Do You Know How Much Time You Spend Watching Television?
If you have been following along with my Facebook page Daily Challenge then this one might sound familiar but if you aren’t I do invite you to do so. Every day I have a new challenge for you. The challenges are not that difficult but they do get you think about you, your life, your future, and a little about your past. You can see my daily challenges on my Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/thedavidguerra
It seems like we have heard how Television is bad for you. There warnings are everywhere. Heck, there is one such dire warning in the motion picture classic, “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.”
“Oompa Loompa doom-pa-dee-do
I have another puzzle for you
Oompa Loompa doom-pa-da-dee
If you are wise you’ll listen to me
What do you get from a glut of TV?
A pain in the neck and an IQ of three
Why don’t you try simply reading a book?
Or can you just not bear to look?
You’ll get no… you’ll get no… you’ll get no commercials
Oompa Loompa doom-pa-dee-da
If you’re not greedy, you will go far
You will live in happiness too
Like the Oompa Loompa doom-pa-dee-do”
However, more times than naught these warnings are coming to you while you are watching television. Now what good does that do you? It does not. Seriously, do they actually expect you to suddenly turn off the television mid show and never turn it on again?
No! They do not expect you to do that. They do expect you to think they are telling you not to watch any other show but the one show that tells you television is bad.
You and I both know that they are not actually expecting you to stop watching them. They need you to watch so that you can be counted as a viewer, which ups their ratings and increases their advertising revenue so they can continue to make more television shows so they can tell you which shows to watch and not watch.
So what does this have to do with you?
A lot.
If we take to heart even just one of those statements about television being bad for you, then you know that it might just be time to do something.
That is why on my Facebook #DailyChallenge video series, I created a three-day challenge to address this specific issue.
While we hear that television is bad for us, what we don’t hear and sometimes we don’t want to hear is the amount of time we spend watching television every week. Let’s break this down before I begin.
In a seven-day week, there are 168 hours. Supposing we sleep the ideal eight hours a night that comes out to 56 hours a week. Subtract that from the 168 hours it comes out to 112 hours left. Now a forty (40)-workweek leaves us with 72 hours all to ourselves. But wait, let’s drill down just a bit. 7 hours (one hour a week) for personal hygiene and another 7 hours for meal prep and dining, all that leaves us with a whopping 58 hours.
Fifty-eight hours is not a lot of time. Now here comes the fun part, how much of that time do you spend on personal care? Seriously, how much of that time do you spend watching television? Think about this, if you spend fifteen minutes every morning (Monday through Friday), just watching the news headlines that is already an hour and fifteen minutes gone. You are down to 56 hours and 45 minutes. Then a one-hour long prime-time show every night that’s another five hours a week gone. You are down to 51 hours and forty-five minutes. Now if you are one of those individuals, that likes a sit-com or two every night then you are down to 46 hours and 45 minutes.
46.75 hours spread out over the course of seven days it comes out to about 6 hours and 40 minutes every day left over. But is it really? I mean I was being VERY conservative on your viewing habits. In the California State University @ Northridge website (https://www.csun.edu/science/health/docs/tv&health.html) run by Professor of Science Education, Norman Herr, Ph.D., states according “to the A.C. Nielsen Co., the average American watches more than 4 hours of TV each day (or 28 hours/week, or 2 months of nonstop TV-watching per year).” So let’s go back to the original 58 hours available and take away the estimated 28 hours per week that comes out to 30 hours left or 4 hours and approximately 15 minutes a day left to do something else.
Are 4 and a quarter hours enough time spend with the family, take care of chores and any other “necessity? I would take a leap of faith and say that you agree it is NOT enough time.
So what can we do about it? What is the call to action?
Simple, you audit your viewing habits.
You start by making a list.
Make a list of all the television shows you watch and for how long each episode runs. Seems simple enough because it is. As you start listing the shows you watch be sure to include the news. Those are shows. If you think they are not a show then why do they boast they have the highest ratings among any other newscast? That’s right, they worry about the ratings as well. So be sure to include the news.
Once you have made the list of shows you watch and how long each show is, tally up the show count and the time spent watching. Does the time spent surprise you? Did you think it was less? Did you think it was more?
What next?
The next thing in this audit, you put next to each TV show how the program makes you feel. Do the shows make you feel happy, entertained, informed, sad, anxious, down, confused, stressed?
Remember, there are two kinds of stress; one that makes you feel good and the one that makes you feel sad. If a show makes you stressed put good or bad next to that. Seriously, consider how a show makes you feel overall. See most television dramas or sitcoms with have their ups and downs and want you to feel a wide range of emotions and that makes for good entertainment. Pick the one emotion that best sums up the entire show experience.
Once you have completed identifying how each show makes you feel. Look at the ones that leave you feeling negative. Now ask yourself the following; do you really need to feel this way? Why do you give this television show the power to make me feel bad or negative?
Trying going a week without watching those negative television shows.
Ignore any previews, promos or spoilers about that show(s); all they serve is to tempt you to watch. Don’t slip and fall into watching those negative shows.
Then audit yourself after one week of NO negative television shows. How do you feel? Also, did you notice how much free time you had?
You probably started to feel better about yourself and you more than likely found yourself with more free time than you actually anticipated.
Now keep it up. Refrain from watching negative television. You can do it. I once thought I could not stop watching the negative shows but I do it. Therefore, I know you can do it.
Cutting out negative television is very simple to do but difficult to maintain because there are just so many people buying into the negativity of television that they (along with all the sponsors) create, foster, and fester a huge fear. The fear of missing out. Missing out on the latest news on who is no longer vegan or which basketball player they are dating or who is sleeping with whom or worst still, who was kicked off the island or did not get the rose.
Seriously, if your fear of missing out is rooted in that kind of television you have a bigger problem and anything I say, do or write will come nowhere near the kind of help you so truly need and richly deserve.
Now with that being said, it is time for you to get to work and audit your viewing habits.
If you need a little help, I have created an audit sheet for you.
Click here to download the TV VIEWING AUDIT FORM (in pdf).
If you need another page or two of the audit sheet just download another one.
Please let me know how the audit turns out for you. I will be posting my audit online in the coming days.
Thanks for your time,
David Guerra
P.S. Make Today Better Than Yesterday!