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Fast Company
43 minutes ago
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How to stay informed without doomscrolling
There is a lot going on in the news these days. Internationally, there are active wars raging. Domestically, there are daily changes in government policy at the national, state, and local level. There has been turbulence in the economy. To be a leader in any sector, you have to stay current on the latest world developments, but the constant parade of threats in the news is anxiety-provoking. What can you do to ensure you stay informed without getting sucked into the vortex of doom and find yourself staring at social media feeds, blogs, and a host of different news sources? It is worth thinking about the information you consume as being a diet like the one you have for your nutrition. And—just like with what you eat—you need a balanced media diet. Here are a few suggestions to help you stay informed without overindulging. Limit your intake To ensure your stay informed, pick a time when you can pay attention so that the news isn't blaring in the background or you're not just staring blankly at a website. Then, decide how much time you have to devote to the news. You can probably get a lot out of 15 minutes of concentrated reading. Subscribe to the Daily newsletter. Fast Company's trending stories delivered to you every day Privacy Policy | Fast Company Newsletters I recommend setting a timer on your phone. When your timer goes off, finish the story and move on. It is important to use some kind of external reminder to finish. Otherwise, one story can lead to the next, which can lead to another. Before you know it, a much longer time than you intended to spend has gone by. You are particularly likely to over consume media when the news is stressful. Uncertainty can enhance your stress. By reading more, you give yourself the illusion that you know more, which will make you feel less anxious in the short run. In the long run, that focus on threatening news can keep you feeling fearful. Pick a variety of sources Even when the news isn't that anxiety-provoking, media know that they can best get your eyeballs when they find a potential calamity that they can scream from their headlines. So, even a slow news day has its stressors. I recommend that you pick a few reliable news sources—preferably ones that have a different underlying political slant or area of expertise. If the same story appears (in some guise) in all of the sources you use routinely, it is probably something worth paying attention to. Getting a variety of viewpoints also gives you different angles for thinking about the story. You also want to find sources that have expertise related to your particular industry. Most market sectors have companies, magazines, or outlets that cover news of particular relevance to people in your business. Those sources are also important, because they focus on events that may not be of wide significance, but will affect your work. In addition, those sources will clue you in to what other people in your industry are likely to be thinking about. Push yourself away from the table There will be some days when particular events or news stories capture you, and you're tempted to keep digging. Your fascination (or anxiety) about these stories may keep you reading well past your allotted time. That is when you need to engage your willpower and stop the madness. Fitness guru Jack LaLanne was reported to have said, 'The best exercise is pushing yourself away from the table.' Similarly, the best cure for news-induced stress is to close the paper, put down the phone, turn off the radio, and do something else.
New York Times
44 minutes ago
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A Medievalist Hits the Gym
I teach a seminar for graduate students called Divine Comedies. My students and I trace Dante's influence through the ages. After a close friend — like me, a medievalist — died by suicide last year, I found the passage of the 'Inferno' where Dante describes a grove of suicides almost intolerable. The poet relegates the souls of those who have died by their own hand to trees in a withered forest in the seventh circle of hell. During the Last Judgment, we are told, they will not reoccupy their bodies like everyone else, but will remain trees, with their skins hanging from the branches, in penalty for casting their bodily garments aside during life. The poet snaps a twig from one tree. It bleeds. After my friend's suicide, I found myself surprised by the depth and complexity of my grief. To cope, I turned not to the consolation of poetry, but to the gym. I started weight lifting. I had to process anew Dante's condemnation of suicides. How to read the 'Inferno' when my friend was now to be counted, in Dante's eyes, among those who could not find peace? Many centuries after Dante, the American poet W.S. Merwin imagined emerging from this life, casting off his skin: 'I will no longer / Find myself in life as in a strange garment / Surprised at the earth.' But life had never felt like a mere garment to me. My body was clunky, squishy, heavy. Turning to weight lifting was a method of control. It also made palpable the grief I was carrying. Around that time, I thought often about a conversation I had with another friend, a music professor. He told me that his family questioned the amount of time he spent with his music, noodling with synthesizers. 'We're all going to die,' he said. 'And while I'm here I want to learn a bit of what it means to be alive.' Before this, I had only rarely attempted weight lifting — and usually experienced frustration and injury when I did. Still, those words resonated with me. I had been a writer, an academic and a musician. But after my friend's death changed my life, the thing that gave me the urge to live while there was still time was strengthening my body, challenging my body, surprising myself in the process. Seeing how I might transform, given time, just for the fun of it. I thought of Dante once more, in the land of the dead and newly attuned to his own physical heft. There's a moment in the poet's tour of the afterlife, stopping on the shores of Mount Purgatory, when the spirits notice that Dante is alive, an interloper. They 'had spotted by my breathing,' he writes. The spirits 'were so astonished / that they all turned pale.' (I have used the poet Bernard O'Donoghue's translation.) From the perspective of death, the living body must be a wonder and a shock. All sinews and hairs and fat and muscle and bone. Wet eyes. The necessary breathing. The way your shadow claims its spot of earth. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
