When I was a kid I wanted my own TV to have in my room more than anything else in the world. Watching TV and playing video games were what we did at the time and having your own TV was like your initiation into being cool. If you had one of these in your room, you were the shit.
Naturally, I badgered my parents day in and day out trying to get them to buy me one but to no avail. It grew increasingly more frustrating as time went by and it got to the point where I eventually gave up on the idea. I forgot about it.
Little did I know, my parents were preventing me from wasting copious amounts of time, energy, and money in their refusal. In the end, they may have saved me from wasting my life away.
To this day I have not gotten a TV in my bedroom at home nor in my dorm room when I moved to college. As I grew up, I became obsessed with different goals that I had and the processes required to reach them.
Watching TV was never one of those processes so even before I knew TV was bad, I started to drift away from it. As I got into personal development, I found that all these other people advised staying away from TV as well.
Eventually I got to the point where I openly disliked watching TV (Look at Law 36 in The 48 Laws of Power. This may have played a role even though I had not read the book yet.). Today, all the reasons I don’t watch TV are very clear and I can finally articulate them:
Everything we do with our time is an investment. TV happens to be one that yields no returns. In fact, TV is a negative investment so you are actually going backwards.
First, you lose out on time that you could be doing things that get you closer to your goals. This is called opportunity cost. You also lose money in the form of innumerable subscriptions, game consoles, and endless games. I would hate to guess what this adds up to over the course of years and all the more worthy things that could have been done with that money.
You also build terrible habits of complacency and distraction. The irresistibility of “one more episode” lulls you into an insidious complacency and the constant supply of dopamine is a distraction no better than social media.
Because of this, I didn’t bring a TV to college. Never even considered it. My roommate was flabbergasted and still does not understand. Maybe he will someday. Probably not.
It’s the same way with friends. When you don’t have a TV, people will automatically ask you what you do in your “free time” as if watching TV were the only option. Of course telling them about reading books and chasing goals would be a bigger waste of time than watching TV, so you are left with making something up. This is ok.
If you don’t have a TV then you know what I’m talking about. If you are getting rid of your TV as soon as you get done reading this, then you will find out what I’m talking about.
Once again, this is perfectly fine. However, do not let these people peer pressure you into thinking that watching TV is normal and acceptable. For losers, it is. For us, it is not.
Someday we won’t have these friends. We will associate with like-minded individuals who also don’t waste their time.
Exceptions
For nearly every rule there are exceptions so I need to make sure that I cover which exceptions are acceptable and which exceptions are unacceptable. Here are those 1% of times:
#1: Family/socializing- If your family time is primary based on watching TV together, then this is understandable. I would say to try to find a better bonding activity than staring at a screen like zombies, but this post is not telling you to stop spending time with your family.
There is also a way you can use TV’s and in particular video games strategically: to create connections. Connections that you develop through these activities may not be as high quality as others, but it never hurts to have relationships with more people.
#2: Down time- If you insist that TV "helps you relax", then it may be ok ever once in a (very long) while. Just make sure that you don’t BS yourself here. It may also be a good way to reward yourself when you accomplish everything you need to, so long as you can hold yourself accountable or involve someone else who can.
…
I can already hear it. What about sports? We are athlete-students right? Don’t you use the TV to watch sports at least? For the most part… no. This is because of a harsh truth I found a while back and as an athlete, this one hurt; unless you are directly involved in what is taking place, then it is just like anything else on TV- it does nothing for you.
But what about using it for film? This is not a bad idea and is something I have tried. However, unless you can rewind as many times as you need and play it in slow motion, then it will probably not be as useful as something on YouTube.
I’m not saying I never watch sports- I do, it just falls into the #2 category.
What about “educational” shows? Stuff you could actually learn from? Occasionally, there may be something on that would actually have useful information. However, these instances are few and far between and 99% of all the information you could ever want can be found much faster by looking online.
Essentially, TV has always been a waste of time and an egregious bad habit. Watching TV is lazy and anything good that it had has been made irrelevant through smart phones and computers.
Because of this, I don’t remember the last time I watched an entire show or movie. In fact, a lot of times if I want to watch something now, I need my mom or my little sister’s help to get it figured out. It’s kind of funny and kind of impressive at the same time.
An 18 year old not knowing how to work a TV in the age of streaming services? Definitely unique. Sometimes I feel like an elderly person trying to use a smartphone.
This is a GOOD thing.
I’ll let you go now so you can sell your TV.
Athlete-Student
BucketsoverBooks
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