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Ask HN: How are you coping with all the (mostly bad) news around you?

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Re: Ask HN: How are you coping with all the (mostly bad) news around you?

#51

Post by smdz »

If it your first time WFH, the anxiety due to that will pass with time.

News out there exists to induce some heightened emotional response. Either a WOW factor or a FEAR factor. Apparently, news to induce the FEAR factor is usually available. You don't believe me - then count the negative news and positive news articles for a 15-20 days. This stands true even without the Covid-19 fear.

When working from home, limit your TV news time. I watch business news mostly and that too for a limited period. Do not let news chatter in the background.

Go for a 15-30 minute walk alone, it will help in reducing anxiety. And get some sun - it does wonders.

There is a saying: yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the "present.” - Master Oogway, Kung Fu Panda.

Re: Ask HN: How are you coping with all the (mostly bad) news around you?

#52

Post by op00to »

jamil7 wrote: post #25
op00to wrote: post #19

I worried a lot. Did the Amazon guy cough on my deliver? Why is my neighbor’s kid knocking on my door? To solve this, I smoked a lot of weed. I’m out of weed now. Guess I should try to get some work done.

Word of unsolicited advice from someone who smoked weed daily for a number of years. If you already have some anxiety, prolonged consumption will worsen it.

Please keep your unsolicited advice to yourself, because you literally have no clue what my journey is, or what health issues I have.

Here's my word of unsocilited advice. EVERY PERSON'S BODY IS DIFFERENT. When dealing with mental health medication, it's trial and error. What seems to work for one person doesn't work for another. I am under the care of a physician, and the cannabis I consume is prescribed by that doctor, grown in a fully licensed facility, lab tested, and used as part of an overall treatment regimen that got me off of addicted benzos and productive at levels I never saw before.

Keep your advice to yourself.

Re: Ask HN: How are you coping with all the (mostly bad) news around you?

#54

Post by xtracto »

Zhyl wrote: post #50

Humour. We Brits have a fairly dark gallows humour anyway and we also genuinely have a cultural sense of 'grin and bear it', 'stiff upper lip', 'keep calm and carry on' also called 'blitz spirit'. Today, after the UK generally and my office specifically required working from home, I made subtle references to this sketch [1] from TV show 'That Mitchell and Webb Look'. I make standups light and breezy; I add a lighter…

We Mexicans are kind of like that (shit.. we make a party of/for the dead). People here are joking so much about Coronavirus that sometimes it feels like they don't care.

I've most likely got corona myself (waiting for the pcr test results) and am isolating. I setup my man cave as a "camping experience " since I'll be staying here for some time.

Re: Ask HN: How are you coping with all the (mostly bad) news around you?

#55

Post by meheleventyone »

On the anxiety front I've found some mindfulness meditation helpful. Even if it's only giving myself some time to get really relaxed.

I start using Calm about a month ago after having a odd (in that I can't see a directly attributable cause) acute spike in anxiety. Obviously right now its fairly normal to feel anxiety but its good to try to minimize it's affects on you.

Re: Ask HN: How are you coping with all the (mostly bad) news around you?

#56

Post by bk66 »

No magic bullet but I changed what I do on the net.

Block/reduce usage of sites that are abt mindless consumption (hacker news encourages mindless consumption too - I don't really need to see most of the stuff that shows up here surrounding the tech stuff I care about)

Stopped using YouTube/Reddit/FB which I think has helped.

Twitter I still find useful but I Enable it only on the weekends for few hrs to catch up with messages and ppls feeds.

Also blocked most news sites (nytimes/CNN/fox/wapo/bbc...basically any news site where they threw opinion/infotainment at me on the side panels or prominently on main page). It was too addictive for me.

So I just blocked them in my Host file. I use Steve blacks big list on github. I scatter multiple entries for the same site throughout the file so its a pain to unblock even if I feel an urge.

The consequence is I end up getting most of my news on sites (from Canada, Ireland, Japan etc) where the opinions are about things I have no great interest in and find it easier to skip over.

Basically control your daily info flow. Just like food don't over consume. The sites are designed to capture your attention and keep you feeling helpless to sell ads.

Re: Ask HN: How are you coping with all the (mostly bad) news around you?

#57

Post by bjourne »

gambiting wrote: post #7
bjourne wrote: post #4

Corona is actually GOOD NEWS. I'm not kidding. What the world needs is a severe recession that stops flying, overconsumption, and overworking. The longer the recession lasts the better. It's the only thing that can effectively slow global warming. Climate change is a global threat, coronavirus could be a blessing in disguise.

If you were an alien on a spaceship watching us from orbit - sure. But once things start affecting you it just becomes grim reality. Personally I'm stressed as balls because my mum runs a few retail shops and if the situation doesn't improve rapidly she will literally face bankrupcy. It's hard for me to look at it and say "hey, it's great because it stops overconsumption!". And that's not even considering that she or…

Actually I think you are the one with a privileged word view. We know that in a decade or so climate change will come to affect tens of millions of people who will become refugees. Crop yields will fail and lots of diseases much worse than corona will spread.

Tough luck that you can't get fly home but that doesn't affect my main point. International air travel is unsustainable and is KILLING OUR PLANET!

We as a species have two choices; either we let our global economy collapse or we let our global ecosystem collapse. I know what my choice is.

Re: Ask HN: How are you coping with all the (mostly bad) news around you?

#58

Post by otobrglez »

I'll very likely have to fire 14 world-class engineers, OPS, PMs and designers. From the team that I've spent building 4 years. We'll very likely have to kill the product that I've spent all my work and free time working on.

This is gonna be the first time I'll actually have to say "thanks" to people that I consider to be my friends. At the beginning of very likely the worst crisis that the world has seen.

Ruby, Scala, OPS, Machine learning, AI, Angular, fully-remote and distributed...

FML.

Re: Ask HN: How are you coping with all the (mostly bad) news around you?

#59

Post by muzani »

I'm enjoying it. As I see it society goes two ways during hard times: people either become selfish survivalists, or they become more compassionate.

Lockdowns are great - they keep the assholes away from you and lock you in with the people who will live and die with you (or they can be hell). If you're not with someone, maybe you should find someone? Move in with a friend because loneliness will make you very depressed.

Use it to lock away the rest of the world. Instead of swiping on Facebook or thinking of what clubs to go to, you can cuddle with a significant other, or make pancakes with a friend. Watch TV together. Build little LEGO structures. Find the best way to make tea or fried eggs.

I like to focus on the little things and this is the time when all of them will be magnified. So what if you lose your job, your career, your life's savings? There will be a different world next month. Just enjoy the sunset.

Re: Ask HN: How are you coping with all the (mostly bad) news around you?

#60

Post by drakonka »

I am growing a vegetable garden in my apartment and last weekend I stocked up on bleach and disinfected my entire apartment. These two are mostly just to make me feel better and manufacture any sort of semblance of control.

In more useful actions, I stocked up on some food (both canned and frozen) to prepare for self quarantine and/or self isolation. I pulled out my moped and de-rusted the chain yesterday after seeing multiple sick people on public transport, ignoring the advice to stay indoors for anyone who shows symptoms. Now working from home but still quite hard to focus with all of the news. I also have some anxiety, but it sort of comes and goes and just cleaning obsessively for a little while seems to settle it :D

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