1. Give up news. Not necessarily Hacker News, although it's an idea, but mainstream newspaper, television, radio etc. news. It's remarkably easy to cut out completely in one fell swoop and can make an enormous difference to your mental real estate. You won't miss it, you won't miss out (the big stuff will find its way to you regardless) and it can actually be an entertaining challenge to be religious about avoiding it in its ambient forms.
2. Beware the rabbit hole. Whenever considering following a tangential link or taking time out from work for some infotainment diversion, fully consider that it carries a risk, which you cannot necessarily assess or control, that it will end up taking you a long way down. Take that first step by all means but in full consideration of the expected (statistically speaking) cost of doing so.
3. Rename your "to read" list "sounded interesting". Come back to it if something on it ever bubbles up from your subconscious as being relevant to the task at hand. Maybe.
4. Meditate, walk, write. These three activities above all others seem most widely recommended as reaping huge rewards in this arena, with a daily dose of around 30 minutes being a typical prescription for each. This is not from any long term personal experience unfortunately, but there's a near certainty at the back of my mind that a regime of these three each day would be transformative for me. A couple of observations on these I can draw from personal experience; the first two activities can be combined; and on the writing, pen and paper is to be recommended, and committing to throw it out at the end of the session is a marvelous cure for writers block.
> You won't miss it [news], you won't miss out (the big stuff will find its way to you regardless)
Maybe it is different in the valley or wherever, and of course highly dependent on your social circles, but not being able to comment any current affairs can make some conversations quite awkward. Personally I'd find that it would not reflect well on the person.
Also I would say that it is far better to choose your own news sources rather than rely on random regurgitations.
And this is coming from a person who does not follow news, and hasn't done so for most of his adult life. Ignorance is a bliss, but it is still ignorance.
> [...] not being able to comment any current affairs can make some conversations quite awkward
Not really.
I don't watch TV since 1998. I also don't read newspapers (exceptions are sometimes made for weekly magazines like Time, Economist, Spiegel or New Yorker and monthly magazines of all sorts) and don't listen to radio (for example, I always drive in silence -- it's not boring as many people tend to think). I also don't read general-purpose news web sites, like BBC.
Despite all that I have never felt awkward talking to anybody about current affairs. Someone expresses to you their dissatisfaction with some politician or excitement about some celebrity you never heard of (I was in this situation trillion times)? Ask them who is he or she and why they cause this dissatisfaction, which party they belong to, or whether they have previous history of screwing things up.
People will gladly explain this all to you if it really matters to them. Your desire to listen will remove all awkwardness.
I concur about watching news. Just stop. I cut my cable entirely actually. I still have Netflix, which can be a time sink, but is less prone to just being "on" all the time like a lot of people do with news channels.
"News" is just a way to constantly bombard you with negative bullshit which will cause all kinds of anxiety and resulting other problems.
I stopped watching television about 8-9 years ago. I don't have a TV or a radio anymore. My car's radio antenna is physically disconnected from the receiver. No newspaper, no general news portals, local or international. Haven't missed out on a single important thing. Tremendous improvement in mindset and interests.
2. Beware the rabbit hole. Whenever considering following a tangential link or taking time out from work for some infotainment diversion, fully consider that it carries a risk, which you cannot necessarily assess or control, that it will end up taking you a long way down. Take that first step by all means but in full consideration of the expected (statistically speaking) cost of doing so.
3. Rename your "to read" list "sounded interesting". Come back to it if something on it ever bubbles up from your subconscious as being relevant to the task at hand. Maybe.
4. Meditate, walk, write. These three activities above all others seem most widely recommended as reaping huge rewards in this arena, with a daily dose of around 30 minutes being a typical prescription for each. This is not from any long term personal experience unfortunately, but there's a near certainty at the back of my mind that a regime of these three each day would be transformative for me. A couple of observations on these I can draw from personal experience; the first two activities can be combined; and on the writing, pen and paper is to be recommended, and committing to throw it out at the end of the session is a marvelous cure for writers block.