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Comment by retzkek | Hacker News Reader

> just knowing you have the option to reduce stress is enough to make something less stressful

I believe this is a huge source of stress today, with 24-hour news and addictive social media all constantly screaming "the sky is falling" and there's absolutely _nothing_ you can do about any of it. As an experiment, for every bit of news and every tweet you read, ask yourself "is this actionable?"

The best thing you can do for your personal mental and physical well-being is stop paying attention. If you can find a source of local, actionable news that actually affects you, great (good luck). Otherwise just focus on the immediate world around you - family, friends, job, community - and let the larger world do what it's going to do anyways.

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> The best thing you can do for your personal mental and physical well-being is stop paying attention.

Last month, I deleted all of my social media accounts outside of LinkedIn, Tildes, and Hacker News. Additionally, I blocked news sites in my browser and subscribed to both the Economist for current events and the Athletic for my sports addiction.

At first, it was strange- there was a constant feeling that I was missing out on things happening that all my friends and family were in on. I realized, after a while, that I now spend more time improving myself personally rather than worrying about what others are doing.

I wouldn't say I am less distracted.. but it's a different kind of distraction. Rather than finding myself aimlessly browsing a never-ending stream of posts on Reddit, I am now trying to answer questions on Stackoverflow. Rather than reading through posts of my peers landing internships and stressing myself out, I spend time on my resume and learning Go.

Also, people text and call me now rather than shooting me a message on social media which is honestly really nice. Even more so with the current COVID climate.

The most important part though is that I feel as if I have spent more meaningful time with my significant other.

Another change is that I separated my devices.

My laptop ONLY has stuff for school and programming on it. Our iPad has the entertainment in books, games, etc (radio.garden has been fun exploring). My phone has all the default Apple programs only. Since doing so, I can't count the number of times I picked up my phone subconsciously, swiped through it realizing there isn't anything on there, then asking myself why I even picked it up to begin with.

Sorry for the rant.. it's just been a strange adjustment that is showing benefits personally.

To me, Radio Garden has been the app delight of 2020. I found it tremendously fascinating to listen to people living in faraway countries talking on radio, both the hosts and the callers. Often, normal, but nonetheless less interesting, people: the barber in Argentina describing how he started his business 50 years ago; the pissed-off lady who's calling to complain about the traffic in Lisbon. I found it refreshing; I recognized that I was (and I am) still quite fed up with the Tim Ferriss, Weinsten or Joe Rogan's wildly accomplished or popular-on-Twitter guests, and with the dramatizations that after 5 podcast episodes leave you as clueless as you were 5 episodes before.

> ... subscribed to both the Economist ...

Why "The Economist"? I've been trying to find a news source I can trust and won't leave me feeling like we're f--ked as a species and nothing is worthwhile doing.

What are your thoughts on choosing that publication?

It's delayed a week which is enough to avoid the panic and clickbait news but not too long that I miss out on what is occurring in the world. The articles are in-depth and lead me to doing a lot of my own research on the topics.

It's essentially a macro view of the world that allows me to dig more into the things I want.

Many areas have a local NPR-type news source regarding decisions and policy disputes of city councils and mayors. You can reasonably organize efforts to influence these types of decisions.

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