Maybe an hour a week tops, have never been into it as I find tv far too boring. My biggest time sink is exercising though, which I probably do just as much as most people watch tv lol
Sometimes for background noise/information.
I watch very few TV "shows", and what I do watch is usually coming off of Tivo.
Other than 1 or 2 shows I watch with my wife, most of my personal preference is for something that is at least mildly interesting/informative (Myth Busters, etc.)
I stopped watching TV when I moved to the city. Season 2 of Lost was the hardest show to give up. Now I spend more than the time I spent watching TV commuting to the suburbs.
A few years ago, the girlfriend and I spent some time carefully building and configuring a MythTV box, which was fun. Then we proceeded to not actually watch any TV. 6 months later, when we realized we were only keeping the cable subscription so that our Myth project wasn't purposeless, we cancelled it.
We still watch a decent bit of downloaded TV content -- we'll sit down and watch entire seasons in a few evenings. We watch nothing in 'realtime' and we see zero commercials.
(I actually miss commercials and wish people wouldn't cut them out of what I download.)
Currently, yes, maybe a few hours per week or so. But soon, thanks to our powerful government, they will stop broadcasting analog TV in this country (Finland) and my home will be TV-free. Sweet.
Definitely. I think the twist will be that the Turk becomes an AI on the side of good. The turk inventor's last name IS Goode, after all. Just speculating. Also, I like that the terminator's name is Cameron, after "James Cameron" I imagine.
Yes, sort of. I don't have cable or anything, and I only follow House (downloaded). My girlfriend and I have also been watching Star Trek (first TNG, now Voyager).
I work best with distractions. My favorite three distractions are music, people (i.e. going to the coffee shop), and tv, in that order. If I'm coding at home, either the music is cranked or the tv is on. Though, I try to watch uninteresting shows, so that I don't get distracted. If either Discovery or the History channel are on, I'm not getting much done.
I'm the exact same way. I am most productive from about 11pm to 4am. Luckily my 9-5 only requires me to work "just hard enough to not get fired." I'm also still in college, so my college roomies don't mind the music at 3am, as long as it's not blasting.
No time. I would include DVDs of TV shows as TV. I used to watch them more. Watching an entire season of a good show over the course of a few days is MUCH better than serial TV.
Even shows like Seinfeld are better. I didn't realize till I watched them in order that they reference previous episodes all the time.
Our MythTV ( http://www.mythtv.org/ ) setup didn't quite survive our recent international move, so we're not watching much. Not that we watched much before - there's not much good stuff on. We'll see what happens when I get around to fixing myth.
Unfortunately yes. I find myself watching HGTV and other home type shows to get ideas for the time when I actually own a home. I don't have Tivo, so it's normally back to a book or papers during commercials. I'm also a big fan of comedies like Scrubs, The Office, 30 Rock, Family Guy and The Simpsons. I seem to find long marathons of Law & Order as well...
I watch video podcasts. If you haven't started watching GigaOm, I highly recommend it. It was really bad at first, but some of the VC/CEO/founder interviews they've done are absolutely stellar stuff that have taught me a lot.
I actually watch some, and it increases during winter. I think it has to do with SAD (considering I am not used to the weather, especially the bleak 4 months that we see here in Columbus, OH). The only show I follow is House (and now Sarah Connor Chronicles) but I am at a point where its sucking up a lot of time. I am going to cut the cable, and go DVD shopping. And of course, commerical free shows are so much better.
Most of my TV watching happens in the background, while I am surfing the web or catching up on my RSS reader, but its still a lousy habit
Trying to learn something worthwhile with TV is like trying to get rich with the lottery.
Sometimes you do indeed learn a little something/get a little cash, but at least 99% of the time you're wasting your fucking time/money.
And if you still manage to be lucky enough to learn something/win cash, it's still not very edifying (I'd rather make a million by myself than 30 millions with the lottery).
i was suggesting you can learn about the target audience, by watching TV. this works even if the content is bad. like our culture or not, i'm interested in what it's like (which is important to know, if you hope to improve it).
for me at least, tv is not dangerous. i don't drool, i don't buy stuff b/c it says to, i don't like stuff b/c it says to, etc
I fully agree on this point. Also, I really don't like our culture. I think the two are strongly correlated. I really don't want to be told what to think, what to buy, who to like, where to go, what to do, and why worry when I can just take a pill for that with possible sexual side effects talk to your doctor.
I download specific tv shows to watch but for the most part, I ignore it. I find whenever I'm at someones place and they have a tv on, my brain just fully shuts down and I sort of drool out of the corner of my mouth.
No. I realized TV was what I would now call a "time sink" (didn't have a word for it then) when I was about 15, and stopped watching it. I've never owned a TV. I do sometimes watch old TV episodes on DVD though. I especially recommend Fawlty Towers, Jeeves and Wooster, The Dick Van Dyke Show, and The Saint.
On another front, don't mean to come off as rude here, but surely somebody among you folks has some experience with Wufoo and can spare a moment to jot a quick reply on the post a few topics below this one? Please? Or is everybody busy watching t.v. ....
Yeh but you know right after you down-modded me you went straight to Amazon and were like, "Oh yeah, The Prisoner, almost forgot about that - wonder if that's available as a box set."
Whatever you do, please do NOT think of me as you're watching it if you wind up getting it on DVD.
And besides ... I just know I'm going to lose most of my points for this one ... I'm making a perfectly valid point.
Everybody talks about Wufoo here ... yet when I ask for honest, useful feedback, nobody responded for most of the day.
Yet if I were to put up a post like, "Do you think it's better to code in rooms painted blue, or rooms painted green" I'm pretty certain I'd quickly get over 50 responses ASAP.
Here we go ... here come the down mods ... sigh ... 52 points my all time high ... oh well it was nice while it lasted ...
T.V. has a huge narcotic effect and gives you a "hit" of dopamine rush, very hard to get over. Try googling things that help you regulate your dopamine levels so they're more in balance and you'll find anything from t.v. to smoking easier to quit; for starters: exercise, especially stuff that stimulates glands and lymbic systems, like Yoga and Qi Gong - not so much Tai chi. Running helps a lot but eventually you mess up your joints so biking is good too. Just take it easy and don't look for any quick, extreme radical changes - just setting self up to fail. Instead try this: "I want to reduce my t.v. viewing to 150 minutes of quality t.v. programming of my choice per day and not give in to random crap programming designed to just grab my attention." Step by step.
If you like sports, that is one sports game a night. When I was in university we had 4 tv's and the ultimate cable package (a benefit of cramming 6 people into a tiny house, things like that become cheap) and a few roommates would commonly watch about 8 hours of tv per day.
However 'watching tv' was more doing school work on the couch with the odd bit of discussion about a good play.
90% of my 'tv watching' then was doing schoolwork.
At about 16, when I first got a gig writing reviews I decided TV took up too much time. At that point I simply pulled the cable out the back of the thing and just continued to use it to review games.
Now I simply don't have a TV, I still own one but it's in storage. I have a small problem with DVD's, but mostly because it's rather boring eating alone, and I barely play games on my PC anymore since reviewing them made pretty much 90% of games detestable. I literally had to force myself to play through Metalheart: Replicants Rampage, description claimed it was like a new Fallout; I believe they mixed up the game with the feeling of "Oh dear god, that pain is my life draining away" of radiation poisoning.
Now I have so much time without TV that I'm going to blitz out a novel I've been working on over the next couple of weeks. It's been a while since I tried to get anything published, so its about time I _did_ get something published.
You find something else to do. I've never been able to quit an addiction without replacing it with another addiction. It went TV -> MUDS -> Magic: the Gathering -> Star Wars CCG -> writing my own MUD -> electric guitar -> MUDS again -> Harry Potter fanfiction -> C2 & programming language design -> sailing -> Reddit -> News.YC -> Scrabulous -> my startup -> Arc -> hopefully back to my startup again, though I can't be sure of that...
Luckily, if you get to a certain point in a "constructive" project (like a piece of software), it'll start to pull you along and becomes less of a chore and more of an obsession. Unfortunately, it's pretty easy to interrupt that obsession, which is why I should stop overriding my 10-hour noprocrast timeout on news.YC.
I realized that 99% of what's on TV is pure crap and wasn't worth paying $70 / month for, so I cancelled my cable service. I use Netflix now so I can watch movies and some TV series, but I no longer just sit in front of the TV and do nothing for a couple of hours a night.
Easy. Cancel your cable/satellite subscription, then wait a month. Suddenly TV doesn't seem very important.
If you want to use the pseudo-nicotine-patch method of weaning yourself from TV, do the above and download your current shows off the internet and watch them at your convenience. Eventually those shows will die off, and since you don't have cable/satellite, you won't have any new ones to replace them.
It doesn't have much to do with willpower, it's more about realizing if you don't waste your time on inconsequential stuff, then you'll almost necessarily spend it on something worthwhile.
I don't think it's hard to convince yourself TV is a waste of time...
I grew up with TVs on a lot as well. Not the constant background noise that some people grow up with, but a fair amount of TV. Cartoons Saturday morning and after school when I was little, and then sitcoms or whatever my parents were watching in middle school.
However, I also grew up with a truckload of books. And one day I finally realized that I wasn't really watching TV; I just happened to be keeping my folks company and reading in the same room the TV was on. I had accidentally (but fortunately!) learned to completely tune TV out. This led to my current state of constant reading. To me, books are TV. Some people have to concentrate to read a book. I have to concentrate quite hard to pay attention to a TV. Weird quirk, but I like it!
This of course means times other than when I put on a DVD or tape or something specifically to watch and turn all the lights out and get lost. But I rarely have that much free time.
I do not have enough willpower not to watch TV if there is a TV in my apartment. But there is no TV in my apartment, and I have enough willpower not to buy one and bring it home.
Not really. I cancelled cable about 6 months ago, and I haven't looked back. The writer's strike helped a bunch, though.
I'll tune in to broadcast TV to occasionally watch Jeopardy while eating dinner, or to catch a new episode of House (pretty much the only show I watch regularly).
108 comments
[ 7.0 ms ] story [ 192 ms ] threadSeems like a waste of time to me.
Other than 1 or 2 shows I watch with my wife, most of my personal preference is for something that is at least mildly interesting/informative (Myth Busters, etc.)
We still watch a decent bit of downloaded TV content -- we'll sit down and watch entire seasons in a few evenings. We watch nothing in 'realtime' and we see zero commercials.
(I actually miss commercials and wish people wouldn't cut them out of what I download.)
Not a great deal, mostly sports, and it is more of background entertainment than my focus.
I am most effective between 10pm and 2am. It is weird, but knowing everybody else is going to bed, and you are coding, makes you more efficient,
I am also very efficient between 6a.m and 8-9am.
It also might be related that the background sound level drops by few decibels during the night.
I just can't do much work during the day, unless there some other kind of pressure (i.e. I have to finish something by that day).
Even shows like Seinfeld are better. I didn't realize till I watched them in order that they reference previous episodes all the time.
Most of my TV watching happens in the background, while I am surfing the web or catching up on my RSS reader, but its still a lousy habit
http://www.videosift.com
http://www.theonion.com/video
Sometimes you do indeed learn a little something/get a little cash, but at least 99% of the time you're wasting your fucking time/money.
And if you still manage to be lucky enough to learn something/win cash, it's still not very edifying (I'd rather make a million by myself than 30 millions with the lottery).
i was suggesting you can learn about the target audience, by watching TV. this works even if the content is bad. like our culture or not, i'm interested in what it's like (which is important to know, if you hope to improve it).
for me at least, tv is not dangerous. i don't drool, i don't buy stuff b/c it says to, i don't like stuff b/c it says to, etc
I download specific tv shows to watch but for the most part, I ignore it. I find whenever I'm at someones place and they have a tv on, my brain just fully shuts down and I sort of drool out of the corner of my mouth.
Usually I am in front of my computer most of the time.
The Wire
Other Sports
Whatever you do, please do NOT think of me as you're watching it if you wind up getting it on DVD.
And besides ... I just know I'm going to lose most of my points for this one ... I'm making a perfectly valid point.
Everybody talks about Wufoo here ... yet when I ask for honest, useful feedback, nobody responded for most of the day.
Yet if I were to put up a post like, "Do you think it's better to code in rooms painted blue, or rooms painted green" I'm pretty certain I'd quickly get over 50 responses ASAP.
Here we go ... here come the down mods ... sigh ... 52 points my all time high ... oh well it was nice while it lasted ...
My Dad always had a TV on. Looking back on it, that really wasn't good for any of us.
How are you able to break such bad habits?
However 'watching tv' was more doing school work on the couch with the odd bit of discussion about a good play.
90% of my 'tv watching' then was doing schoolwork.
That's like saying, "What? You never strike your children? You must have a lot of willpower."
Here's what to do. Put you TV in front of your house with a sign on it, "Do Not Take".
7 minutes later, problem solved.
Now I simply don't have a TV, I still own one but it's in storage. I have a small problem with DVD's, but mostly because it's rather boring eating alone, and I barely play games on my PC anymore since reviewing them made pretty much 90% of games detestable. I literally had to force myself to play through Metalheart: Replicants Rampage, description claimed it was like a new Fallout; I believe they mixed up the game with the feeling of "Oh dear god, that pain is my life draining away" of radiation poisoning.
Now I have so much time without TV that I'm going to blitz out a novel I've been working on over the next couple of weeks. It's been a while since I tried to get anything published, so its about time I _did_ get something published.
Luckily, if you get to a certain point in a "constructive" project (like a piece of software), it'll start to pull you along and becomes less of a chore and more of an obsession. Unfortunately, it's pretty easy to interrupt that obsession, which is why I should stop overriding my 10-hour noprocrast timeout on news.YC.
If you want to use the pseudo-nicotine-patch method of weaning yourself from TV, do the above and download your current shows off the internet and watch them at your convenience. Eventually those shows will die off, and since you don't have cable/satellite, you won't have any new ones to replace them.
I don't think it's hard to convince yourself TV is a waste of time...
However, I also grew up with a truckload of books. And one day I finally realized that I wasn't really watching TV; I just happened to be keeping my folks company and reading in the same room the TV was on. I had accidentally (but fortunately!) learned to completely tune TV out. This led to my current state of constant reading. To me, books are TV. Some people have to concentrate to read a book. I have to concentrate quite hard to pay attention to a TV. Weird quirk, but I like it!
This of course means times other than when I put on a DVD or tape or something specifically to watch and turn all the lights out and get lost. But I rarely have that much free time.
If you want a startup to appeal to 'the masses', it helps to know what 'the masses' are into.
I'll tune in to broadcast TV to occasionally watch Jeopardy while eating dinner, or to catch a new episode of House (pretty much the only show I watch regularly).