I don't follow any news and any social media (I have only one of them, FB but only for a very specific technical groups/forums and I only browse it on a my computer with kill newsfeed add-on). Anyway social and news aren't my problem, my problem is "technical social" one :).
When I reread this chapter about information diet in 4HWW I recognize the same pattern as Tim's described.
I have a habit to read and bookmarks a lot of technical information which aren't relevant to any tasks I'm doing in this moment. It's a strong habit and I start to remove it. It's trigger when I lost focus or I stuck with work and I don't know what next.
But when I'll only focus on "useful" information, I can easily lost my pulse of current trends. From the other side, "knowledge" without practice is useless in my opinion.
So, I'm looking for a healthy balance :).
And you are right, a good newsletter, like Fronted Focus[1], is the best option.
Same here, I'm 44 now and my last job was a DevOps role for a big corporation in big city. Now I'm living in small town and I work for very small software house as a full stack developer and general IT guy (we have many different projects). My salary went down but my living standard goes up and I feel much better in general. My work is more excited and my private life improved as well.
As a backup I have an idea to try remote work, because I don't want to leave my current town. But now, I don't need it and I'm not searching a new job.