Get more time #1: Rethink television

8th August 2009

I haven't watched TV in almost 3 years. I guarantee I'm much happier for it.

The average person watches 148 minutes of TV a day. That's 17 hours a week or 38 days per year.

By the time you factor in holidays, you're spending almost half as much time in front of the TV as you do in your job. In your life, it'll cost you around 2,800 days. Nearly 8 years. I hope that scares you.

For most people, the quickest way to gain the largest amount of free time is to rethink their TV habits.

Making TV your bitch

You can still watch programmes, just don't watch them on broadcast TV. And get picky about what you watch.

Firstly, watch DVDs / Blu-Ray / downloaded shows for huge benefits:

• You choose what you want to watch.
• You choose when you want to watch it.
• Never miss an episode.
• No adverts.
• You can pause / watch partial episodes.

It may cost more, but the cost itself is an advantage: you'll choose what you watch more carefully. You probably buy a tonne of DVDs already anyway. Besides, how much would you pay for 2,800 days of your life?

You can also use TiVo / Sky+ for much the same effect, but beware as it can be easy to queue up too much and feel pressured to 'clear the backlog' before new stuff replaces it. You'll never get that pressure from a DVD.

Try to develop a habitual time for watching programmes. I almost only ever watch something when I'm eating dinner (actually, my first dinner - I have two). This habit means I only ever watch one programme a day maximum, which is fine - I get a lot from that one show, and I know I can't over-indulge much.

The downside

Of course, you'll lose a few things:

• You won't have an encyclopaedic knowledge of current adverts
• You won't know the latest 15-minutes-of-fame celebrities
• You won't be that hot at pub quizzes

What I've found you won't miss is a tonne of programmes you don't even know exist, and wouldn't remember a month after you've seen them.

The upside

Now Mr Gladwell is famed for saying it takes around 10,000 hours to become world class at something. But let's not forget what you can do with less:

"[on violinists] ... By age of 20, the stars had all totalled 10,000 hours of practice, the "good" students had worked 8,000 hours and the future music teachers had practiced just over 4,000 hours."

For most of us, developing the skill of a music teacher - from scratch - would be a seriously impressive feat. Or equivalent to about 4 years not watching TV.