How to Stop Watching TV, or at Least Watch Less
Today, we'll focus on one of the biggest obstacles standing between you and academic success. There are a lot of distractions out there, but none is as elusive, innocent-looking yet devilishly harmful as television.
Changing habits is difficult
The first thing you need to know is that changing a habit is almost always difficult. If you spend too many hours in front of the TV, changing that behavior won't be easy, and it will demand a lot of patience and perseverance on your part.
It is often said that the first step toward a remedy is recognizing the problem, and this holds true here as well. If you are hooked on watching TV day in and day out, you'll need to recognize this before you can take the necessary steps to watch less.
There are two different roads you can take: watching less TV, or stopping altogether. The second option may seem more difficult, but this isn't necessarily true. It is sometimes said that complete abstention from something is easier than perfect moderation. This holds true for some things, TV possibly among them, but it varies from person to person. Since there are two approaches, I'll discuss them both.
Watching less TV
Start by asking yourself how much you watch every day. If you watch 5 hours of TV a day, that equals 35 hours per week. Over 60 years, that adds up to 12 years and 6 months! Talk about wasting your life! Calculate how much TV you watch per day, and then set a goal for how much you want to reduce that number.
The second thing to moderate is the content of what you watch. The more educational the content, whether documentaries or debates, the better use you make of the time you do spend watching.
Stopping altogether
This isn't as crazy as it may seem. If you want to stop watching TV altogether and rid yourself of the monster entirely, I recommend reading the poem "Television" by Roald Dahl, the British writer of Norwegian descent. Its message is simple: take the set away and, in its place, fill your shelves with books. Before long you will rediscover the joy of reading, and you'll wonder what you ever saw in the screen.
For more ways to protect your study time, browse our time management articles.