For me,

News means,

N ever

E nding

W aste

S tream.

You ask any thoughtful person about this acronym, they will resonate with it.

Just think over it. Exactly one year ago on this day, which news you have seen and how much your life has been changed based on that news?

Whatever the topic or situation it make you think upon with strain, Does that really matters to you today?

Does that information and bulletin improved any segment of your life? Health, Happiness, Relationship, Hobby?

You will never be able to keep it up with everything you came across on daily basis.

Most of them are being created and distributed purely with the purpose of seeking attention, not for informing you the truth. As technology and internet is widening its scale and speed on its peak, Distribution process of news has become cheaper and easier than ever before. Its because the distribution is very easy and cheap, process of writing news script has become very quick. On an average, one person in news industry is writing 8-10 articles or script a day.

Moreover, How can we define the credibility and believability of that person who is writing about the topic?

I don’t even call all of them journalist, because they are just information twister to fulfil their own back office agendas behind the tag of a journalist.

And writing 10 articles a day is is like a cricketer having practice in nets.

We never spent our precious time to watch Sachin Tendulkar facing 500 balls in net practice every morning.

We only watch him play on the real ground where he express his talent.

Just think about it, He played 463 one day international where he faced 21,367 deliveries. But during the practice session, he has faced hundreds of thousands of deliveries.

We didn’t spent time to watch all those practice sessions. Did we ever tried to keep it up with all delivery he face in his life?

It might seems ridiculous questions to everyone. But that’s what we do on regular basis.

We are allowing our time and attention to someone who is not performing but practicing his best to survive in competition. Entire game of their team is to trigger your inferiority and fear so that you keep your eyes on them to find solutions. (Which they never going to offer.)

On a contrary, we can look at the example of Warren Buffet, Robert Greene and Matt Ridley.

Warren buffet shares his thoughts and views only once in a year through his Annual Letter of Berkshire Hathaway. Robert Greene publish a book once in 4 years on an average. Matt Ridley publish his book every three year on an average. But all three are coming up with profound knowledge, deep insights and thoughtful research which has its impact and meaning in our life. They never try to extrapolate their ideas on daily basis.

News platforms are all attention hungry people who just want to leverage their viewership into capital gain.

Now the question arise is,

What can be the solution?

It lies in quote of American Economist, Herbert A. Simons,

“Wealth of information creates poverty of Attention”

There must be certain defined parameters for ourselves when it comes to news. We must cultivate self control to restrict our attention on few important sectors.

I always believe that,

Anything which I can’t define properly for myself, will ultimately gain control over my life.

If you can’t define it for yourself. It will ultimately control you. Period.

Solution: Thoughtfully define what is NEWS. It will take lot of mental energy in that brainstorming but it will pay its dividends for lifetime.