READING NEWSPAPERS AND MAGAZINES
There are still people who think that reading newspapers is a task related to their work, because they have to know what’s going on. Nothing could be further from the truth. Reading newspapers might make you feel like you’re working, perhaps because they’re often written in sophisticated language and business spiel, or perhaps it’s because you’re often introduced to a subject you’re unfamiliar with. Let me tell you this: even if it makes you feel less stupid than playing games on your phone, reading newspapers is almost as unproductive.
Out of the hundreds of news stories you may have read in the last year, did one ever allow you to make a better decision about a serious matter in your life? Did one ever give you the upper hand on anything? Did one ever help you win a client, give your children good advice, or guide somebody who needed your help?
I know the answer, and so do you.
Most of the things you read in newspapers doesn’t concern you. Worse, reading them doesn’t require much thinking on your behalf. As Mark Twain said, “If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed.” He stated this over a century ago, and it would seem little has changed.
The state of mind of the people who buy newspapers (or watch news on TV) is: “What am I going to think about today?” But what drives people to search for this information? Is it what we call the FEAR of missing out? Fear indeed. From a psychological perspective, negative news and damning headlines sell because they evoke feelings of FEAR and ANGER. Positive news stories are largely underwhelming and forgettable.
In order for media companies to generate revenue and sell more stories, they’re looking for headlines to evoke fear and enrage you. Once you’re hooked on a particular story, you’re likely to keep coming back to that same source for more of the same. It’s nothing personal, just business: the purpose of the media is to enrage you. But paying attention to the news is an unnecessary distraction from your grand vision. You need to blot it out; any truly important events happening in the world will rise to the surface and you’ll know about them anyway. Trust me, if there’s something you absolutely NEED to know, you’ll know.
When the Notre-Dame cathedral was burning in the center of Paris, my beloved city, on April 15, 2019, I was on airplane mode. Yet I still knew about it … somehow. I can’t quite recall how I found out about it. News that really affects us just has a way of making itself known to us.
In order to reach your goals, you must free yourself from anything that diverts you from these goals.
This includes avoiding parasitic news. Information is no longer a scarce commodity. Quite the opposite, in fact. Your time, focus, and energy are scarce commodities.
All the people who’ve ever lived in communist countries, including my father, know that one of the characteristics of propaganda is that it’s usually imposed on us and blows up in our faces even if we don’t ask for it. Those living under a regime often have to search, dig, and question to discover the objective truth. Failure to do so is to condemn yourself to a life of misinformation; those fairy tales for grown-ups. In addition, newspapers not only tell you what to think, but also HOW to think. If you want the truth, you have to dig and look for it yourself.
If you happen to be interested in something you’ve read in the newspapers, again, dig up further and buy a book or two on the topic. Weigh up both sides of the argument. Newspapers and news in general are forms of morbid entertainment—it’s information, but not the right sort. In essence, the media is like fast food for your mind disguised in Kobe beef.
As Nassim Taleb puts it, “To be completely cured of newspapers, spend a year reading the previous week’s newspapers.” It’s like looking at the previous week’s weather forecast: you really don’t care about it. It doesn’t stand the test of time. That’s actually the secret to all of this: if something doesn’t pass the test of time, it’s not worth reading or knowing about. It’s not education, it’s entertainment.
On the other hand, there are books that have been written decades or centuries ago, that are more relevant than ever.
As for magazines, they’re usually shallow and don’t bring much in the way of enlightenment to our lives. Even educational magazines like Success, which I used to read over fifteen years ago, are always discussing the same topics. Once you’ve read three or four of them, you’ve read it all. Every monthly issue, they come back with the same subjects but with another person’s slightly different take on it. I used to read Muscle & Fitness over twenty years ago, but there’s only so many muscles in the human body. I soon realized that the articles were very similar and that the same content was being regurgitated over and over again.
CONFESSION
Sometimes when I sit down in Barnes & Noble with my kids, I still like to open The Rake or The Robb Report. I like great clothes and the finer things in life, but I’m always mindful that, while these magazines can inspire us, I try not to get foolishly absorbed in them, staring at $50m mansions and $500k watches for excessive lengths of time.