DuclearcT.V. : The [productivity] Virus
- Posted on: August 12, 2019
- Read Time: 5 minutes
There’s a new TV show on now that I’m obsessed with. So, naturally, I’ve binged it and was done with the thing in a few days. Then I went to “RedditTubePedia” to look up stuff about the show. I told my friends and family about it, so I watched it again with them. After that, I found just about every podcast on earth that talked about it. Now here we are. Almost a month since my last post and only now I realise how badly I’ve been obsessed with a TV show!
I mean, seriously! It’s just a TV show! What’s wrong with me? But then again… I could justify where that came from.
TV is easy. TV is everywhere. TV is what I do when I’m tired. When I’m sick. When I’m frustrated and don’t want to think. When I’m back from work but not yet hungry to cook. When I’m in bed but can’t sleep… Basically, over a lifetime, I’ve conditioned myself to make TV my “go-to-thing”. Whenever my brain is bored, indecisive or confused… TV! Either as an “easy answer” or as an “in between” until I find an answer. My brain: “you know what? Why don’t you watch some TV until I decide what’s next?”. I’ve created a vicious cycle. And YouTube in my pocket has made it worse.
Once that realisation hit me, I’ve decided to change myself (or rather, my brain’s settings). I want to feel present and aware of my life as I’m living it. And since I’ve identified TV as being one of the main elements to “steal” my attention, I’m starting with that.
I took a day and decided not to watch television during it. And I thought it would be an easy thing to do. However, although it wasn’t difficult, per se, I wouldn’t call it “easy” either.
It started pretty well. I don’t really have time for TV in the mornings anyway. I woke up. Did my things as usual, then went to work and back. So far, so good.
Then I came home, flung myself on the couch and caught my eyes looking for the remote. “No! No television!”, I reminded myself. So I got up, got a book and started reading that. The book was fascinating! I recall thinking to myself: ”how long have I been trying to convince myself to start reading it?”. Always without success because ”I couldn’t find the time”. Nonsense. There was always time. I just couldn’t convince my brain to use it properly.
The idea of “Time” is also one of the big reasons I’ve decided on this Television ban. Someone smart whose same I don’t recall once said that:
“The one thing you have in common with everybody you admire, is time.”
I think about that a lot when I’m trying to improve on something. It’s true. We all have 24h in any given day to accomplish whatever it is we want. Of course there are situational differences. Still, I find it motivating to think that we all start with the same time premise. Which often renders the very phrase I kept using for months (i.e. “I couldn’t find the time”) moot.
Still, I got bored. Considered a nap, but instead decided upon writing a bit and ticking off some smaller items of my daily to-do list. By the time I was done, it was dinner time. Which was by far the most difficult part of this experiment.
Typically, my wife and I eat while watching TV. So, once food was done, there was that weird moment of sitting down and not knowing where to look at. We took the first few bites deep in awkwardness. Until someone broke the silence with the most mundane question of all: “how was your day today?”.
This, dear reader, is not an uncommon question in my household. Every day we ask each other that. Either via text, or upon meeting for the first time after hours apart. However, on this occasion there was something different. Time. We had a lot of time to fill during our meal. And – at first – that one question was everything we had to go on. So instead of our habitual “it’s ok. The same as usual. How’s yours?”, we took our time with our answers.
I talked about the funny comment I heard at work. About the client with the weird outfit that made me giggle (and she joined me in laughing about it). She told me about this idea she had while drawing. And that she thought about how to get it done as she walked the dog. We discussed how it’d be cool to take some time on the next day to go somewhere nice… But – to me – by far the best thing to come out of this was that I remembered to ask my follow-up questions! We all know them, right? When someone says something like “I gotta call my parent’s today”, or “today is my check-up appointment at the dentist”. Little things that are not really cause for worry. I being the terrible spouse that I am keep forgetting to ask after those. I’m so bad at this, that I’ve gotten to literally writing them down on a list I’ll review on my way home. And if you think this is a sign that I don’t care, may I point out that I’m writing an actual list to be reviewed daily in an effort to re-train my brain to appropriately express how much I care about this woman? Yeah…
But this time I remembered! On my own! My brain was not distracted so it just came as a natural part of the conversation flow. I’m really proud of that.
So, what does the future holds?
Was the experiment a success? Yes.
No television for a single day, made a big, positive impact on my day and on my time management.
Will I now give up television altogether? No.
I like television. I find it a rather childish idea to completely cut it off my life, since I was the one that have been poorly handling it.
No. I will still watch television. But now I will be more cautious about it. More aware of the opportunity cost it entails.
I will no longer turn on the television as soon as I flung myself on the couch after work. I will not have the television on upon every meal. I will not watch television every day.
I will watch television only when I want to, instead of when I don’t have anything else to do.
Also, I’ll be paying close attention to how much I’ve been watching (in terms of hours) and what that means to the other things I want to accomplish.
Maybe that’s not drastic enough. Maybe it will make virtually no difference. Honestly, though, I expect it to be a sensible, significant change in my life. I hope so, anyway.
We’ll see where it goes. Wish me luck!