So we have a satellite dish at our house in lieu of cable. The main reason we switched to it was that our cable company kept lying to us about when certain channels would be coming and since the dish got us more channels at less money (and without all of the extras fees and taxes that cable had), the decision was pretty easy. From the outset, we loved it. The picture was clearer, we had more channels than ever, and it went out less than our old cable did. I tell people it was the most satisfying electronics purchase I have made.

So now I have a huge chunk of channels to pick from but at the same time I realize that watching TV is not typically the best option for my time.  Neither is it the best option for my family’s time either. A few years back, my wife and I decided to watch less television. Part of it was simply that there were less shows we were interested in, in short we became more particular how we spent our time in front of the TV, and part of it was a desire to do other things than lock ourselves into sitting on the couch two hours a night and stare. The results were a little surprising to me. I actually felt freer on the nights where there was no show to watch.

Whenever I feel freer because of a choice I’ve made, that is a red flag to me that the time I spent on that activity was out of balance with the amount of enjoyment the activity gave me. But why do I keep doing something that is giving me less enjoyment? How many times have I sat on the couch, remote in hand, and gone from channel to channel looking for something to watch? I could go an entire half-hour switching channels and never actually watch anything. Is this a productive use of my time?

There are maybe four shows we actively follow now. Shows that we actually schedule time to watch rather than watching whatever happens to be on. The rest of the time is spent engaging in other activities that bring much more satisfaction than TV watching. Note that we didn’t cancel the satellite service or stop watching TV completely, we still enjoy it. We just rationed what we watched and give ourselves plenty of time for more balancing activities.