Good friend and fellow writer Barbara Moore (blog, website) recently turned me on to Zen Habits, a great site for those of us looking for practical tips for more balanced living.
Today’s Zen Habits post, A Guide to Escaping Materialism and Finding Happiness, makes several suggestions … including freeing yourself from the influence of television.
“Do you really enjoy watching TV for hours? Think about which shows you really, really love, and only watch during that time. When the commercials come on, go do something else. Or use Tivo to watch TV. You can even give up cable TV entirely, if you’re brave — I have, and it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done.”
It’s no secret that, currently, TV is important to me. In addition to an Apple TV, we own not one, not two, but three Tivos. Our living room is dominated by a 62-inch widescreen HDTV. We spend most nights parked in front of that thing.
Sometimes, we’re watching shows we really enjoy: Lost, for example, or Battlestar Galactica … or, in the summer, So You Think You Can Dance, The Closer, and Big Love. But many nights, we’re just killing time.
We don’t really care for ABC’s new show, Traveler, but if Tivo catches it, we’ll dutifully watch it. Last season, sitting down for 24 and Prison Break felt more like an obligation than a pleasure. And there are at least a dozen other shows on our “If we have nothing else to do” list: shows like The Deadliest Catch and The Dog Whisperer.
It’s the “killing time” aspect of our TV-watching habits that scares me. How many hours of our lives are swallowed up by those “take it or leave it” shows?
What scares me more is a growing realization that, for us, especially since we’re relatively isolated here in Jackson, TV is providing us with virtual places to go … and virtual friends to spend time with. Instead of visiting and laughing with real people, we’re scheduling nights with simulated people. Instead of going out with friends to hear real musicians perform and see real dancers dance, we’re watching American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance.
What would we do, where would we go, and how might our lives change if those shows were eliminated from our routine entirely? Or — since I have a penchant for going to extremes — what if we didn’t watch TV at all?
I’d read more. I might get out more. And we’d save a significant amount of money, to boot — all those cable channels don’t come cheap.
* * * * *
Given that TV is pretty important to Clyde, I doubt that, barring an Apocalypse, we’ll ever get down to a TV-free existence. But it would be nice, I think to declare just two or three nights per week as “TV-free Nights.”
On TV-free Nights, we could go anywhere or do anything that doesn’t involve watching TV. (I think it would also be nice to make those nights “Retail-Free,” as well, limiting ourselves to activities that don’t involve buying anything. In addition to our bad TV habits, we’re all too often killing time by wandering the aisles of Wal-Mart or Sam’s.)
Frankly, I think we could do that without giving up a single show we really care about. In the long run, this practice would probably make our TV-full nights more enjoyable … because we’d be watching the shows we really want to see instead of just killing time.
I’m glad you’re enjoying Zen Habits. I don’t think I’d ever go TV-free (especially during football season!), but watching only things that you actually care about makes a difference. I love the idea of not only TV-free nights, but retail-free as well. That’s very cool. You can use the Bright Idea Deck to brainstorm fun and creative ideas!
I’ve been TV-free for a long time now, and I really love it. To do it right, I think you have to go entirely off cable – otherwise it is all too easy to rationalize it. But choosing a few nights to do it is probably a very good start.
Netflix helps. Personally, the main reason I ever watched TV was for the movies – so I can have as many of those as I wanted (though I actually had to buy a TV when I wore out the fan in my laptop watching them on it :D). I do also get series that I like through Netflix, like CSI, Desperate Housewives, and Queer as Folk. What’s fun is I can burn through a whole season and don’t have to wait impatiently for the next one on my TV nights 🙂
I think you’re missing an opportunity, with shows like ‘American Idol’, or ‘So You Think You Can Dance’. I’ve set up rotating parties for this show, everyone that attends will host one time during the run of the season. You get to see people, and more importantly, you’ll get to look in their medicine cabinets. It’s a great way to have fun, and trust me, once you get it set up, it’ll take on a life of its own.