Recently I made a few changes to my lifestyle to increase my productivity and to decrease my stress levels. The approach I’ve started following is not radical in any sense but I would like to share it with the world as I feel that there is too much noise nowadays on issues that lack substance. Here is my simple advice to people who want to increase their productivity and cut down their stress levels :

Stop Watching the News!!

Nowadays most news channels have debates where participants are involved in a shouting match to get themselves heard. The viewers who watch these debate shows inadvertently experience a spike in their blood pressure (Google “Arnab Goswami + blood pressure”) as they get more “involved”. Consider this : When you SEE THE NEWS, you assimilate the news content mixed with the emotions of the news presenter and his biases. Most TV News debates begin with an agenda and their content takes awhile to be digested (if you are not distracted by the millions of ads that popup in between).

A simple but effective alternative would be to READ THE NEWS from newspapers and magazines. Most of the times, the ” Breaking News” that you see on screen changes direction every hour and sometimes, the entire context is changed at the end of the day. If you closely examine the content of the news section that you “watched” you will be surprised to note that the 2- hour news section could be easily summarised in 10-15 min. To avoid a scenario where you mull over how you could have used your time more productively, always READ THE NEWS as most people read faster as textual content does unfold gradually as in the case of a video; you can read anywhere and wherever you want in a newspaper. Also, you can form your own opinion about the truth behind the news article and lessen the chance of acquiring a clouded perspective. I do watch news debates, once in a while but reading news has become the norm and it has helped me manage my time immensely.

So,READ the news and save time. If something really demands your attention, someone close to you will surely inform you ( assuming you have people who care about you and talk to you :-)).