How Many Minutes Should You Spend Reading the News
The News Audit is a simple style to eliminate unnecessary news consumption from your life and make time for things that really matter.
Clint never felt similar he had enough hours in the day.
As a rising young star in a prestigious law business firm, he often worked 60+ hours a calendar week. And despite an effective morning routine that had him in the office working by 6:00 AM, he withal struggled to become domicile from the role at a decent plenty hour to spend quality time with his wife and 3 young children.
During ane of our sessions, Clint described in poignant detail how he felt like his kids' early days were slipping away from him—that he was missing them and could never get them dorsum. And while he and his wife'southward relationship was stiff, he knew information technology could be better. He worried that it might brainstorm to stammer if something didn't change—if he couldn't find more time to be available and present.
Subsequently listening to Clint's story, I suggested we run a little experiment: I asked Clint to track his fourth dimension in half-hour increments every day for an entire calendar week.
The results (and his reaction) were fascinating…
Pssst: If you lot want to leap direct to the How To portion of the article, click here.
We Don't Realize How Much Time We Spend on The News
When Clint came back the next week, having dutifully filled out his activity log, he looked down-hearted.
He explained that he felt even more depressed than when he started because the do only confirmed what he suspected: He but didn't have plenty hours in the mean solar day to make fourth dimension for priorities outside his job.
I looked at Clint'southward action log and the beginning matter I noticed was, yep, this guy was insanely busy—and productive! He obviously wasn't wasting huge chunks of fourth dimension playing video games or drinking with his beer buddies. He was an organized, efficient guy who—at first blush—really didn't seem to have enough hours in the day.
Just I quickly noticed an interesting pattern in his activity log, something Clint either didn't really notice himself or didn't give much weight to: he was spending a huge amount of time each day on the news:
- He listened to the news for 40 minutes on the way into work during his commute.
- Then, when he first got to the office, he "skimmed" the newspaper for xv minutes.
- During dejeuner, he often watched the news on his figurer or phone for twenty-30 minutes.
- He also reported checking the news online between 8 and 12 times throughout the workday.
- He then listened to the news for some other xl minutes on his way home from work.
- And finally, he had to picket at least 30 minutes of news in the evening to catch all the latest terminate-of-day developments.
- He fifty-fifty read the news in bed sometimes before falling comatose.
I calculated that Clint was spending on average nearly 3 hours per twenty-four hours on the news!
This was incredible to me when I saw information technology. Then I commented to Clint (in my calmest, well-nigh professional person therapist voice) that information technology seemed similar he checked the news a lot through the day. His surprisingly straight response was: "Oh yeah, I'one thousand a chip of a news junky."
Amazingly, it didn't register for Clint that he was spending literally hours every day watching, listening, or otherwise checking in on the news, and that perhaps this might be a skillful place to "find" some more than hours in the mean solar day and brand time for other priorities.
When I did the math in forepart of him and showed how much time he was actually dedicated to the news, he did begin to squirm a bit and remarked something along the lines of, "Yeah, I guess it is sort of a lot of time."
But I have to Be a Well-Informed Citizen!
Over the side by side few weeks, Clint and I had some interesting conversations about his news consumption habits and how important to him they actually were.
Politics and certain cultural issues were very important to Clint, I learned. And doing his best to be a "well-informed citizen" was a value he believed in strongly. Just it was besides a value he hadn't explored or clarified in much detail.
In ane conversation, nosotros talked about how many hours per day information technology really took to remain a "well-informed citizen." I asked him to give me some examples of information he had gleaned from yesterday's news that had made him more well-informed nearly a detail political or cultural issue he cared about.
…Crickets…
He admitted that most of the news that he consumed was "mostly superficial or re-hashing onetime information" and that very little of information technology was "actually substantive." He had, it seemed, resigned himself to wading through 95% junk just in case there was 5% of import information.
At this indicate, Clint was starting to get pretty uncomfortable with the amount of news he was watching and seriously questioning how valuable information technology really was to him. And all the same, he couldn't seem to get himself to change much virtually his news consumption habits.
So I recommend that we do some other piddling experiment:
"For this next calendar week," I explained, "I'd like you to keep rail in a note on your phone each time you lot consume or check the news and for how long. I also want you to write down annihilation substantive that y'all learned from the news when you practice."
The Law of Diminishing Returns
When Clint came back the post-obit calendar week and we reviewed his news tracking assignment, he was visibly irritated, angry most.
I mentioned that he seemed a picayune upset, to which he replied, "Yeah, I estimate I'yard a little angry with myself. I put a lot of time into all this news stuff thinking that information technology'south of import merely really I'm not actually learning much of anything."
I empathized with him—the disappointment and frustration he was feeling—and then drew a little graph on the whiteboard in my office that looked similar this:
I explained that for a lot of things in life, nosotros become most of the bang for our buck with an initial investment of time/energy/effort, and most of our efforts after that pb to disproportionately minor returns (technically, this is known as the Law of Diminishing Returns). I wondered out loud if staying well-informed via the news might follow a similar trajectory?
Practise 2 hours of news consumption really lead to double the corporeality of substantive information every bit 1 hour?
Together we hypothesized that while Clint was spending well over 15 hours per week consuming the news, it's possible that—with a few modifications to his routines—he might be able to go virtually the same return on a much smaller investment of time and energy.
He seemed acquiescent to exploring this, so we designed yet another little experiment:
I asked Clint to cutting out all news consumption except for A) listening to the evening news on his commute home from piece of work each day, and B) reading his favorite newspaper (The Wall Street Journal) on Sunday morning time.
And, like before, I asked him to track how much he actually learned.
The 80/20 Principle
When Clint came back to session the following calendar week, he had a very different expression on his face—a coy smile. "What's that grin all near?" I asked him with a pretty big grinning of my own. "Yes, yeah, y'all were correct, doctor."
Turns out, even with a drastically reduced quantity of news consumption during the week (about 4 hours rather than 15), his "substantive learning" had substantially remained the same.
And interestingly, he explained that he really enjoyed the more thorough, slower pace of reading the whole newspaper once, rather than trying to "squeeze in" many little bursts of news throughout the day and week.
I remarked to him that this equally a dandy case of the 80/twenty Principle (besides known as The Pareto Principle), which states that in many areas of life, an outsized proportion of our gains (roughly 80%) comes from a relatively small proportion of our energy (roughly 20%).
What Clint discovered with our little experiment was that substantially all of his "substantive learning" was coming from reading the paper once a week and listening to the news in the evenings on his commute—and that the rest of his news consumption (the bulk of it) wasn't actually adding anything.
How to Make Time for the Things That Matter Most
Ultimately, Clint was happy to have discovered how unnecessary nearly of his news consumptions was. Simply a problem remained: He even so found himself pulled dorsum into consuming the news more than he wanted simply through force of habit.
He was spending more quality time at dwelling every bit a direct result of not watching the news in the evening and just one time during the weekend, but he often listened to the news oftentimes on both commutes and oft "checked in" on the news during his workday, which he admitted, was "not slap-up" for his productivity.
I asked Clint the following question:
Aside from spending more quality time with your family (which yous've done a smashing job of achieving so far), what if I told you that I could give you an extra 'free hour' every 24-hour interval to apply for anything? What, ideally, would you lot like to use that free hour for?
He saturday thinking for a few minutes, at times appearing to requite an respond then sinking dorsum into reflection again.
Finally, with a somewhat embarrassed and sheepish look on his face, he came out with this answer:
"I've ever wanted to be a rock star."
I smiled and he grinned back.
"Of course, I don't really want to be a rockstar." He explained. "But I accept always wanted to acquire how to play the guitar. It's simply that I was always so decorated with school and and then piece of work that it never seemed like I could brand fourth dimension for it. But I guess if I had an hour a solar day of totally gratuitous time, information technology would be awesome to larn to play the guitar."
"Jackpot!" I retrieve thinking to myself in my head.
I was excited because Clint had discovered another major personal value, which was exactly what he needed to fully extricate himself from his onetime news consumption habits.
Ultimately, the nigh powerful way to go out of a bad habit is to build or observe a good addiction that "outcompetes" it. Ironically, as much as Clint wanted to discover more than hours in his day, he hadn't actually thought a lot about what he wanted to make time for. And considering he lacked that powerful "why motivation," the old news consumption addiction continued to exist the stronger pull on his behavior.
So, later on some in-session planning (and guitar research), Clint and I worked out the following strategy:
- On his drives to work in the morning, Clint would use the time to mind to his old library of favorite songs and curate a list of the ones he'd nearly similar to learn to play himself (Elaborating on and clarifying his value of learning to play the guitar and therefore building a powerful why motivation).
- During his workday, each fourth dimension he was tempted to cheque lookout the news, he would remind himself that if he simply kept working rather than getting sucked into the news, he'd take time to work on learning the guitar (Extinguishing the association of checking news with diverse cues at work).
- After discussing information technology with his wife, Clint arranged a weekly guitar lesson that he would attend every Friday on his way home from work. And on the other weekdays, rather than watching the evening news after the kids were comatose, Clint would do guitar for 30 minutes before spending the residue of the evening with his wife (Specific planning plus a Ulysses Pact to help him maintain the new addiction).
- Finally, because he and so enjoyed his weekly in-depth news reading on Sundays, Clint added another "high-quality" news activity. He bought a subscription to another of his favorite periodicals, The Economist, and read that in the evenings. His reasoning being, "I'chiliad not a announcer, so there's no need for me to be up-to-appointment with the news on an hourly or daily footing. Plus, if I read about a calendar week or two afterwards, I'm more likely to go the total story rather than someone'due south 'hot take' 2 minutes after it happens."
In the end, Clint settled into a news consumption rhythm of reading the Sunday paper in-depth for ane hour on the weekends, reading The Economist for 30-40 minutes a few evenings out of the calendar week, and occasionally listening to the news on his commute home from work. In full, this added up to between three and four hours per calendar week consuming the news (in stark contrast to his original fifteen+!).
Clint reported that not only was he non missing annihilation, but he actually felt amend informed because he had shifted to a "quality over quantity" approach to consuming the news. Plus, he was spending more time with his family, getting "pretty legit" on his new guitar, and reported feeling less stressed and more energetic to kick.
How to Practice a News Audit Yourself and Brand Time for Meaningful Pursuits
Of course, most of us probably don't consume quite as much news equally Clint had been. Which ways the amount of time-saving a news audit will buy yous may not be quite every bit big as his. Still, most of the states probably eat more news that we need to, and getting dorsum an extra one-half-60 minutes or hour per day is very realistic for many of us.
In fact, since doing this exercise with Clint, the news audit has become a common exercise with many of my clients and almost all of them remark on how meaningful it can be to find even just a few extra hours per week. Often considering this is enough to allow them get started moving toward a goal or dream that they had all but given upwards on for being impossible due because they couldn't make time for it.
So, if you lot'd like to apply the same principles and lessons from Clint's story to your own life, here are a few practical guidelines to become you started doing your own news inspect so you can make time for the things that affair nearly.
STEP 1: Track your news consumption for a week.
Yous tin can use pen and paper, just I observe tracking with the notes app on your phone to be more successful since—for better or worse—we all tend to have our phones on the states all the time. Convenience is king.
Be sure to note:
- When and for how long y'all consumed the news
- What type of news and what medium (e.1000. podcast, newspaper, blog, etc.)
- Whether you learned annihilation "noun," and if and then, what
STEP two: Utilise the 80/xx rule to your news consumption
Afterwards you have at least a week'due south worth of data on your own news consumption, apply the 80/20 principle by request yourself:
Which 20% of the news that I consume is leading to lxxx% of my overall value gained from the news?
For Clint, this was reading the Wall Street Journal and listening to the evening news on his commute dwelling. But whatsoever the particulars of your state of affairs, endeavor to tease out the high-quality news from the low-quality "infotainment" and recaps.
Footstep 3: Experiment with an data diet for a week
Based on your fourscore/twenty analysis in Step 2, get for a week simply consuming virtually xx% of your typical news "calories" and see how you experience. If possible, make the twenty% you stick with the highest quality news you have access to.
STEP 4: Clarify and elaborate on your values
In society to resist the pull toward more than and more than mindless news consumption and fall back into old habits, it'south important to be articulate-eyed and intentional most where yous'd rather be putting your time and attention. In other words, spend some time clarifying what your values are.
Inquire yourself:
If I had an actress one-half hour or one-half-hr per twenty-four hour period, how would I like to spend/invest information technology ideally?
The more clear, specific, and elaborated your answer to this question the meliorate.
Footstep 5: Establish your replacement activities
Once you've antiseptic what yous'd rather be doing with your extra time, make a specific, reliable, and doable plan for getting started.
If you need suggestions on this step, here are a few helpful resources from myself and others:
- How to make a new habit stick
- Diminutive Habits
- How to Observe Your Passion
While analyzing and condign aware of how much wasted time goes into consuming the news, information technology'southward the establishment of newer, values-based habits that will permit you to maintain your gains and newfound gratis time so that you can brand time for the things that matter well-nigh in your life.
Summary and Key Points
We ofttimes underestimate how much time we spend consuming the news. Doing a news audit is a elementary way to exist more intentional with our time and energy so that we can make time for what really matters.
How Many Minutes Should You Spend Reading the News
Source: https://nickwignall.com/news-audit-make-time/