Avoid News. Towards a Healthy News Diet

"News is to the mind what sugar is to the body", says Dobelli in his thought-provoking essay "Avoid News. Towards a Healthy News Diet". As he continues, "News is easy to digest. The media feeds us small bites of trivial matter, tidbits that don’t really concern our lives and don’t require thinking. That’s why we experience almost no saturation. Unlike reading books and long, deep magazine articles (which requires thinking), we can swallow limitless quantities of news flashes, like bright-colored candies for the mind." Having gone without news for a year, he can feel the freedom an information diet offers first hand and is happy to share his prescription for less disruption, more time, less anxiety, deeper thinking and more insights.

If you want to understand why news consumption is bad for you, invest a few minutes of your time in reading Dobelli's fifteen arguments and his guidelines for what to do instead.