I’m going to draw an analogy to finance/investments. If I check the level of the stock market every day or multiple times a day, I become acutely aware of increases and decreases. I might feel a rush of adrenaline when the stock market goes up by 2%, and an overwhelming feeling of despair if it drops by 2%. But if I stop checking it frequently, I can “zoom out” and see that the broader trend is upward. It is true that there is a lot of variation on a short timeline, but over decades the trend is quite clearly upward. Like all analogies, this falls somewhat short in a variety of ways, but the idea I want to drive home is that “the news is just incredibly depressing” because we look at the short-term news. We allow ourselves to be emotionally buffeted and battered by what is happening this day or this week rather than paying attention to larger trends. If it really is vital for a job to stay up to date on the latest news, then at least try to keep some perspective: what is and isn’t within your control, and this too shall pass.
One useful framing can be asking yourself if there is anything you can do to affect this, asking why you care about this particular issue, and asking if there is any purpose/outcome in focusing it. I think that people dying in a civil war in Yemen is horrible because I detest suffering in general, but I have no influence to affect that at all, and my worrying about it doesn’t serve any purpose. I think that the world will be a worse place if USAID funding is reduced, but there isn’t any benefit to me stressing out about that. There are a million things that I would like to see different in the world, but most of them are very much outside my scope of influence.
I’m going to draw an analogy to finance/investments. If I check the level of the stock market every day or multiple times a day, I become acutely aware of increases and decreases. I might feel a rush of adrenaline when the stock market goes up by 2%, and an overwhelming feeling of despair if it drops by 2%. But if I stop checking it frequently, I can “zoom out” and see that the broader trend is upward. It is true that there is a lot of variation on a short timeline, but over decades the trend is quite clearly upward. Like all analogies, this falls somewhat short in a variety of ways, but the idea I want to drive home is that “the news is just incredibly depressing” because we look at the short-term news. We allow ourselves to be emotionally buffeted and battered by what is happening this day or this week rather than paying attention to larger trends. If it really is vital for a job to stay up to date on the latest news, then at least try to keep some perspective: what is and isn’t within your control, and this too shall pass.
One useful framing can be asking yourself if there is anything you can do to affect this, asking why you care about this particular issue, and asking if there is any purpose/outcome in focusing it. I think that people dying in a civil war in Yemen is horrible because I detest suffering in general, but I have no influence to affect that at all, and my worrying about it doesn’t serve any purpose. I think that the world will be a worse place if USAID funding is reduced, but there isn’t any benefit to me stressing out about that. There are a million things that I would like to see different in the world, but most of them are very much outside my scope of influence.