Interesting, about 20 years ago my dad stopped consuming all news media. He said "It's all negative, it's killing us all and if anything important happens I'll find out anyway."

I've not been brave enough to totally "check out", but I do avoid sensationalized news and try to pay more attention to valuable information rather than "drama".

Meanwhile at work I always remind my team "Hey we are not curing cancer, relax, slow is fast, fast is slow."

I tell my teams my job is easy because as a manager I only have four things to do:

  1) Provide Air Cover (reduce stress)

  2) Provide resources

  3) Provide direction

  4) Get the F* out of the way

I find that #1 is harder than it sounds, but as this article points out stress is infectious and can really slow a team down. I've had more than one stressed out employee come into my office and explain how we're missing some deadline or whatever and I always say "Yup, ok we'll get through it, we're not curing cancer here." we both laugh and they walk out with a lighter step to their walk.

That said I believe in accountability and we try to pick these things up in retro's and figure out how to avoid them in the future.

I like to say "I like originality in mistakes, big massive mistakes are fine, just learn and try not to repeat them."