Ask HN: How long should I spend every day reading news?

10 points by randy_gilette ↗ HN
I'm trying to manage my time better, allocating sessions to read news every day. 2 sessions (after lunch and evening) seem optimal to me but it's maybe too much. How do you organise yourself ?

7 comments

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I guess it depends what you're trying to achieve, why you read the news, and what else you could be doing instead.

Arguably you could subscribe to something that gives you a competently summarised payload of news at low frequency (monthly?), and spend one long session once a month digesting that.

Read until you begin to wish for global thermonuclear war. Then you have had enough.
It's a brilliant question -- the optimum daily news diet. I find listening to NPR in the morning is a solid minimum dosage of daily headline news. Supplemented later by Bloomberg, Fark, HN, Drudge, etc...

The way one processes news cycles- is very much determined by your personal rhythm and energy levels. Here's an interesting take on the optimal time for everything from the WSJ > http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100008723963904441800045780182...

I read the news with a cup of tea mid-morning, for about as long as the tea lasts.

Probably just as important is what you read, I tend to read the business press because there isn't so much bias and sensationalism as the general media.

Which sources do you read? Every news source has a bias. The ones that feel like they do not may align with your own personal biases.
When I click the Windows 8 button at work the news app shows a headline blurb. If it's interesting (and preferably world news) I click it, and see what else is there too.

Otherwise I let the more interesting news bubble up via social media discussions or chatting with people.

I used to be more on top of it, but it really didn't do me a whole lot of good, other than provide me with an extra bullet point or two to bring up with amateur pundits for them to dismiss and bring up a new subject about some little thing they were told to be outraged about today.

I can't say I feel like I'm missing out on too much.

Now I just don't bother and keep up with the important news: board games (via Reddit), tech news (via HN), and video games (via Kotaku).

It depends on your procrastination profile. I usually do it in the beginning of the day, but after all urgent things are done.