Dunno if this trick will help anyone but me, but here it is anyway: go looking for Really Important news from a few years ago. The more sensational the headlines, the more portentous the tones, the better.
When I tried this, I got a mixture of boredom and disgust. This didn’t replace the craving, but it did sort of overwhelm the craving and compelled me to put my attention anywhere else. I think I ended up going for a walk or something.
However, the only sustainable strategy I know of is to put together all the standard habit/addiction things in place. Find a decent replacement (maybe fiction or video games or just journaling), make a personal rule against opening anti-informative media, configure your devices to increase friction around news-reading and lower the reward, take an official break and maybe add some kind of mastbinding mechanism (a week in a cabin without internet access would count), and when you do decide to give in to the temptation, at least try to first spend a few seconds visualizing what it will be like.
Dunno if this trick will help anyone but me, but here it is anyway: go looking for Really Important news from a few years ago. The more sensational the headlines, the more portentous the tones, the better.
When I tried this, I got a mixture of boredom and disgust. This didn’t replace the craving, but it did sort of overwhelm the craving and compelled me to put my attention anywhere else. I think I ended up going for a walk or something.
However, the only sustainable strategy I know of is to put together all the standard habit/addiction things in place. Find a decent replacement (maybe fiction or video games or just journaling), make a personal rule against opening anti-informative media, configure your devices to increase friction around news-reading and lower the reward, take an official break and maybe add some kind of mastbinding mechanism (a week in a cabin without internet access would count), and when you do decide to give in to the temptation, at least try to first spend a few seconds visualizing what it will be like.