How to Deal with the Never-Ending News Cycle

Today’s news is highly repetitive and available on demand. Here’s the thing: You get to decide when to demand it.

Perhaps the reason it’s so easy for the public to feel victimized by news coverage is simply this: Time.

The foundation of our civilization is based on beginnings and endings, all based on time. Our internal clocks tell us to work in the daytime and sleep by the moonlight. We go to school for a certain amount of time during the year, with each day broken down into timed allotments for such things as math, science, recess, and lunch. From school, we go to work, where time continues to dictate where we need to be, when and with whom. We carve out our days around the time to eat, work and relax. For most everything you can think of, including our relationships and friendships, there’s a defined beginning and a defined ending.

And then there’s the news.

What’s interesting here is none of this reliance, this conditioning, built around time is true with news today. A life connected to technology means the news is always there, always changing, on its never-ending quest to bring you the latest developments, even if there really aren’t any to report. And that’s what makes it so unwieldy, so hard to grapple with…