A few days ago, I completed a 30 day challenge to not watch any TV. I had a few reasons for doing this. Firstly, I’d realised I was spending around 5 hours every night with the TV on. This had started as a way to get through the boredom of the second lockdown here in the UK, which meant no more running with my local club, and therefore no social life whatsoever, and unfortunately also coincided with me not having much freelance work on. However, secondly, I’d realised I had the telly on but wasn’t really watching it. I was doing puzzles at the same time, and not even good ones, but just sudokus, over and over again. Thirdly, I realised that the TV, far from comforting me and supporting me through a difficult time, was in fact making me feel miserable. Fourthly, I had been intending to try to start a second business for a while but wasn’t really making any progress towards it.
I had been researching the concept of essentialism, introduced by Greg McKeown in the book of the same name, and was struck by the seeming simplicity of improving your life through such a logical process. The questions to ask yourself, Greg said, were (1) What do really want to do but are currently spending not enough or no time on? (2) What are you currently spending (too much) time on that really isn’t essential? It was obvious to me that I needed to ditch the TV and spend more time working on my new business.
Being the sort of person who gets addicted to things very easily and finds it easier to go cold turkey and give up entirely than try to just do things in moderation, and having tried many times before to just watch one or two hours of TV, I decided to set myself a 30-day challenge to do without, not just TV, but the related timewaster of YouTube videos. While, in moderation, they can be really informative and educational, it had got to the point I was watching them all the time I was at home and not working, and I felt that if I banned TV but not YouTube I would just end up substituting one for the other.
I had a few expectations about the challenge
- I thought I would find it really hard. I’d done 30 days without alcohol and sugar in the past, and genuinely struggled. I’d watched (too much) TV for as long as I could remember (apart from a period at uni when I didn’t own a TV) and I knew I must be addicted due to the fact that I wouldn’t even go one day without watching and found it almost impossible to turn it off once I’d started watching.
- I thought that I would gain loads of spare time (basically, five hours every night plus all that time during the day when I had been putting YouTube on) and get loads done. My to do list would be finished in no time!
- I thought that I would be really bored and climbing the walls and would need to find loads of replacement activities, like reading, writing or cleaning.
Here’s what actually happened:
- It was really easy. I didn’t miss TV at all. I wasn’t even tempted to put it on. I didn’t mind when other people talked to me about TV. I actually felt relieved not to have that pull to go and put the TV on as soon as work was done for the day and I’d made my evening meal. I wasn’t bored in the evenings even once.
- I didn’t replace TV with other stuff as much as I thought I would. I did read more than I normally would, which I considered a good thing as I always have a pile of books waiting to be read. Towards the second half of the challenge, I started re-reading some old favourites, which I decided after a while was a bit too similar to TV watching in the sense that it’s very comforting, and really a bit pointless. I’m planning to address this next, continuing without TV but also banning myself from reading novels I’ve read before.
- Most startling of all, rather than being bored, my to-do list exploded. It’s true that I had Christmas presents to buy and cards to write, and I also immediately decided to start this blog, which gave me lots of research, learning and planning to do. However, I also think that not switching off every night as soon as I finish work has meant that I actually take time to look around at my house and see more of the jobs that need doing. I have started decluttering my house, following my long-held desire to live a minimalist lifestyle.
- I will probably find out more in January, which is naturally less busy, and also maybe as time goes on I really will get more of my to-do list done, but it does seem at the moment that the more I do, the more I find to add to my list. While I started the 30 days going to bed early, in the absence of TV to stay up for, I soon found I had difficulty switching off from tasks, and would wake up early, my mind going over problems, and eager to get up and started on tackling them.
- So, strangely enough, I seem to have become one of those people who finds it hard to relax, which is weird, because I’ve always thought that I was too relaxed, and lacked get up and go. I have worried about it and been on a decade-long quest to try to find more energy. I never understood people who told me they couldn’t sit down and relax until they’d done all the housework, or couldn’t go to sleep at night for thinking about everything they had to do the next day. I would literally have NOTHING on my mind when I went to sleep. I couldn’t understand why people thought it was so important to get the housework done. And I couldn’t understand why anyone cared very much about their task list for the next day. But all of a sudden, I became that person. There was a while in the middle of the 30 days where I even started to wonder if not watching TV was bad for me and I should start watching again just so that I could relax. I resisted the temptation and after a few days the feeling went away. Now, I feel like I’ve got slightly more balance. I’m not on edge but I am getting a bit more done. The truth is that, before the no-TV challenge, I was probably mildly depressed. The truth is, taking action can boost your mood if you’re the sort of person who can tend to be a bit lazy.
- I have more purpose now. I can’t say I’ve found the meaning of life or am certain I’m on exactly the right track. I don’t think that getting to the end of your to do list is transformational and definitely just being busy isn’t the answer. You have to also take the time to make sure you’re doing the stuff you want to do. But for me TV is an activity that completely takes me away from reality. I get fully engrossed in it and it stops me thinking about anything real whatsoever. It’s a really easy and effective way for me to stick my head in the sand and ignore my problems. And, for that reason, not being able to do it has forced me to tackle the stuff that isn’t working in my life.
So what’s next?
Before I did this challenge, I thought that I was seriously addicted to TV and that giving it up would be really difficult but could transform my life. I have learnt that I am much happier without TV and I don’t actually miss it at all. It has transformed my life, I’d say, but not as dramatically as I probably expected. I imagined I’d be able to get so much done in a month without TV. But the reality is simply a cleaner, tidier house, less stress, and the very tiny beginnings of a new business. I don’t plan to go back to watching TV the way I used to, ever. Maybe the odd special event like the Olympics or a film as a special treat instead of a nightly occurrence. My next challenge is going to be no TV combined with no re-reading of favourite novels. I’ll be interested to see how that goes, because I know that I’ve used TV and books in the past, not just to escape and hide, but for comfort, the comfort of a story you already know has a happy end, or a familiar character or face. Without either one of them, we’ll see how I get on. I’m also still working on my minimalist journey, which you can read about here.