In the year since Donald Trump's election as President of the United States, we've been bombarded with almost daily updates on everything he's saying and doing.
But can you imagine what it would be like not to hear anything about it?
Christopher Hebert, author and Assistant Professor of English at the University of Tennessee, decided not to consume any news at all after Trump's election, which he describes as "a self-protective measure."
"I was absolutely a news junkie," he explains. "I filled every waking moment with it."
"What was surprising to me was that it wasn't as hard as I thought to tune out. It had become such a habit and it took me a while to figure out what to do in place of it."
Christopher says the experience of cutting himself off from the media world got him thinking about why so many people avidly consume things that make them miserable, and also about the idea that too many of us are passive consumers.
"We consume news thinking that we're doing something righteous, but all we're doing is getting angry. We're not going out and making a difference in any way, so part of this became an experiment in resetting what it is that I'm doing and how to think about it."
He acknowledges the importance of paying attention to what's going on in the world, but thinks we need to be doing more with what we hear.
"We can't have a world in which no one is paying attention, but I'm interested in not letting it stop at consumption. What matters is that people are paying attention and then acting on what they're hearing."
