Over the past year I’ve grown to see the absolute insanity of following the news on normal news sites like CNN or Fox News. You might be thinking that I have no clue what is going on in the world. I do value being an educated person who knows about world events.

I have a secret weapon that helps me get this insight into the world without driving myself crazy day to day. It’s a paper subscription to The Economist magazine. Here are seven things I love about having a paper subscription to The Economist:

1. International. It’s not focused on Americans only. I get more of an insight into the world than the typical American news outlets.
2. Soap Opera Free. It doesn’t try to get me sucked into idiotic stories about how people are going to react to this or that, or worse what a celebrity was doing last Friday night. I want to be an educated man who knows world events…not a celebrity gossip connoisseur. The subscription keeps everything serious and leaves the rest out.
3. Distraction Free. When I read the magazine, I don’t see emails popping up. My kids don’t think I’m playing video games. They know I’m reading a serious news magazine. And when I put it down, I do something else. I don’t get sucked into ten hours of mindless video watching. This is a feature and not a bug.
4. Not Republican or Democrat. I love it that I get out of the false American dichotomy of Republican and Democrat with the magazine. It has no interest in getting me to be more one way or another. It just calls it like it sees it. Which is probably more of a Libertarian bent, but honestly it’s difficult to tell sometimes. And that’s how I would like to take my news. I don’t want to be told what to think. I want some facts and fair analysis and I want to think about it myself.
5. Weekly. I don’t think that the appropriate news cadence should be any more frequent than once a week. If something is important I’m going to find out about it. I don’t need to spend every day reading the news. It just doesn’t matter that much. So the fact that the Economist is weekly is perfect for me.
6. Guilt Free to Skip. This isn’t a feature of the magazine as much as it is for me. If I had a weekly subscription and didn’t read any of it, I still think it would be worth it. Why? Because it kept me from the hours per day of distraction I had been getting by going to news sites. So the Economist can be skipped just fine.
7. Diversified. It’s not just a political magazine. It also has stuff on business, technology, science. It has special features that bring you up to speed on a topic in depth.

I have subscribed to the Economist for months now and absolutely love it. I highly recommend you ditch your current news habit and buy an Economist subscription. I did some searching and found a deeply discounted deal here. Try it and you’ll be hooked. If you run into me personally, I’ll be happy to give you a copy, so you can see what I’m saying; just ask.