Yesterday I was reading an article on Medium and the author said something really interesting that gave me the idea for this article - a big part of what we're reading won't offer us any valuable information that will last for more than a few days.
This applies mostly to those who are obsessed with reading everything related to news, who constantly want to know what's happening in the world and who never read anything that could offer them some information that would last for more than 48 hours.
My godfather was like that - he thought it's vital for anyone to watch the TV in order to know what's happening in the world and be "informed" even tho that wasn't helping him with anything.
He was literally spending hours in front of a screen consuming tons of content and learning about all kind of events for nothing. He wasn't benefiting from that, he didn't need any of that information for work and he couldn't do anything to change or reverse certain events.
His only reason to watch the news and "inform" himself was his desire to appear like he knew more than others. That was it. When he was younger he was an engineer and he was also pretty respected, but from what I know, that was pretty much the only thing he spent time learning that lasted for more than a few days.
Spending several years in college learning how to be an engineer helped him have a career and later in life, a lot of money. After he stopped working, he wasn't doing much except owning a small shop in a small city, and that wasn't really a lot of work.
And of course he blamed all that on the "system", on the government not offering people enough jobs and so on. It didn't matter that he could use his engineering knowledge to work on something online or use technology at his advantage to do something, or even learn a completely new skill unrelated to technology that could offer him something to do.
He was obsessed with knowing what was happening in the world so much that he ignored everything else around him that he could learn to have even a better life.
I feel like a lot of people do exactly what my godfather used to do and I think it's wrong. I can't remember when was the last time I watched anything onTV (since I threw it out of my room when I was 14) to see what's new in the world and I don't really have a problem with it. I like being ignorant about that.
Most of the things that are happening are really out of my control and I can't do anything to change them. If there's something interesting that happens, I'll find about it online since I have enough ways to get the information I want.
But other then that, I'm "protected" against any useless information about what happened somewhere in the world that I cannot change in any way no matter how much I'd like to.
Instead, I prefer to spend my time consuming content that offers me some kind of information that lasts. For example, I'd rather spend my time and read an article like The Perfectionism Conundrum - How to Overcome Perfectionism and Its Ramifications and Why I don't want to grow up that help me gain a new perspective on things and act in a different way in certain situations.
Maybe I could even learn something from those articles that would help me improve my life somehow (I know that the first article did teach me something really important, and I talked about it in an article I wrote a few days ago called Stop comparing yourself with the best of others).
This type of information will last. This type of content that I consumed helped me learn something that I'm using to change my life in a good way. You don't get this kind of information and knowledge from watching the news.
Look at how much time you spend watching the news and consuming content that offers you nothing that lasts, and find a way to change that. Being informed about important problems where you can do something to improve certain situations is a good thing. However, spending 3 or 4 hours a day in front of the TV just to be "informed" about things that won't help you or anyone you know with anything, that's just wasted time that you could invest in something a lot more productive.