Television Anarchy
Previously on SAW, I mentioned our big move. Before the move I made sure that our home was equipped with a cable modem because so much of what I do depends on having reliable Internet access. Paritally as an experiment, I purposefully neglected to set up cable television at the new house. This experiment has proven itself useful. This machine that centers nearly every American home wastes an inordinate amount of time and brain cells weekly in my home. I’m going to experiment with the following guidelines to increase my nightly productivity - it might be refreshing. How many hours did you waste in front of the television last evening alone?
- Limit time to an hour per night, but consider leaving it off completely 1-4 nights a week (every night if it pleases you, but I just can’t do without LOST). Spend an hour of your normal TV time doing something productive but not taxing, you don’t want to turn downtime into hard work. By now we all know that productivity != hard work.
- If you’re reading this, chances are you get your news on the Internet, so don’t tell me you HAVE to watch the nightly news. It’s just depressing anyway. A lot of families watch the news or some other TV over dinner. Talk to your family. “People who watch television while eating also tend to be unaware of how much they eat, which encourages overeating.” (citation).
- Relaxing is excellent, and TV is one way to do that - but it shouldn’t be the only way to relax. Play cards with your family, roommates, neighbors (it’s a very good idea to meet and befriend them if you haven’t already), or pets. Game night rocks, and rather than relaxing by vegetating in front of the television, you can exercise your mind.
If you’ve got any experience with these sorts of exercises, please let me know. Have a wonderfully productive, relaxing, and fulfilling weekend.
March 25th, 2005 at 11:44 am
DVRs are nice because you can compress your normal TV time by 20-30%. Hit pause when the show starts, go do something else for 20 minutes, come back and blast through all the commercials. The downside is that you can end up trying to squeeze four hours of tv shows into three, rather than three hours into two or what have you.
Technology that’s supposed to make our lives more relaxed usually ends up making us busier, because we want to do more with more, when we should be doing less with more. Just like word processors, cell phones, internet, you name it. The tech ends up owning us instead of vice versa.
March 25th, 2005 at 5:26 pm
I completed a full month of “media deprivation” in high school.
March 25th, 2005 at 8:45 pm
JV - excellent point about tech owning us instead of vice versa. Another point I think that’s worth mentioning that sometimes lofi is just better and easier.
That being said, I’m not much of a TV watcher. I watch Survivor each week with my wife (I guess it’s the equivalent to your LOST). Beyond that, I don’t watch it much at all. I don’t watch any other ’set’ programs (i.e., things I’ve just *got* to see weekly), and I rarely watch movies.
I tend to waste a lot of my ‘downtime’ on reading or on the Internet. (Imagine that…)
August 23rd, 2005 at 1:53 pm
a) My wife and I don’t have cable either. It’s been a glorious thing, freeing up our time to do something more productive / fun / enriching / etc. We’ll watch maybe 30-60 minutes of something on the local networks at night just before falling asleep, and that’s about it.
b) We’ve also given up TV entirely (among other things) for Lent the last couple years.