How to Crush Your Habit of Excessive Political Worry

Read this if you’ve ever lost a night’s sleep over something a person 1,500 miles away said into a microphone.

A quick note before we start:

I wrote this piece last week. It was supposed to sit behind the paywall…a little something just for the paid folks who keep the lights on around here.

Then I sat with it for a few days. And…I kept thinking about how many people I know right now who are walking around with their shoulders up by their ears. Friends. Family. Strangers in the comments. Good…decent people who are quietly coming apart over things happening on a screen.

And I thought: what kind of jerk puts the life raft behind a paywall?

So I’m pulling it out front. Free. For everybody. Share it with whoever you’ve got in mind right now…you know exactly who I mean.

If it helps..and you want to throw a few bucks my way to keep this going…the paid button’s right there, and I’d be grateful. But that’s not why I’m publishing it.

I’m publishing it…because too many people need it this week.

Let’s get into it.

How to Crush Your Habit of Excessive Political Worry

Read this if you’ve ever lost a night’s sleep over something a person 1,500 miles away said into a microphone.

The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #919: Thursday, June 4th, 2026.

Let me ask you a rude question.

How many hours did you spend yesterday worrying about politics? Not doing anything about it. Not voting, not donating, not organizing.

Just… worrying. Scrolling. Refreshing. Reading the same outrage from forty different angles and feeling your jaw clench a little tighter each time.

Be honest. One hour? Two? Three?

Now here’s the kicker:

What did you get for all that worry?

Nothing. Not one thing changed. The world spun…exactly as it would have if you’d spent those hours building a model train set or learning to make a decent risotto.

But you changed. You got more tired. More bitter. A little harder to be around. And tomorrow you’ll do it all again, because…and I want you to sit with this…you are not informed. You are hooked.

I’m going to show you how to get unhooked. And…I’m not going to insult you with “just log off” or “go touch grass.” You’re an adult. You already know that. The reason you haven’t done it is that nobody ever told you how the trap actually works.

So…let’s pull it apart.

The machine was built to capture you

Here’s something they don’t want you to understand.

The news isn’t broken. It’s working perfectly. It is doing exactly what it was engineered to do, which is to hold your attention by any means necessary…and the cheapest…most reliable way to hold a human’s attention is to scare them.

Fear is sticky. Fear feels like information. When your heart rate goes up…your dumb lizard brain whispers, “This matters. Pay attention. Keep watching.” So…you keep watching. And…every minute you keep watching…is a minute somebody sells to an advertiser.

You think you’re a citizen doing your civic duty.

You’re a product being delivered to market.

Once you see this clearly…once you really get it in your gut…something shifts. The anxiety stops feeling like wisdom…and starts feeling like what it is: a manipulation you’ve been paying for with your one and only life.

Worry is not a virtue (even though it feels like one)

A lot of smart people are secretly proud of their political worry.

They think it makes them good. Engaged. Awake. They believe that if they stopped worrying…it would mean they stopped caring… and only a monster stops caring, right?

Wrong. Dead wrong. And…this single confusion is keeping millions of decent people miserable.

Worry and care are not the same animal. Care produces action. Worry produces more worry. Care writes a check…knocks a door…runs for the school board.

Worry sits on the couch at 11:40 p.m. …with a glowing rectangle and a cortisol headache…accomplishing precisely zero.

If your “caring” never once leaves your skull and turns into a thing you do, it isn’t caring. It’s just suffering wearing a halo.

So let me say the thing nobody says:

You are allowed to put it down.

Putting it down does not make you ignorant. It does not make you complicit. It makes you a sane person who has decided to stop bleeding out through their eyeballs over events they cannot personally control between sips of coffee.

The system (here’s the part you actually wanted)

Alright. Enough philosophy. You came for a method, and old Gary always delivers. Here’s exactly what to do, in order.

1. Set an appointment with the news. Then break up with it the rest of the day.

Decide…right now…that you get the news at one fixed time. Say, 8 a.m., for thirty minutes. That’s it. That’s your window. The other 23.5 hours, it does not exist to you.

“But what if something important happens?!”

My friend…if something is that important…you will find out. Someone will text you. The sky will turn an interesting color. You do not need a 24-hour drip line into your nervous system to remain a functional member of society. You need it the way you need a second hole in your head.

2. Pick your sources like you pick your surgeons.

You wouldn’t let a screaming stranger on the street operate on your knee. So why do you let a screaming stranger on a screen operate on your mood?

Cut the rage-merchants. All of them…right, left, doesn’t matter. Keep two or three calm…boring…fact-forward sources that report what happened without telling you how to feel about it.

Boring is the goal. Boring is health. If a headline makes your pulse jump before you’ve even read it…that source is not informing you. It’s farming you.

3. Run the “Can I touch it?” test.

Every time a worry grabs you, ask one question: Is this something I can physically affect in the next 30 days?

Your kid’s school board? You can touch it. Go to the meeting.

A coup in a country you can’t find on a map? You cannot touch it. Set it down. Gently. No guilt.

Channel one hundred percent of your political energy into the things you can touch …and let the rest float on by. You’ll be more effective, not less…because you stopped spreading yourself a mile wide and an inch deep.

4. Replace the input. Don’t just remove it.

Here’s where most people blow it. They quit doomscrolling cold turkey…leave a giant hole where it used to be…and by Tuesday they’ve crawled back to the feed like it’s an ex they know is bad for them.

You can’t subtract a habit. You have to swap it. The next time your thumb reaches for the app on reflex…have something ready and waiting…a book on the nightstand…a walk you take…a friend you call…a hobby with actual tools and an actual finished product at the end. Give the craving somewhere better to go.

5. Move the body. The worry lives there too.

Political dread is not just in your head. It’s parked in your shoulders, your gut, your clenched hands. Go for a hard walk. Lift something heavy. Get sweaty. You will be genuinely shocked how a forty-minute walk can dissolve a worry that an hour of arguing in the comments only fed.

The hard truth, and then I’ll let you go

Here’s what it comes down to, and I’ll say it straight because I respect you too much to dress it up.

The republic does not need your anxiety. It needs your action…and you can only act when you’re not exhausted.

Every hour you spend marinating in dread is an hour you’re not spending becoming the calm…clear-eyed…useful person your community actually needs.

Panic has never built a single good thing in the history of the world. Steady hands build things. Rested minds build things. People who get a full night’s sleep and show up on Tuesday build things.

So crush the worry. Not because you don’t care…because you do. Because the world is better served by ten thousand calm people doing one real thing than by ten million frightened people refreshing a feed.

Put the phone down. Take the walk. Show up where you can actually touch the work.

The worry was never helping anyone.

Least of all you.

Yours in clarity,

…and now go take that walk before you talk yourself out of it.

#HoldFast

-Jack

Jack Hopkins