How To Stay Informed While Maintaining Your Mental Health
By Emma Silva, Account Supervisor
As PR professionals, it is extremely important to stay informed. Knowing what is going on in the world and understanding current industry trends helps us to provide the best possible counsel for our clients. Nowadays there are countless ways to stay informed, from podcasts to push notifications. The 24-hour news cycle we have all gotten used to has become increasingly invasive and inescapable. Pressure to always have your finger on the pulse of what’s happening and the fear of missing out perpetuate potentially harmful effects of news consumption.
With so many ways to access news coverage at our fingertips, in our back pockets and on our side tables, staying away or taking a break is hard to do. As much as staying up to date is essential, being constantly plugged in to the news can have numerous negative effects on mental health. Anxiety, depression and insomnia have all been linked to heavy news consumption.
One way to mitigate the negative effects of news is to set clear boundaries for yourself. A simple way to cut back on news consumption and wind down is to avoid checking the news right before you go to bed, or first thing in the morning. Doing so will allow you to unwind at the end of a long day and prepare yourself for a restful night of sleep. In the mornings, getting out of bed and going through a solid morning routine before reaching for your phone allows you to set the tone of your day, rather than the news.
Push notifications can be especially invasive. We have all experienced enjoying a walk outside or a nice cup of coffee with a friend only to be jolted out of the present moment by a vibrating cell phone. Turning off your push notifications for news applications allows you to set the terms of when and how you consume news, rather than letting it be something that controls and invades your classes, meetings or personal interactions.
Scheduling and setting times during the day to engage in news coverage is a good way to consume news on your own terms. It allows you to stay informed, but also limits the amount of time spent endlessly scrolling. Listening to summative news podcasts (such as ABC’s Start Here or The New York Times’ The Daily) on your commute or walk to
class is a great way to fit your daily news briefing in.
It is important to take a step back from the news when you begin to feel overwhelmed. Taking a news and social media break can help you to reset your mind from the stress of the 24-hour news cycle. It can help you to stay calm, cool and collected, and at your best for your clients. When you are at your best, you are able to produce strong and creative work to achieve your campaign objectives.
At the end of the day as PR professionals, we can all agree on the importance of staying up to date on what is going on in the industry, and the world around us. Nearly just as important is preserving our mental well being. It is what helps us be better communicators, writers, speakers and advisors to our clients—which is what we are here for.