending machines in the entryway. Argh! Turn away! Luckily, there was only a bit of Academy Awards news on display, mostly one large picture, so I wasn't (consciously) tainted by that.

News is everywhere.

The rest of the day went pretty smoothly, as I was busy in meetings, so I didn't have a chance to consider checking headlines. I didn't even think about the stock market all day. (Great, now I want to know what the Dow did. Must... not... check.)

The commute home brought a tougher decision--Boston sports radio. I couldn't even keep a straight face in my own mind when trying to make the argument to myself that sports radio is entertainment, not news. I was not as forgiving as I was yesterday, when I allowed myself a few websites. No sports radio, not even a bit. iPod music for the entire way home.

I made it through the day. I made it! And then my wife turned on The Daily Show.

This is going to be hard.

Day One: What is News?

First things first. I had to replace the New York Times page as my homepage, obviously. For both browsers I use. At work and home. Yeah, I was in deep.

What to replace it with? I went with the New Yorker (long-form articles) and Science and Nature magazines. That may change depending on how useful I find them, but seems like a good start. I agree with Dobelli that one thing that should replace news consumption is deep reading about how the world actually works, and these three sites qualify. I'm sure I'll find more as this experiment progresses.

The straight news sites are easy to identify and eliminate. I'm having trouble with other semi-news sites, though. Should I keep visiting Facebook? Not exactly news, but it has some of the same bad characteristics. I decide FB is okay for now, so long as I don't overdo it. A few reasons I think this is okay: (1) it is entertainment and clearly identifiable as entertainment and (2) I can control what I see on FB, unlike news which serves me what they think is important. FB has information that may actually personally affect me, or may help me make a decision. So it's a yes for now.

Having said that, if I find I start spending unreasonable time on FB, I may reduce it to once a day or eliminate it altogether.

A more difficult case is io9. It's definitely very newsy, but it also discusses interesting science and technology (usually with links to longer articles on the topics). At first, I told myself no, it's too much like news. In some ways, being an aggregator, it represents the worst of the culture of bite-size news stories.

And then I relented. I've found many good science articles through io9. Plus they do have original long-form articles as well. And there's an element of entertainment rather than news. Maybe I'm already rationalizing...

I expect to eventually limit or eliminate io9 as well, though. I'd like to get my sci-fi and fantasy fix through fiction. But it's in for now.

Lest you think I'm not eliminating much news: overall the majority of the sites I visit are out. Slate, MSN, Yahoo, CNN, NY Times, Wired--all gone. I'm going to have to find some good new reads.

Day Zero: No News

I read a lot of news: the New York Times, CNN, the local newspaper; I'd make the rounds all day every day. I wanted to stay informed, to know what's happening in the world around me. I fully understand that most of it doesn't apply to me, and it biases me toward what's in the news, but it's better to be informed than not, right?

Then I read Rolf Dobelli's "Avoid News: Towards a Healthy News Diet". Wow. I had no idea what I was doing to myself.

I had thought about this before--I had read enough of The Black Swan to hear the basic argument that news is unhelpful--but Dobelli's article crystallized the concepts in a way that really struck me. Even though I was fully aware of how little the news items directly affect me, Dobelli points out that the repeated process of reading the news still takes its toll. And I have noticed my ability to concentrate, while not shot, is not as strong as it used to be.

Hence this blog. I've taken Dobelli's advice and gone cold turkey from news. This blog is meant to document the effects--the good, the bad, and the ugly--from cutting myself off from news consumption. I'll also talk about what I do to fill the time, and anything else that comes to mind (including all those brilliant ideas I'll have now that my mind is free of news clutter!).