“Here’s some breaking news: you’re not in the news business. It’s nice that you want to be well informed, but does a protest in Belarus really need to drag your attention away from your kid’s soccer game? Empathy is a good thing, but do you really need to be distracted from a quiet, introspective moment to be made aware of a mudslide, flood, or another natural disaster a world away? You’re not a first responder. The only thing you’re responding to is the bait being dangled by news organizations trying to convince you that you need to know something now when you probably don’t need to know it at all. Breaking news? The only thing that’s breaking is you. El Chapo wished he had a customer base this addicted.” From me in FastCompany: I write about news for a living. This is why you need to turn off news notifications.

+ And if you missed it last week, I got a ton of reactions to this one: Every day I go out into the swirling cesspool of bad news about bad people doing bad things. So I might seem like an odd messenger to deliver this missive: People aren’t all that bad. Check out my article in the Boston Globe: I read more news than anyone. Trust me, people are better than we’re led to think.