I’ve come to realize that news serves my life almost no value, while knowledge provides my life with immense value.
With this realization in mind, I developed an important motto:
Knowledge over news.
I’ve spent a lot of time this month going over some high-level concepts with incredible depth, so I’m going to keep this particular post brief.
While this will be short, it doesn’t make this concept unimportant.
It’s just that I believe the gist of this can be captured with brevity.
Let’s dig in…
News
We all know what news is.
That 24/7 cycle that seems to be driving Americans crazy.
I never bought into it. I canceled cable television years ago, and I haven’t watched much TV since. It never struck me as a good idea to get sucked into that vortex.
Moving abroad, though, has greatly helped me in my quest to “ignore the noise”.
Even without cable TV in the States, I felt like a lot of news was kind of forced down my throat. It’s hard to totally escape it.
But since most of the channels on my TV over here in Thailand are in Thai, I’m blissfully ignorant of most news. I do have access to Western news channels, if I were so inclined to get that fix, but I don’t turn them on.
There are two main points about news you need to understand:
- News provides almost no actionable value for your life.
- News rapidly depreciates to zero.
That’s right. It’s shocking, but it’s true.
Finding out what Celebrity X said about Celebrity Y will provide your life with no actionable value. There’s nothing worthwhile you can do with this information.
Likewise, the same can be said about any other piece of news information.
Politician John Doe went and said blah blah about this and that. Someone located across your city is upset about some new construction. An actor was arrested for driving while under the influence. Somebody’s Facebook update states they’re now in a relationship. The stock market is up/down today by X%.
None of it matters!
None of it will change your day-to-day life at all. There’s no actionable value in any of this.
Meanwhile, this news depreciates to zero extremely rapidly.
I mean, this is why there’s a 24/7 news cycle in the first place. If whatever happened on Monday morning still had relevance on Wednesday afternoon, there wouldn’t be a reason to have a news broadcast on Wednesday afternoon.
Unfortunately, there’s almost no value to news the second after you hear about it.
It makes a new car’s depreciation pretty tame by comparison. At least you can still drive the car around. News, however, won’t get you anywhere.
Knowledge
Now let’s compare news to knowledge.
Per Oxford Dictionaries knowledge is defined as the following:
Facts, information, and skills acquired through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject.
Your knowledge is the sum of everything you know.
What’s been great about avoiding news over the last ten years is that I’ve been able to apply far more of my finite resources toward the gathering of knowledge. This has had an immensely positive impact on my life.
And this spread in resources dedicated toward knowledge over news has only widened since moving abroad, which has resulted in an ability to live my best life and become the best financial, physical, and mental version of myself.
There are two main points about knowledge you need to understand:
- Knowledge provides actionable value for your life.
- Knowledge appreciates over time.
These dynamics are in complete opposition to news.
Without knowledge, you’re paralyzed when it comes to taking action. It’s impossible to take action when you’re completely uninformed of the relevant facts.
Investing is a perfect example of this.
News about a snowstorm in Minnesota won’t help me invest. Actually, that won’t help me do anything.
But the knowledge I gain by learning, say, how financial statements work is immensely valuable and actionable toward knowing how to analyze and value businesses.
And that knowledge has also greatly helped me manage my own finances, since we’re all essentially the CFOs of our own lives. I’m able to, for instance, maintain a fortress balance sheet in my life because I know what a balance sheet is, how important it is, and what a great balance sheet looks like. Without this knowledge, I’m almost helpless as it pertains to this particular subject.
I couldn’t have built my FIRE Fund without knowledge. Indeed, I wouldn’t have been able to achieve FIRE without knowledge.
I’m able to take action in my life – across so many different aspects of my life – precisely because of my base of knowledge across many different disciplines.
Knowledge Over News
With this knowledge (see what I did there?) in mind, it’s important to almost always choose knowledge over news. Unless there’s some kind of world-changing event actively occurring, news should be universally avoided.
The reasons should be clear here.
While paying attention to social media and whatever is going on with politics might seem tempting, the reality is that you only have so many resources.
Your time, focus, and energy are all limited. The more of these resources you dedicate toward news, the less you’ll naturally have left over to dedicate toward knowledge. And your life will suffer – or at the very least, you’ll be less equipped and knowledgeable to chase after your goals in life.
Not only does knowledge appreciate, but it also compounds.
Warren Buffett, when espousing the importance of reading to a group of students, once stated:
That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest.
I’ve personally found that one piece of new knowledge usually somehow aids an older piece of knowledge. Every new thing I learn tends to somehow give new, more profound insight to something older in my brain’s database of facts and information. They add value to each other. Information complements other information. And this appreciation and compounding effect is incredibly powerful when you’re able to take advantage of it.
I look at it like trees. Each larger piece of knowledge is like a giant tree that grows upward from seeds of curiosity. These trees eventually allow new seeds to fall and be planted, which give rise to new trees. Before you know it, you have an entire forest.
I spend multiple hours per day reading, watching, and adding to my base of knowledge. This is possible because I was able to retire in my early 30s, which in and of itself was possible because I was gaining and applying knowledge.
I haven’t paid any attention to news in almost a decade. If I were prioritizing news over knowledge all this time, I’d be willing to bet my bottom dollar I’d still be at my job.
With that, there’s a sense of accomplishment with knowledge.
Not only are there the actual goals that you’ll be able to go out and accomplish with knowledge, but there’s also a sense of ongoing progress with knowledge. You learn something new, check it off, and go on to learn something else new. You’re better off for it.
Meanwhile, news is a never-ending spew of nonsense that doesn’t seem to ever make any progress or have an end in sight. You’re never better off for it.
Lastly, news can be biased or faked. News can be and often is used to move an agenda forward.
Knowledge, on the other hand, is simply facts. The latter is far less likely to be slanted, and the latter can also help you discern between when the former is real and when it’s not.
Conclusion
I originally had a much longer article planned for this concept. I decided to cut a lot of it out because this is all fairly self-explanatory.
If you want to waste your time on social media and the 24/7 news cycle, be my guest. But I can guarantee you that it won’t serve you. That information depreciates to zero almost instantaneously.
If you instead decide to dedicate your limited resources toward building out your knowledge base, I can almost guarantee you that your life will be far better across the board because of it. You’ll find that knowledge provides you with an ability to be informed and take action, all while seeing these individual facts and slices of information appreciating and compounding over time. And you’ll feel like you’re progressing forward as a human being, which is instrumental to enjoying FIRE and being generally happy in life.
What do you think? Knowledge over news? Why or why not?
Thanks for reading.
Image courtesy of: digitalart at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.
P.S. If you’re interested in building out your knowledge base, which could greatly help you achieve FIRE, check out some amazing resources I personally used on my way to retiring in my early 30s!
I think you are correct!
I know that MMM also has a post similar to this, and he talks about area of influence or something like that. You cannot change the world, but you do affect your area of influence. And thats where the focus should be. News is so depressing I usually do like you, turn it off. Since, and I am gonna be brutally honest now, almost made me wanted to not live anymore. And I am not alone in this. Since then I made a change, no more news 24/7.
Started reading on what is good instead. Goodnewsnetwork is a good example. And made facts over time something to put my trust in. Read up on Steven Pinker and Hans Rosling. As a kid from the 80´s we usually think that those were the good awsome time. No…that is not true. We remember it like that because we were kids and did not know about the world. (cold war armageddon, remember?)
I am getting off topic here, but my point is that the world is and always will be shit if you look at it with shitty eyes, but a lot of things are constantly improving. But the news never talks about that, they only want more viewers. And that goes for all news, real news, fake news, funny news, celibrity news, random crap on “social media”.
Today we have more democracy, more money, more stuff, more medical care, more free time, more everything than ever before. Sure it is not perfect and also with its drawbacks etc..but it is so much better today. People who long for the 50´s just do not know how it was back then.
Relax from the day to day fights in politics, I think it is messing with your head.
What if we hade 24/7/365 news and social media in the 80´s..omfg.
Take care Jason! Thanks for all the inspiration.
Andreas,
Yeah, I definitely agree with you (and MMM) on the influence aspect. I started going down that road with the initial draft (which was much longer), but I decided to separate that element of the discussion into a totally separate article (which is now complete). You could take this concept and really run with it. I cut this way down because I kept going down rabbit holes. The bottom line here is, it’s an incredibly important motto to try to stay true to in your life. The benefits are wide-reaching and substantial.
News is negative and biased because people eat it up. It’s slanted purposefully in that way. Knowledge is neither positive nor negative. It’s just a collection of information based on facts. I actually remember someone commenting on Dividend Mantra a while back about something like how the entirety of my library pales in viewership comparison to one episode of TV about the Kardashian family. There’s nothing I can do about that. I only focus on what brings me joy and what I can control, and I hope the writing helps others.
The social media is particularly bad. If it weren’t for the writing, I wouldn’t have social media accounts. I only use social media to share content and life updates for interested readers. Once I stop producing content, I’ll shut those accounts down.
Best regards!
I agree.
News are like a black hole where we sink our attention.
Learning new knowledge is like building a house. The bricks you set stay there for a long time and help you build even more on top.
News are like popcorn. Somewhat satisfying, but ultimate provide no nutrition to our brain.
Learning is like a gourmet meal. Satisfying, complex and enriching.
I choose knowledge all the way.
Clarence,
Sounds like we’re on the same page! 🙂
Thanks for dropping by.
Cheers.
I find cable news is the worst kind of reality show, in that there is nothing real about it. If you watch the radical left programing on CNN & follow that up with the radical right on FOX, you are left wondering did I watch news or The Twilight Zone. If Walter Cronkite ever saw what is considered news today, he would roll over in his grave.
Brian,
Confirmation bias at its finest. People just want to be part of an echo chamber that reaffirms whatever they think, regardless of whether or not facts support the case. I never saw the value in getting sucked into that vortex, fortunately. 🙂
Best regards.
I have to agree on this, I do read some financial newspapers. But this is to keep in touch with some of the companies I follow but don’t want to read the entire annual report because they are not intresting enough at set time. But I never read the normal newspapers, I couldn’t care less what a politician did or say yesterday and I also don’t care what the write about the celebs.
But luckily not everybody is the same.
LTI,
Agreed. Fortunately, we’re not all the same. The world wouldn’t be a very fun place if we were all clones of one another. Plus, it’s easier to rise above the noise and take advantage of the folly when others are going about it the wrong way.
Best wishes.
I think people mostly watch the news so they can talk to other people about the news.
Anonymous,
I’m sure that’s part of it. Your vibe attracts your tribe. If you want to watch the news so that you have something to talk about with others who watch the news, you’ll be part of that cycle forever.
I’d rather choose knowledge and have something to talk about with others who have made that same choice.
Cheers!
Very good. We shut off cable a while ago beaide getting rid of all the negativity shutting it off saves $205 a month !!! I also get the creeps how much the cable companies and smart phone companies track our lives.
On the other hand this is one of my favorite times of the year as my annual reports of companies I own are coming out 🙂 I enjoy reading them and voting my shares 🙂
Great topic Thanks 🙂
Bob
Bob,
I hear you on the negativity. I don’t want or need that stuff in my life. Life’s way too short for that. FIRE is about enjoying life. 🙂
I love ignoring the noise, although I found that slightly difficult to do in the US – even without cable TV. It’s never been easier since moving abroad.
Cheers.
If news is truthful it can be useful. But most of it is is just trying throw off a biased point of view, and the news is there to justify that view. Knowledge is far better. How to Pick Quality Shares by Phil Oakley has transformed my stock selection approach. I could have listed to the news or taken in his book.
Taking the time searching for knowledge is an enjoyable hunt and at times can be profitable, but you become a better person most definitely.
Anonymous,
A lot of news is definitely slanted. However, even news that isn’t slanted is probably of little value, and it’ll usually depreciate to zero almost immediately.
Knowledge suffers from neither problem. 🙂
Best regards.
Talib in Fooled by Randomness makes this point, particularly when you see the funny headline like “Stocks buoyed by trade news” and they are up like 0.1%. Noise noise noise.
I deleted facebook a year ago and I feel so much happier. Thats also around the time I started really growing the fire fund. Wonder if that is correlated…
Rob,
Yeah, I developed an ability to ignore stock/financial noise some time ago. But it took me a little bit longer to ignore all noise. My life is much better off without any of it.
I mean, I just look at the average American who consumes a lot of news. You look at that physical, mental, and financial picture. We all know what that looks like. Then I take a look at myself and my situation. I look at my physical, mental, and financial condition. To each their own, but I’m pretty happy with my path thus far. 🙂
Best wishes!
B-b-but Jason……….JUSSIE SMOLLETT!!!!! If we don’t follow the “news”, how will we learn about that actor I’ve never heard of on that show I’ve never seen.
In all fairness, I’m not actually against following the news. It can contain valuable information about the goings-on in your local community or help you form opinions/beliefs about important current events that may affect you or those you care about (and that’s important if you want to be politically active, support s cause, or make an informed decision at the ballot box). I just don’t count most of the garbage nowadays (celebrity gossip, sports, political fear-mongering, etc) as news. Unfortunately, that’s all that’s on.
My parents don’t understand how I could not have cable or even live TV. This is why.
Sincerely,
ARB–Angry Retail Banker
ARB,
Haha. I heard something briefly about the guy. Even way over here in Thailand, going out of my way to ignore this stuff, I can’t avoid all of it.
Yeah, you make a great point there. In theory, news is great. I mean, I’m not against being informed. Quite the contrary. But in practice, news is terrible.
Fortunately, I think it’s very easy to circumvent news and go right to a source. It’s a far more efficient and worthwhile method to inform oneself. 🙂
Best regards.