I had a thought in early September that is still compelling to me today. It was about the many TV episodes and online videos I feel compelled to watch in the evening. I had begun to wonder if my desire to watch so many of these related to a desire to escape. Specifically, escape from all the other information I was processing throughout the day.
In the past, especially when I started developing anxiety after finishing high school, the amount of shows and videos I watched was a real problem.
Although I have always been interested in stories, the amount of late hours I regularly spent consuming them on TV or online was far too many. It became bad enough that I was chronically sleep deprived, causing my loved ones considerable grief.
As time has passed I have made great progress toward controlling this habit. I did so by committing to watching only one half hour and one hour long show or video (or seventy-five minutes) at most in the evening.
There are still occasions though when I end up getting "sucked down a hole", as they say, while watching online videos (mostly on YouTube).
This often leads to me having difficulty functioning the next day as a result of the considerable sleep I lost. Why does it keep happening, I've wondered. Why, when I now know that staying up long hours staring at a screen is bad for sleep hygiene (which is important to maintain for overall health)?
In early September I started to think that this habit was in response to how much daily information I processed. This was after listening to an interesting interview on the CBC radio show Spark. The episode examined the idea of concentration and the interviewee, Professor Stefan Van der Stigchel, said that distractions like phone and social media notifications are harming our ability to focus (although such harm is not irreversible). He also said that general life worries and mental health problems can also contribute to losing focus. In those cases, people often reach for their phones to distract themselves from such emotions.
As I pondered this interview, I thought about my own ability to concentrate. It had considerably diminished after my anxiety started and I had to work hard to get it back. In some ways, I'm still working hard at it.
This lead to my aforementioned thought, that maybe I have felt compelled to watch so many shows and videos so I could lose myself in their set narratives. Narratives which, unlike the ones in my own life, I don't have to worry about controlling. I felt like this theory made a lot of sense and that I should consider trying to reduce how much news, media and other information I received daily.
With that in mind, I started not reading/listening to/watching any news (unless I had a very good reason) when I started my day and had breakfast. I would only do so in my off hours after I had started working. This was in addition to the habit I had already started of not checking my email until after I had gotten up and finished breakfast. I really think doing both has made me able to focus better when my working day begins, as long as I get a good sleep the night before. However, thanks to my seventy-five minute evening entertainment limit, I think getting that sleep is becoming easier as well.
I've heard of "taking a break from the news", in the sense of escaping from all the worrisome and depressing events happening in the world.
Perhaps in these times though, when information is more prevalent than ever (whether in the news, social media or advertising),"taking a break from the news" is worth considering for focus as well as mental health.
By that, I mean that we should avoid receiving too much daily information, so as not to become "information fatigued" and be unable to focus on what we need to. Mental health (although important in itself) goes hand in hand with concentration as well.
Do you feel like there have been times where you have been affected by information fatigue? Do you have a method for avoiding it? I'd be interested to learn about it in the comment section below.