Five Months With No TV

general

Not quite as impressive as five months with no water to drink, but for me (and perhaps others that worship the box with moving people inside), it wasn’t as easy as I thought.

In my case, it was somewhat enforced. We just finished a bunch of work on our house and due to circumstances, our front room - the very same room that has our Sky TV box and TV - was uninhabitable. The state of the room was pretty dire with dust, boxes, displaced items etc. and so much so, that I daren’t include a picture even if I have one.

During the construction work, I had other things to contend with, so it wasn’t a problem but now that I could watch TV if I wanted, I still pretty much haven’t, and that’s what I want to briefly talk about here.

I’ve read a few times that we have about 30,000 days of life on this planet and using the back of an envelope to calculate it, that’s about 82 years. If you ignore leap years and the sad fact that not everyone lives as long as that, that doesn’t seem that long, right?

I’m firmly in the wrong half of that equation and what’s more, I used to spend a crazy amount of time watching TV. Documentaries, antique programs, series, one-offs - the vast knowledge I have of popular prime-time programming is shocking, but what’s it worth? Maybe quite useful for the pub quiz, but not particularly productive and it has meant that some of the things I wanted to create, lie half-finished or not started.

Now that things have settled down for me, I have suddenly found I have time (and energy) for quite a few things:

  • Jogging - I’ve been running for either a mile or a mile and half, a few times a week
  • Blog posts - this is the 8th consecutive daily blog post. Holy moly. After a 4 month hiatus, that’s amazing.
  • Writing - I have a book project I am working on, which I just started again after a year, and which I begun over a decade ago!
  • Studying - I have been learning about new technical IT topics. In the evenings, I sit and watch training videos or YouTube clips.
  • Cooking - I’ve recently made Thai Green Curry, Macaroni Cheese and Pasta Carbonara. For someone who likes to just shove something in the cooker, that’s a positive change.
  • Opportunities - this is a funny label, but I have been saying yes to things that came up that I hadn’t previously had time for. Will they result in anything? Who knows, but now I have time which was that precious commodity I squandered a little in the past.

So what’s my point? It’s simply that you may want to consider looking critically at what you use your time for. In a year, 5 years, 10 years…will you look back and think that you used your time productively? Will you care?

Hi! Did you find this useful or interesting? I have an email list coming soon, but in the meantime, if you ready anything you fancy chatting about, I would love to hear from you. You can contact me here or at stephen ‘at’ logicalmoon.com