Watching TV

One of the best things about

One of the best things about being is China is I don't watch TV. I now spend more time reading, and learning Chinese, or reading business articles and developing relationships.

I do miss watching Nightly Business Report on PBS in the US. It is packed with power. www.nbr.com

JHB "00"

Devil's advocate

One could try to make a case for actually watching these programmes - if your team is going to be watching them, then a passing awareness can only help build relationships? ;-)

This from someone with a new boss, and about the only tv entertainment we have in common is the programmes our kids watch!

Where is time really wasted?

I've seen this sort of survey before, and taken in isolation it's easy to argue that watching television is the biggest waste of our most precious resource: time.

But TV isn't the only activity that can be considered a waste:

• Reading Fiction -- It's not much different to watching soaps from the take-home-benefit POV
• Reading Non-fiction that's unrelated to your "addiction to food, clothing, and shelter"
• Reading the News -- does it really matter to your life that some cataclysm is happening somewhere? If there's new important enough, your directs will tell you about it in an O3
• Exercise -- Dan Buettner's TED Talk tells us that deliberate exercise is not conducive to longevity (and those that actually need to do it aren't those that spend the time doing it)

But all these things, to some level, increase our effectiveness. They allow us to context-shift away from our day-jobs. We can get lost in the new worlds of fiction, or the expanded world of non-fiction. We learn more about our shared world, or increase our endorphin levels.

Each time we context-shift, something else falls through the crack between contexts and our understanding of our work-context increases somewhere, somehow.

While excessive hours spent watching television steals time from being effective, so does excessive hours spent at almost anything. Television seems to just get more of a bum rap than anything else that appears to "waste" our time.

Cheers!
Rick Measham

Geek Herding

Thanks!

Thank you for your comments everyone.

JHB - glad you've found value in less TV!

Diem - I've never found not watching the same programs as my team to be a problem - my trick is to look at the headlines on the front of magazines in the supermarket checkout line. That's usually enough to know that Ian Beale has run off with Ricky!

Rick - you're right - everything in moderation :-)

Wendii

crazy talk

As someone who works in television I encourage you to ignore Wendii's crazy talk and watch more TV! :)

Although, as someone who works in TV I actually watch very little at night.  Just enough to know what's going on in my industry. 

Newton Minnow said it best in 1961:

"When television is good, nothing — not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers — nothing is better.

But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there, for a day, without a book, without a magazine, without a newspaper, without a profit and loss sheet or a rating book to distract you. Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland.

You will see a procession of game shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons. And endlessly commercials — many screaming, cajoling, and offending. And most of all, boredom. True, you'll see a few things you will enjoy. But they will be very, very few. And if you think I exaggerate, I only ask you to try it."

Time waster

 TV is a time waster, but not as much as it used to be for folks in my circle of friends.  When I was younger, there were fewer channels, even on cable, and the internet was a lot less robust as an entertainment medium. Now, it seems, few shows are able to capture the attention of popular culture for very long - no "must see TV" any more. As a result no single show seems to gather much attention any more.

Although I must admit it is odd that I get 300+ channels on cable, and still can't find anything that captures my interest most of the time.

Most of my circle of friends don't watch much TV other than the occasional sporting event - For me the 141 hour average seems very excessive - one tenth of that is more the norm.

-Dan

Oh, cut it out!

Oh, cut it out!  

My free time is ..... free!  It's not enough that our corporate overlords demand our most productive years now we are going to give them our pacifiers as well?

Stay away from my time wasters!  There mine!

Thank you!

Canuk - Great quote - even if I'm trying to do you out of a living :-)

Dan - That's the thing with averages - some people are watching nothing, so how much do you think the others have to watch to make that 141 hour average? That boggles my mind!

AManagerTool - Research says the more TV you watch the lower your income and life happiness. Want to change your mind?

Wendii

Wendii, firstly, no-one

Wendii, firstly, no-one watches the soaps, thankfully!

But your comment about the interaction of TV, income and happiness is fraught with issues about causality. Unless there's been a study which I'm unaware of (more than likely), that's a bit like saying that smoking reduces your income levels, when in fact there's just a correlation of low incomes and smoking.

Perhaps people with lower incomes just watch more television (possibly because they feel they can't afford to do other things), and generally having less money would be a plausible reason to report yourself being unhappy (obviously there's a gaping chasm there about needing money to be happy, but I'd wager that's what the surveys would reveal, however much we celebrate the outliers).

Wendii,No.

Wendii,

cum hoc ergo propter hoc

Did you know that 100% of people who don't watch television have a greater than 95% chance of dying before the age of 100?  My conclusion is that if I want to live to see 100, I better turn on American Idol!

Just kidding, you know I think highly of you! 

I think my point is that we can take this career development to extremes at times ..... especially here...LOL

Lighten up everybody.  He who dies with the most toys still dies!

:-)

Diem, of course you're right - causality is complicated. (Though, interestingly, there isn't a straightforward correlation between wealth and happiness.) I simplified for effect!

AManagerTool, obviously it didn't work :-) I still think 141 hours a month is too much, but I'll lighten up a little :-)

Wendii