You are working on an assignment, or perhaps a PowerPoint presentation and then suddenly you feel the urge to check your favorite newspaper website for the latest updated news. It could be the BBC, CNN, The Boston Globe, The Straits Times or the Times of India. The question is – do you really need to be constantly updated about somebody else’s take regarding the events happening in the world? Are your online news reading habits becoming an interruption to you, your work and the flow of your thoughts?
Now I do not blame the news providers for this, they are following and doing what they do best. The problem lies in our own mind and the habits we have created. We are addicted to news reading – or least a vast majority of business owners and professionals are. Earlier it was just the morning fix of news. But now with wireless internet coupled with laptop warriors around the place, it is continuous. You can keep checking the news 24 hours and keep reading endlessly about what is happening all over the world. The question is do we really need to know so much about everything?
Perhaps we need to be disciplined in the allocation of time we devote online to news reading. In the absence of that news can become a constant interruption in your workflow, leading eventually to lower productivity and sub standard delivery of work to your company, client or partner.
Dennis Taraporewala 
Thank you for your comments. It’s true and of course some habits actually take us closer to our consciousness or the awareness of our consciousness. Some examples – the habit of being joyful, the habit of merging with music, the cultivated habit of sitting meditation, the habit of focusing in on the job at hand or the present moment, the habit of regular bodywork. Enjoy.
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All of us are addicted to so many things, the most innocuous of them being our own habit patterns. The example of the newspaper is one such habit pattern but there are so many more. All habit patterns impede our connection with our own consciousness and starting with tackling the challenges wrt the new reading habit is a lovely point since it is the most regular unproductive work most people do, particularly wrt the degradation in the quality of journalism.
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