I was living three blocks away from a hospital in Queens when the pandemic started. The sounds of sirens and helicopters woke me up in the middle of the night, when I’d check the COVID statistics page on the New York Times and start wondering what my day would look like.

It’s getting worse. It feels like a war zone, I texted my family on the west coast. You’re just being paranoid, my brother replied. Stop watching the news.

But I wasn’t just watching the news: I was also looking at ambulances out of my window, waiting in long lines to enter the grocery store, feeling anxious whenever I’d brush up against someone in a tiny aisle, and getting frustrated when I couldn’t even run laps at the park without nearly bumping into a million people — because, you know, New York.

Stress is anything that impacts our survival and fitness, caused by an imbalance between a situation and the resources we have to manage it. The Coronavirus — uncontrollable, new, dangerous, possibly anywhere — fit this definition like a key. Resilience is the ability to bounce back from stress, to take a punch and adapt to the situation. The best way I could adapt to the situation and reduce my stress, I realized, was to control my attention.

I stopped watching the news. I stopped getting angry when other people weren’t obsessing over the news. I still hated waiting in those lines (and ended up leaving New York), but get this: I didn’t die. My mental health and the quality of my life improved.

Here’s why you shouldn’t feel guilty for ignoring the news:

1. Awareness is relative.

For every topic you know a lot about, there are plenty you’re completely unaware of. I know little about biotechnology, ancient history, chemistry, video games, or even what my own cousins are up to. (Every person who claims to be an expert on a topic is probably unaware of how little they actually know until they talk to an actual expert.)

If someone doesn’t know as much about X as you, that doesn’t mean that they’re completely uninformed about it: awareness is relative. And it doesn’t mean that they’re uninformed about everything: there’s a chance that they’re well-versed on something you’re oblivious about.

News bullies are often more interested in demonstrating their intellectual superiority than sharing curiosity about the world.

Most of my past efforts to assert that I knew more than someone — implicitly trying to make them feel bad about what they knew — were just attempts to bolster my own ego. Other times, when I tried to shame someone into obsessing over the news, I really just wanted them to validate my anxiety (“I feel awful, and you should, too”). Bonding with others who are on the same page does lighten the overall load, but it can come at a cost to those who weren’t frazzled out before: it increases their stress. Thanks to the principle of emotional contagion, you meet in the middle.

When you genuinely want to share knowledge, it comes across as excitement: “Ooh, awesome! There’s some interesting stuff ahead of you.”

2. Watching the news keeps me on an anxious, news-watching loop.

Uncertainty is inherently anxiety-provoking. A theoretical article in Journal of Anxiety Disorders even suggested that fear of the unknown is the one true fear. To reduce our uncertainty — and our stress — and get a better sense of what’s going on, we keep the news on, 24/7. The news constantly answers some questions while continuing to pose new ones, keeping us in a vicious loop of:

“Yes, I heard about that, but did you hear about…”

“Yes, but did you hear about…”

“No, I didn’t hear about that. What’s going on??”

The answer: something. Something is always going on.

3. Nothing in life is as important as you think it is — while you are thinking about it.

The way we see and perceive of the world is like a fisheye lens, and we overestimate the importance of whatever grabs our attention. Things are only important when you focus on them. This idea is so prevalent and ubiquitous in psychology, such a common thread, that I could write a book about it — but I don’t have to, since it was one of the core themes in Thinking, Fast and Slow by Nobel Prize-winning researcher Daniel Kahneman.

When we watch the news, we start mistaking “the information about the world that is right in front of my face” for “all of the available information about the world.” In the past, I’d watch the news until I felt so anxious that I had to self-medicate or distract myself. I’d shop, eat, drink, or exercise.

But 95% of life is stable and not particularly newsworthy. Watching the news can make the world seem like a cold place that’s devoid of dogs and ice cream. But dogs and ice cream exist. So does a Twitter account that puts Paddington bear into movie scenes.

4. There’s a difference between being informed and doing something.

Knowing about a topic or event isn’t the same thing as doing something about the topic. Being able to rattle off statistics about climate change isn’t the same thing as consuming more mindfully or starting a grassroots organization. Knowing that bad things are happening isn’t the same thing as preventing them or reducing the likelihood of them happening again.

But as the saying goes: “In evolution, thinking smart means nothing unless it leads to acting smart.”When we’re surrounded by uncertainty about the future, being informed can feel like a way to reduce anxiety and make us feel like we have control over the situation — but we don’t. If you feel anger, great! Do something about it. If you feel stressed, ask yourself: does this need my energy and attention right now? How is this making the world a better place?

5. Ignorance about a topic is a privilege, and we have the right to exercise it.

We’re two years into the pandemic. We’ve all got bills to pay. We’ve got mental health needs, and today I’m putting these needs first. The paradox of the news is that the more you consume, the less you’re well-informed — you can’t separate the signal from the noise.

Am I really shirking my civic duties by paying attention to other things? Am I really being irresponsible by taking care of things in my own life?

All of that energy that used to go towards watching the news and getting stressed out can go towards all of the things that make your daily life functional and worth living: puppies. Ice cream. Tend your own garden. Work on that side hustle. Take a nap.

You do you — I won’t judge.