Turn off the TV

Watching too much w can triple our hunger for more possessions, while reducing our personal contentment by about 5 percent for every hour a day we watch.

- Wu 1998

Television is a creamy filling that distracts us from the substance of our lives.

When you are in the supermarket, do you buy something from each and every aisle? Of course not. You go to aisles that have something you want and skip the aisles that don't have anything you need.

But when it comes to watching television, many of us seem to follow the buy-something-from-every-aisle plan. If it's Monday, we watch TV. If it's Tuesday, we watch TV. If it's Wednesday, we watch TV. Too often we watch TV because that's what we usually do rather than because there is something we actually want to see. Ask yourself when you are watching TV, "Is this something I want to see? Would I ask that this program be made if it didn't already exist?"

Psychologists have found some people who watch so much TV that it actually inhibits their ability to carry on a conversation.

In the words of one psychologist, "TV robs our time and never gives it back."

Don't turn on the TV just because it's there and that's what you usually do. Turn it on only when there is something on that you want to watch. Your newly liberated hours can be spent doing something with your family or your friends or finding a rare quiet moment for yourself. Without TV, you can do something actively fun instead of passively distracting.