Have a new year’s resolution or thinking of making one? I hope my resolution gives you a little nudge of motivation and a few useful tactics to help you keep your resolution.
Over the past few days, I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on the last year, asking myself what I would like to do more, and what I want to do less. The “do more” list is very long — but the “do less” list is much shorter. At first, I looked at them both and thought, “there’s no way I’ll have time to pursue everything on my do more list”. But then I realized that there was one habit on my “do less” list — watching TV — that could give me a huge amount of time back if I gave it up. The more I thought about it, the more I felt like I’d stumbled onto something big.
Watching TV is a guilty habit of mine that some part of me has been wanting to tackle for years, and I decided that this year, I’m going to give it up — at least for the first 30 days of the year.
Let me tell you why.
It doesn’t help
Now don’t get me wrong — we live in a golden age of television and there have been a ton of really great shows to come out in the last several years. But when I think about the impact TV has on me, on balance, I think it does me more harm than good. At the very least, it doesn’t help me live the life I want to lead.
I often watch TV on my laptop, alone at the kitchen table after work. It helps me temporarily escape work stress and take a break from my day-to-day life, but it doesn’t actually relieve my stress. Often, it makes it worse. The problem is, one episode turns into two, which often turns into three or four, by the end of which, far from feeling relief from the stress that motivated me to turn on the show in the first place, I now feel more stress and guilt around how much time I’ve wasted and how little willpower I have to turn the show off.
There’s an idea Ben Horowitz talks about in The Hard Thing About Hard Things that I was reminded of recently and I think it applies here — “You either apply pressure or you feel pressure”. The way I interpret this is that the way to feel less stressed is to take action and demonstrate to yourself that you have agency over your situation. By contrast, when I watch TV I end up feeling even more passive and helpless.
Of course, there is a time and place for relaxation, but for me, there are so many better choices I can make about how to relax. Meditating, doing yoga, cooking, singing along to a favorite song, talking with a good friend, journaling, reading a book, taking a walk — all of them help me feel better about myself — rather than worse — after I’m done.
I know I can
I’ve been aware of my negative patterns with regards to TV for years, so why haven’t I tried to give it up before? Why quit TV now? Because I know I can. That might sound glib, but I don’t mean it lightly. Just over a year ago, I almost certainly wouldn’t have believed that I could give up TV for a month, and so I wouldn’t have tried. Now, things are different. I know I can give up TV for 30 days because I’ve successfully made other habit changes. I’ve stuck to a morning exercise routine every day for over a year. I’ve taken a 30-day break from alcohol.
What happened to convince me that I could make such significant behavior changes? A few years ago, when I started work at an amazing start-up called Bizo (later acquired by LinkedIn) the CEO, Russell Glass, gave everyone in the company a book to read called The Power of Habit. Although I read the book and enjoyed it, it didn’t change my life overnight. On some level, I wasn’t ready for it and I didn’t need it yet. I was at an amazing company on a high-functioning team that had already established such great habits that I found it easy to thrive. But two years later, when I felt that unique work experience ending, I knew I would soon be starting over somewhere new, and it would take effort and practice to bring the positive habits I had experienced at Bizo somewhere else.
The first change I made started in a surprisingly silly way.
My boyfriend and I go skiing (a lot) during the winter, and on our first day of the season, I simply couldn’t keep up with him. I was embarrassed. And it wasn’t necessarily cardio fitness, I just simply didn’t have the muscular endurance to keep going all the way down the hill without stopping. I didn’t want to spend the whole season holding him back, and so on the car ride home, I asked — if I were to do one quick workout every day in my living room to get in shape for the ski season, what would you recommend?
Being the well-read skiing and fitness nut that he is, he had an answer. He recommended a regimen he’d recently read about that involved squats, lunges and squat jumps. I modified that to something short enough and easy enough that I had not excuse not to do it, and got started the next morning. Before I knew it, I had completed one month of daily exercises, then two months, then three. I felt more active, more mobile. Most importantly, I had changed a core belief about myself — no longer did I see myself as someone who couldn’t form habits, instead, I had taught myself that I could make intentional, positive and lasting changes in my behavior. It was an exciting realization that opened up new opportunities to me that I hadn’t thought possible — I began experimenting with meditation, journaling, and more.
I have a strategy
One of the most important lessons of the Power of Habit is that it’s easier to create a new habit than to get rid of an old habit. The book goes so far as to say that you can’t really get “rid” of a bad habit, instead you can to replace it by identifying the trigger and the reward for the habit, and substituting the undesirable behavior for something else. I practiced this when I took 30 days off from alcohol. When I found myself in a situation where I wanted a drink, I would instead substitute soda water or hot tea, depending on what was available.
The Trigger
According to my best guess, my habit of watching TV is triggered by some combination of fatigue, low blood sugar and time of day. Historically, I tend to watch TV when I get home from work or in the mid to late afternoon when I’m at home.
The Substitute behavior(s)
Fortunately, I have a number of substitutes to experiment with.
- Music — I’ve found that I’m less likely to decide to watch TV if I start listening to music first. Music fills the space, and provides an obstacle to TV since I would need to turn it off to turn something else on. It also helps me focus. If I do lose steam on whatever I’m doing, music can help me boost my energy, either by getting me dancing or singing.
- Podcasts — Sometimes I like to listen to something more attention-grabbing than music when I’m cooking, walking or doing something else. Although TV can fill that need, so can podcasts, without being nearly so distracting.
- Reading/Writing — If what I really want is a quiet time and a retreat from work, people and technology, a book or my journal will offer me a much more relaxing and rewarding break than TV.
The Reward
I’m not entirely sure what my “reward” for watching TV is, but I suspect it’s a feeling of immersion, and I believe any of the substitutes I’ve listed can help provide it.
Rules
Having clear rules ahead of time can be really helpful for sticking with your intended behavior — particularly in tough situations. Without them, it becomes too easy to negotiate with yourself. “Well, I said I was taking a break from alcohol, but I’ve gone long enough, right?,” I might have said to myself on day 12 if I hadn’t decided to commit to 30 days without a drink. In this case, I’ve tried to anticipate the gray areas where I might get myself into trouble. “Youtube videos don’t count as TV, do they?” Yes, yes they do.
- No watching TV at home
- No watching videos for anything other than work purposes on my own devices (if someone shows me a cat video on their phone, that’s OK)
- Stick to this for at least 30 days
Social Pressure
Let’s face it — peer pressure is real. The good news is that you can harness it for your own benefit to help you stick to a new habit. With every new habit I’ve started, I’ve made sure to tell someone about it, usually my boyfriend Sameer. By telling someone else, I make myself accountable to them to live up to what I’ve told them I will do. The person you tell can also provide encouragement. This tactic can also help you navigate specific situations. When I would go to a party during the month I wasn’t drinking, I would often tell someone early on that I was taking a month off of alcohol — that way, even if I wanted a drink, my desire to avoid the embarrassment would help me resist.
In case you haven’t guessed, I’m writing this post in part to create social pressure for myself to stick with my commitment. Meta, right? :)
I want to see what I can do if I waste less time
This year, I’ve experienced what a positive impact consistent exercise and meditation can have on my quality of life. I’m excited to see what I can do with my time when I feel more positivity and agency in my life and when I waste less of my time watching TV.
