It is so easy to be overwhelmed by the amount of information that we are bombarded with these days. I still maintain that a well managed combination of social networks can help to filter this incoming information but within those networks people can slog it out between polarised views and working out "the truth" about the various complex issues affecting us these days doesn't get easier.

This, combined with an equally varied and problematic professional media, means that it is ever more challenging to work out what we think about the world around us.

But then isn't part of the problem that we have been conditioned to expect to stay abreast of, and have a view on, everything that has been presented to us as news – much of which is a list of things to be frightened or worried about? And the list is mostly made of things that we can never do anything to change, that are totally outwith our control or influence, and in many cases don't directly affect us. All we can do is worry!

The actual events that directly affect us, and which we can influence, are a very small subset of the things that we feel pressured to respond to.

Increasingly I find myself asking "What can I actually affect, now or in the near future, and what do I need to know to do something about it". Everything else recedes into the noise.