Stop Pretending to be Informed

Donnell via Unsplash

As the news moved from papers to pockets, it became increasingly digitized, fragmented, and scattered across the web in a million pieces. Not only are there now more ways to read an article, but there are now also hundreds of additional articles that pop up like whack-a-moles.

The ubiquity and frequency of today’s news cycles inhibit our ability to digest stories at a reasonable and meaningful pace. We are utterly and completely inundated with the news—and it’s often fast news. Daily stories that break, develop, and fade within hours—not days or weeks like they used to. While this proliferation of digital news has brought new perspectives, new approaches to reporting, new mediums for delivering content, it has also created a conundrum: an immense and insurmountable pressure to stay informed.

The ubiquity and frequency of today’s news cycles inhibit our ability to digest stories at a reasonable and meaningful pace. You log on to Facebook or Twitter, scroll past two dozen headlines, pause on a few, and consider yourself semi-informed. At least, you tell yourself, you’ll know what people are talking about. But how many times have you had the following conversation:

“Did you see that thing about X?”

“Yes, that’s so crazy. So what actually happened?”

“Oh, I didn’t actually read the article. I just saw the headline.”

Our pressure to stay informed on the most recent stories all the time deters us from diving deeper into **one story. **This surface-level approach is dangerous to our collective knowledge. While we’re too busy pretending to know something about everything, we’re learning nothing about anything.

My solution is two-fold:

1 | Stop pretending to be informed.

It’s OK to admit you aren’t caught up on every daily news story.

2 | Slow way down.

Try to read just one article per day, and I mean the whole article. Understand its purpose, alternative opinions, why it relates to the bigger picture. Don’t rush to the next article. Just let this one sit with you for a day and marinate.

Our pressure to stay informed on the most recent stories all the time deters us from diving deeper into one story. It will take a collective effort to push back against the 24/7 news cycle. It’ll feel off—like you’re actively ignoring the world around you. But, in fact, you’re doing the exact opposite. You’re being thoughtful and methodical in your approach to learn more deeply about the issues and events occurring around us. Just because you take one at a time, doesn’t mean that you’ll be left behind. Rather, by pushing aside this pressure to be informed, you will feel more knowledgable about the world around you than ever before.