Time Leakage
The News Scroll
Routine news updates checking. The cumulative attention footprint of real-time events.
The modern feed provides constant updates on global developments.
Checking news sites for ten minutes three times a day feels like standard citizenship, a way to remain informed. The habit fits into the transitions between tasks.
But thirty minutes daily over thirty-five years accumulates to over six thousand hours. That is two hundred and sixty-six days of waking attention.
The stream of updates rarely changes the reader's actions, but it permanently consumes the remaining hours of the day.
One daily check, not three. 177 days of attention recovered.
The news arrived in seconds. The attention compiled to months of life.