News only once a weekdailyroutine

This is a daily routine for time in motion and pause. Use “News only once a week” to bring a little wellness into the gaps of your day.

News alerts ring dozens of times a day. Even if you don't read it, the title alone fills your mind, and if you read it, 30 minutes disappear. Rather than cutting out information, it may be better to collect it all at once.

The routine of consuming only digests once a week is not choosing ignorance. This is a practice that reduces noise and leaves only signals.

The day I turn off notifications

Turn off news app and portal push notifications. You can temporarily mute news accounts on social media. At first, you may feel anxious because you feel like you are missing out. That anxiety is a reaction to 'not knowing', and doesn't mean you've missed something that's actually important.

After a day or two, your hands will open the news app less often. If you lose the habit of opening during lunch time, that time will go elsewhere.

Try moving the News app icon to the second page on your home screen. If you can't see it, you won't be able to do it. Small barriers make a big difference.

Once a week, 30-minute digest

Sunday morning or Monday before work—set aside a fixed 30 minutes. Decide to only read one trusted newsletter, one podcast digest, or a weekly digest from a newspaper app.

No scrolling, just consume a limited amount. Closes after 30 minutes. That's this week's news. Even if you feel the urge to read more, wait until next week.

When reading or listening to a digest, leave only one line of notes. ‘One thing to remember this week’—at least that’s the information that sticks in your mind.

Urgent news goes through other channels.

The really important stuff comes to other channels before the news app. Company emails, family messages, local disaster texts. In most cases, digest alone does not interfere with daily life. If you do it for a week and look back to see if there was any news you really needed, you will have a baseline.

Even if a colleague asks you at lunch, ‘Did you see that news?’ and even if you don’t know, the conversation continues. You can catch up on the news over the weekend if it's worth including in the digest.

Eating less information does not mean disconnecting yourself from the world. The more time your ears and eyes rest, the more clearly you will hear the remaining 30 minutes.

Looking back a month later, there is less news than I thought I should have missed. The rest are news that you wouldn't have remembered even if you had scrolled. A once-a-week digest reduces the amount of information, leaving you with only the memorable ones.

When choosing a digest, consider ‘reliability’ rather than ‘speed’. Rather than giving away a lot quickly, one channel with the right tone to summarize your week is enough.

When the 30 minutes are up, I close the news app and don't open it again that day. The practice of waiting until the next digest time is half of this routine.