If you are a writer or a reader or you just want a full life - televison is your worst enemy.

This is a chapter from my Lifestyle book:


Chapter 22 - Television

One of the biggest time-wasters and therefore one of the biggest reasons why people don’t spend time on setting goals and achieving them is television.

Ask yourself these questions:

• How many hours a week would I spend just channel-flicking?

• How many hours of television advertising would I see in a week? (around 15 minutes an hour on TV1, TV2 and TV3)

• How many times do I go to bed later than I would like to because I kept watching television?

• How many television programmes do I watch just because they happen to be on, not because I planned to watch them?

• In all the television I watched last week, how did it meet any of my lifestyle goals?

One of the best decisions our family made was to disconnect our television from the aerial and take it out of our living room. We have a DVD player and a video player, so if we want to watch a movie or a music DVD or a motivational DVD we can. Similarly, our kids do not watch television, they watch videos and DVD that we have vetoed. These tend to be wildlife programmes or good quality kids movies. The result of this simple change has meant we have a lot more family time, none of us waste time watching television, our evenings don’t revolve around watching a particular program at a particular time, my wife and I read a lot more, our kids are not exposed to advertisements and questionable programmes (including news items on murder, rape and graphic war/terrorism carnage).

Television used to be cutting-edge technology, but that was 20 years ago. It is now an inefficient way to get entertainment and news.

Let’s take news for example. I used to feel that I needed to watch the television news most days. But let’s look at it. You watch an hour of news, which is 15 minutes of advertisements and realistically you are only interested in maybe one third of the news items. The rest you just have to sit through. What you have to sit through is often so distressing and depressing (generally crime and violence and death) that you often feel violated or depressed yourself. It is far more efficient to read selected news items on the Internet or in a newspaper. Don’t just take my word for it, try it for a week. Force yourself to watch no news on television for a week – you won’t miss it!

What about your favourite programmes? Hey I love some television programmes. Favourites are “The Simpsons”, “Friends”, and “The Apprentice”. So here is what I do, I buy the series on DVD! I can order any series from www.amazon.com. Then I can watch them exactly when I feel like it with no ads! Also, I can watch half a programme or three programmes – suddenly I’m in control, not a television program director.

If you absolutely have to have your television plugged in then record every program you want to watch, then watch it later and fast-forward through the ads, and/or the news items you don’t need to see.

Of course there are a few must-see live events such as All Black tests or Silver Ferns tests for example. But there are probably only 10-15 must see live events per year. It is easy to work around these, see them at a friend’s place, go to a bar, get the aerial down from where you have hidden it – whatever. The point is that you can live just fine without a television, in fact I guarantee your life will be more productive and you will more easily create your perfect lifestyle if you don’t have one.

If you have found yourself agreeing with most of this chapter, act right now! Get up and disconnect your television or take it to a friend’s place to look after it for you. I urge you to at least try it for one month – you won’t regret it!