Most of what looks like curiosity about the news is not curiosity at all. It is procrastination wearing curiosity’s coat. Here is the anatomy of that habit, and a way out that takes about five minutes.
The first woman was named Pandora, at least according to Greek mythology. She was created as a punishment for mankind, because men had accidentally been given more powerful gifts than Zeus intended. Art and reason.
During the original creation, someone in the workshop of the gods had handed all the useful qualities to the animals, so when it was humanity’s turn there was nothing left. Someone else quickly stepped in with a few stolen divine gifts to cover up the mistake. Zeus noticed, and was not amused.
So the gods gathered around the newly made Pandora and each gave her a gift. One of them was intense curiosity, which apparently men did not have. Hermes gave her a container holding all the misfortunes, diseases, sufferings and disasters of the world.
Driven by her curiosity, Pandora opened it. Out came poverty, hunger and violent death. Taxes, beaver attacks, Nickelback, customer service chatbots that do not work, and running out of coffee. The only thing still inside when she got the lid shut was hope. Which is fortunate, because hope is exactly what you need to put up with the rest.
The box is in your pocket now
The lesson is not that curiosity is bad. It is that curiosity needs somewhere decent to go. Most of us now carry a personal Pandora’s box in a pocket. The news app, or whatever digital equivalent you prefer. A window onto the world and everything happening in it.
And often we open it not out of curiosity at all, but out of habit. “I will start on that thing in a minute. I just need to quickly check what has happened.” And so we open Pandora’s app and pour a swirling stream of negativity over ourselves.
Every habit has three parts
A habit is a trigger, a pattern, and a reward. For those of us cursed with a talent for procrastination, the trigger is almost always stress. You remember something you ought to be doing. It is uncomfortable.
That discomfort sets off the pattern, which is your thumb doing its familiar swipe across the screen. Then comes the reward. Your own worries fade for a moment, overshadowed by the far greater darkness of the world as described on news sites.
The reward strengthens the behaviour, so next time the trigger fires the habit sits even closer to hand. You give in again and again, until one day you notice you have accomplished remarkably little this year while becoming unusually well informed about the daily activities of celebrities you will never meet.
Where to break it
You can handle some stress, but you will never remove it entirely, so there is no point attacking the trigger. Break the pattern instead. That turns out to be much easier, and it is something we already know how to do.
The key is to wake up the prefrontal cortex, the deliberate part of your brain, because a habit runs on autopilot and autopilot cannot survive attention. Next time you catch yourself reaching for the app to avoid something, do three things.
First, name the stress that has taken the wheel. Look at it directly and describe it to yourself, so you know exactly what is happening.
Second, do something only the deliberate part of your brain can do. Count to five. It sounds trivial. It works because acting consciously is precisely the thing autopilot cannot imitate.
Third, start the actual task. You know what it is, and you are probably painfully aware of it. Begin immediately and work on it for five minutes. What usually happens is that you carry on far longer. Start the stone rolling and the slope does the rest. Then, when the stress comes back, you already know what to do.
You will not miss anything
Do not worry about what you are not reading. All the condensed misery of the world will still be waiting in Pandora’s app whenever you want it. No Hermes required. The world’s newsrooms will gladly refill it for you.
Why do I keep checking the news when I know it makes me feel worse?
Because it is usually not curiosity but a habit loop. Stress is the trigger, opening the app is the pattern, and the reward is that your own worries briefly shrink next to the world’s problems. The relief reinforces the loop, so it gets easier to fall into each time.
What is the three-step method for breaking the habit?
First, name the stress that set the habit off, so you are aware of what is happening. Second, count to five, which forces the deliberate part of your brain back online because acting consciously is something autopilot cannot copy. Third, start the task you were avoiding and work on it for five minutes. You will usually keep going much longer.
Will I miss something important if I stop checking?
Very rarely, and when something genuinely matters you will hear about it anyway. Everything else remains available whenever you choose to look. The news is not going anywhere, and nobody has to keep watch over it in real time.
Is curiosity not a good thing?
Curiosity is one of the best things about being human. The point is not to suppress it but to notice where it is being spent. Curiosity aimed at a book, a subject or a person pays you back. Curiosity aimed at a feed that refills itself every few minutes mostly pays the feed.
