Recently I have been reading "The 4-Hour Work Week".

Until I read it, I had made a habit of reading the news: au.news.yahoo.com, maitlandmercury.com.au, news.com.au, ninemsn.com.au, abc.net.au/news and sbs.com.au.

With the exception of ABC and SBS which tend to actually produce news. Most "news" sites, as above are dominated by endless body image articles and <insert female celebrity>'s "journey from/to empowerment and/or corruption" which actually, when you break it down, is a re-make of Madonna's entire career except with different hair tints.

So when the 4HWW recommended that I should try a 1 week news black out. I was up for it.

It's amazing how much societal noise we are barraged with, and while absorbing it, we miss or crowd out, the important.

So much of the news produced by the main distribution channels is of the "Give the People Games" variety.

So in the vacuum of my news blackout I went to Youtube and found that while to a great degree, it's a mountain of purility, there is gold in them thar hills.

If you want to learn, then there is some content on Youtube that would be informative in the subject area that tickles your fancy.

I like to know a little bit of everything about everything so I subscribed to http://www.youtube.com/user/Vsauce which from the first few videos I have watched is _really_ interesting and on a range of diverse subjects.

I find reading anything that can improve understanding, provide useful life hacks, break apart accepted but fallacious reasoning, and lead me to asking a better "Why?" are all things that provide greater value day to day than news.

So avoid the news for a while. Oh, and don't worry, if something happens that's news worthy and really important your mum will probably ring you.