Council Post: Why And How To Change Your Media Diet As A Leader

Debra Pickett is the publisher of DeNovo, a subscription-based publication for law firm leaders, and the founder of Page 2 Communications.

If you’re like me, you spent much of 2020 glued to your various screens, unable to look away from continuous news coverage of the extraordinary roller coaster of the past year. Even leaving aside the major events — including the racial justice movement, a global pandemic and presidential politics — just trying to keep up with business media coverage of this year’s impact on industries and markets is unmanageable.

As the founder of a boutique legal public relations and media strategy firm, I spend most of my time counseling law firm leaders on interacting with media as the subject of media stories. I help them figure out what to say to reporters about high-profile cases, how to drive more accurate coverage of the issues shaping their industries, etc.

But, after the extraordinary events of 2020, these same clients tell me they are now struggling with the other side of the equation: their lives as media consumers. There’s so much information, and they feel that very little of it contains valuable business intelligence that can help them make better decisions. Every day, they binge on this media “junk food,” but it only leaves them with whiplash and decision fatigue. Then they get up the next day and do it all over again.

While it can be tempting to throw up your hands and quit reading the news entirely, decision-makers in positions of power really don’t have that option. They face enormous pressure to stay up to date with what’s happening in federal and local government, as well as the industries they serve, that could impact their business.

The good news is, it doesn’t have to be this way. The key to fighting back against information overwhelm is to adopt a few new habits for managing the media you consume, just as you might vow to adopt a more healthful diet. Here’s what’s working for my clients:

Limit your social media scrolling.

Depending on how thoughtfully you edit the list of accounts you follow, Twitter and other social media channels can be a good way to stay informed. However, they can also become habitual or addictive due to the dopamine in our brains.

According to The Guardian, “Dopamine inspires us to take actions to meet our needs and desires — anything from turning up the heating to satisfying a craving to spin a roulette wheel — by anticipating how we will feel after they’re met.” In the context of social media, the compulsion loop created by dopamine in our brains can cause us to compulsively check social sites for affirmation.

We are seeking connection in retweets or just want to stay in the loop. But even if your goal is to stay up to date with your professional network, scrolling is not always the best way to accomplish it. Get a handle on social media use by using screen-time-limiting features on your devices, and structure downtime into your routine.

Assess what’s currently coming in.

Take some time to go through your inbox and the many, many newsletters and alerts you probably receive. Which ones really matter? As a general rule, I believe it makes sense to have three morning news summaries hitting your email each day:

• A summary of national headlines from a trusted news outlet, such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, etc.

• A summary that shares local stories. For example, in Chicago, where my firm and most of my clients are based, I receive an excellent curated list of local headlines.

• A summary that keeps you updated on news in your industry, most likely published by a key trade journal.

You can always make time in your day, such as during a coffee break or after lunch, to visit other news sites, but unsubscribe from all other alerts and newsletters. Monitoring just these three morning reads will keep you well informed and free you to go on with your day.

Curate the keepers.

Merely skimming these emails and links every day, however, won’t fully empower you to act on the intelligence they contain. Even after you have narrowed your subscriptions down to the three key summaries, you need to take another step to organize the information to make the best use of it.

Answer questions such as:

• What are the big takeaways, and how do they square with what leaders already know about this issue?

• Who needs to see this information, and how can I get it to them?

One way to “process” this information is to outsource the task to a trusted assistant who understands the questions that are top of mind for you and your clients. Then, they can put the articles into that context through the use of tags, one-sentence summaries, flagging for relevance by client or whatever makes sense in your line of work. You need to have the right article at your fingertips at the right time.

Break the ‘breaking news’ addiction.

If you are an executive, your decision horizon stretches far beyond the breaking-news landscape. As we saw in 2020, government entities and the industries they impact can make a dramatic move one day, only to completely reverse 24 hours later. In my experience, leaders often underestimate the whiplash that comes from consuming too much of this kind of media and how much it can distract them from their substantive long-term goals.

Shift your media consumption from breaking news and headline coverage to longer-form magazine and Sunday-paper-style content. The news might still be frustrating and upsetting, but at least there’s some valuable context and original analysis around it to help you make sense of it.

This year, change your media diet and direct the flow of information so that it empowers, rather than hinders, your pursuit of business goals.

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