Kill Your Television

“I hate television.  I hate it as much as peanuts.  But I can’t stop eating peanuts.” -Orson Welles

You know there’s something better you could be doing.  Should be doing, if you carry around a healthy dose of guilt with you.  But why can’t you stop watching TV?  Sure you’re tired.  But if you let being tired get in the way of your self-development, your after work hours might leave you with little more than half-remembered, generic plotlines and recycled dialogue.  I know the title of this post is asking for a lot, more than most people are willing to do (though some people manage).  Here are some ideas to at least help you cut down on your TV time.

• If you don’t have one already, get TiVo or some other type of DVR.  This allows you to set your own schedule and not plan your evenings around show times, and instantly cuts out about 1/3 of dead commercial time.  Note: obviously, this only works if you don’t use all that saved time to, you know, watch more TV shows.
• Make a conscious decision to turn the TV off whenever you aren’t specifically planning to watch a program.  It’s all too easy to get sucked into watching something you never even wanted to watch in the first place.  This wastes valuable time.
• Customize your guide if you can.  Avoid unnecessary channels and all the temptations that come along with them.
• Wait for the season to come out on DVD.
• Replace television with productive habits.  Don’t leave dead time.
• Don’t keep a TV in the bedroom.
• Educational programming?  Good time to do this when too tired to read/study
• Write down why you’re watching a particular program.  This might sound weird, but it works.  If you can’t come up with a good reason in a single sentence (“everyone else watches it” doesn’t count), ditch it.  Be merciless about protecting your free time.
• Sports fans, remember the radio.  Little about the regular season is so essential that it demands your undivided attention.  Listen to the game on the radio; that way you can go to the gym, run errands, or do household chores at the same time.
• Customize your cable package.  Do your best not to subscribe to channels you don’t have any desire to watch.  Many providers make this possible now through channel customization.  Pare down spare channels, or you might find yourself watching them anyway.

These are just a few ideas to get you started.  Hopefully they help you save some time so you can do the things you really want to do, whether it’s building your own business or just going for a walk with the kids.  Now get out there and build a reality so cool it doesn’t need a television “escape valve”!