My TV experiment: Successful Results

In the interests of full disclosure…It actually wasn’t an intentional experiment. I didn’t set out to give up TV, it just happened that way. Over the last month I was so busy with work responsibilities, wrapping up employment obligations, launching new career opportunities, dealing with life changes, transitions, and unexpected obstacles that I was forced to be very frugal with my time and energy.

Some things had to go. Since I have never been a big connoisseur of television, only a casual watcher at most, it wasn’t a big sacrifice for me to make. I chose to use that time instead to write, spend time with my family, read, (and sometimes work yes.)

My results – I found that without my weekly television shows and trying to catch up on my DVR episodes of my favorite programs I was able to accomplish so much more in far less time. This should not have come as a surprise.

Does that mean I’ll never watch television again? No. What it means is that if I want to accomplish more in my life, to get more done, to focus on those things that are truly important to me, then I need to make conscious decisions to minimize those activities that are not very important to me.

Those activities may be different for you. We each have activities that feed us, activities that drain us, things that make us laugh, things to help us de-stress and things that waste our time. For some it might not be television, it might be computer surfing, it might be social media, it might be gaming, it might be socializing and might even be doing useless work that doesn’t need to be done.

Whatever it is; to the extent that you can minimize the useless activities and wasted time in your life, you will find that there is a direct correlation in the increase of your productivity, your achievements, your forward progress, your satisfaction and a corresponding drop in stress and anxiety.

What can you experiment with?