It’s time to control your inputs and to try to block out some of the information that’s coming your way, which is making you panic or anxious or affecting your sleep.
At times like this, you have the ability to choose from one of two routes:
1)To just allow yourself to be overwhelmed by a stream of media that you can't possibly control ‘drinking from a fire hose’.
2)Shutting out everything and then selectively letting back in information and opinions and learning from sources that you trust or have selected yourself.
My strategy for the present time is to check the BBC News app (on a desktop) once a day. That’s usually in the middle of the day, so that it doesn’t get in the way of going to sleep or planning the start of the day.
I have selected two sources of information, New scientist and Information is beautiful and the updates on these are pretty much giving me a good sense of where things are in relation to what the news media is saying.
Information is beautiful, updates every three-four days. New scientist, again has a lag period.
The rest of the time, I’m trying to take in stuff that may improve myself or will make me better, and I’ve made a couple of suggestions below of things you might want to take the time to look at, to take you out the bubble of a pandemic and push you forwards into thinking about what might come next.
As an aside, now might be the time to consider where you collect your media from too. It doesn’t have to be Amazon all the time, just because it’s easy. As long as Amazon continue to force unacceptable working practices on their staff and tax avoidance strategies to damage society as a whole, it’s probably better that we look to alternatives elsewhere. It might be that those alternatives are no better, but to try to dilute the dominance of Amazon in the marketplace is always a good idea.
An alternative place to access Audiobooks and eBooks is Kobo and for normal books, Wordery is a great alternative (you can’t get Audiobooks on Wordery)
A few book suggestions I have are:
1) Stuffocation by James Wallman.
Everybody’s starting to realise that there is too much stuff in their house and they have nowhere to put it, also realising that they spent a lot of the money that they wish they had now, buying stuff that they don’t need. This book breaks it down beautifully.
2) Affluenza by John de Graaf, David Wann and Thomas H. Naylor, this book has been around for a long time but it's what many people get caught up in, as they chase for status through material stuff, that then makes them poor and pushes them back down the status ladder.
3) Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport, listen to this on Audiobook, as you go out for your daily exercise or just create some space in your life, it will also give you the strategies to settle down and limit the fire hose effect of the media that’s coming your way.
4)David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell, is one of the most inspiring books I’ve ever read and seems more appropriate now than ever before.
5)Linchpin by Seth Godin, if you want to find out about what you should be doing at work right now, Seth Godin told you years ago.
Blog Post Number - 2321
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