Being less busy

I’ve written previously about my news addiction. In this month decided to take steps to reduce my reliance on social media and news sites even more. Instead, I opted to read more books and getting my news through podcasts.

Every once in a while I have sudden realization how much time I spend on useless activities online: reading social media, reading news or endlessly browsing the latest horrors of war — empty calories for a lack of a better term.

At the beginning of this month I decided to make changes cold turkey: I modified the adblocker on my phone to restrict access to commonly visited news sites and I stopped watching news on TV. The trigger for this experiment was the interview with Chris Bailey in the Focused podcast episode #148.

After continuing this experiment for two weeks I wanted to be up-to-date on broader topics around the world. I decided to give news podcasts a try. I subscribed to the Economist podcast and two Finnish podcasts that cover current issues. Majority of the episodes are short approximately 20 minutes daily listens that one can listen while making breakfast.

As I’m writing this at the end of the month, I’ve started to notice changes in my well-being: I feel less busy, and I don’t pick up the phone as often. I still need to condition myself to check RSS feeds less often. RSS feeds that would update once-a-day would be ideal.

That’s all I have for this month, see you in the next one!