Morning coffee in hand, I started scrolling through my phone. Another wild headline popped up – something about potatoes curing something-or-other. Yeah, right. I sighed. Finding decent info feels like digging through junk sometimes. Needed a better plan.
First, I decided to actually stop mindlessly scrolling. Sounds simple, right? But man, it's harder than it looks. My thumb just wants to flick! So, I set a stupidly small goal: check just one news app for 5 minutes after coffee, not while sipping it. Failed the first day. Nailed it the second. Small wins.
Next part? Questioning everything. Even stuff that looks legit. Saw an article quoting a "prominent expert." Okay, who is this person? Instead of just reading, I paused. Searched the expert's name. Looked for:
- Where they work.
- If other places mentioned them.
- What folks in their actual field think.
Found out one "expert" was actually a guy whose main gig was selling weird vitamins online. Dodged that nonsense!
Another thing I tried? Finding the boring original source. Read a sensational story about a new health study. Instead of taking the news site's word for it, I hunted down the actual study summary. Hard to read? Absolutely. But it said something waaaaay less exciting than the news article claimed. Classic case of telephone gone wrong.
Also got back into reading proper books from the dang library. Sounds old-school, I know. But grabbing a physical book on a topic forces a different pace. Authors usually have to back up their claims better than some random online post written at 2 AM. Spent a lunch break reading a history book instead of Twitter. Felt... calmer. Smarter, maybe?
Oh! And I started actually muting sources that kept being trash. There's this one website always screaming about EVERYTHING BEING A CRISIS. After the third time I got riled up over something they exaggerated, I muted the whole thing. Poof! Less noise. Mental peace.
So, here's what stuck:
- Control the scroll: Set tiny boundaries.
- Dig Deeper: Who is saying this? Really?
- Find the Origin: Seek the boring original report, not the spicy take.
- Trust Paper & Ink: Books and journals still hit different.
- Clean Up Your Feed: Ruthlessly mute the junk peddlers.
It’s work, yeah. Doesn't happen automatically. But after a couple weeks of doing bits of this daily? My feed feels less like a dumpster fire and finding actual, reliable nuggets of knowledge feels more possible. Just gotta keep shoveling through the mud.
