For many people, watching TV is little more than a big pit into which they shovel the precious few ticks of the clock they have on this planet. It's junk food for the mind, and contributes little to the potential of their future.
But what if there were a way to way to link that mindless one-eyed beast in the living room with personal development? There is, and you don't have to stop watching TV to do it.
Recently, a client and I were talking about his need to incorporate more energizing activities into his life. When he stopped and looked at where his time was going, he realized that there was a huge chunk being spent in front of the TV.
Rather than stop watching TV altogether, we hit on the idea of creating a one-to-one ratio of TV time and energizing activity. For every hour of TV he watched in the course of a week, he committed to spending an hour doing something that energized him.
This approach had multiple benefits, some obvious, some less obvious:
- He started incorporating more energizing activity into his days
- His awareness of just how much time he spent in front of the TV increased, because he had to track it in order to match it.
- He balanced his "empty brain calories" with energizing nourishment.
- He didn't have to go cold turkey. He was still able to watch TV, which made it feel less onerous.
- It put a cap on the amount of TV he could realistically watch. He had to prioritize what programs were important for him, because he couldn't watch indiscriminately and have time to match the hours with energizing activity.
For this client, the focus was on energizing activity, but you could do it with just about anything positive you want to incorporate into your life. Maybe that is reading personal development books. Maybe it is quality time with family or friends.
Try this: For the next month, pick something you want to incorporate more of into your life. Track your TV time for one week, just to get a realistic picture of how much time you actually spend with it, and then start your one-to-one ratio.
What would you focus on?
--
Time for a career change? Launch it with...
The Occupational Adventure Guide:
A Travel Guide to the Career of Your Dreams
--
by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst
Comments