Television
One of the biggest time-wasters and therefore one of the biggest reasons why people don’t spend time on setting goals and achieving them is television.
According to the A.C. Nielsen Co., Americans watch an average of more than four hours of TV each day. That works out to be 28 hours per week, or two months of nonstop TV-watching per year. In an 80 year life, the average person will have spent 11 years glued to the tube.
Ask yourself these questions:
• How many hours a week do I spend just channel-flicking?
• How many hours of TV advertising do I see in a week (around 15 minutes per hour)?
• How many times do I go to bed later than I would like to because I kept watching TV?
• How many TV programs do I watch just because they happen to be on, not because I planned to watch them?
• In all the TV I watched last week, how did it meet any of my Lifestyle goals?One of the best decisions our family made was to disconnect our TV from the aerial and take it out of our living room. We have a DVD player so if we want to watch a movie or a music DVD or a motivational DVD we can. Similarly, our kids do not watch TV, they watch videos and DVDs we have approved. These tend to be wildlife programs or good quality kids movies. The result of this simple change has meant we have a lot more family time, none of us waste time watching TV, our evenings don’t revolve around watching a particular program at a particular time, my wife and I read a lot more, our kids are not exposed to advertisements and questionable programs (including news items on murder, rape and graphic war/terrorism carnage).
TV used to be cutting-edge technology, but that was 20 years ago. It is now an inefficient way to get entertainment and news.
Let’s take news for example. I used to feel that I needed to watch the TV news most days. But let’s look at it. You watch an hour of news, which is 15 minutes of advertisements and realistically you are only interested in maybe one third of the news items. The rest you just have to sit through. What you have to sit through is often so distressing and depressing (generally crime and violence and death) that you often feel violated or depressed yourself. It is far more efficient to read selected news items on the Internet or in a newspaper. Don’t just take my word for it, try it for a week. Force yourself to watch no news on TV for a week – you won’t miss it!
What about your favourite programs? Hey I love some TV programs. Favourites are “The Simpsons”, “Friends”, and “The Apprentice”. So here is what I do, I buy the series on DVD! I can order any series from Amazon. Then I can watch exactly when I feel like it with no ads! Also, I can watch half a program or three programs – suddenly I’m in control. Now I am the TV program director!
If you absolutely have to have your TV plugged in, record the program you want to watch, then watch it later and fast-forward through the ads, and/or the news items you don’t need to see.
Of course there are a few must-see live events such the Olympics for example. But there are probably only 5-10 must see live events per year. It is easy to work around these, see them at a friend’s place, go to a bar, get the aerial down from where you have hidden it – whatever. The point is you can live just fine without a TV, in fact I guarantee your life will be more productive and you will more easily create your Perfect Lifestyle if you don’t have one.
If you have found yourself agreeing with most of this chapter, act right now! Get up and disconnect your TV or take it to a friend’s place to look after it for you. I urge you to at least try it for one month – you won’t regret it!