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Why I Don’t Own a TV
by Joshua Millburn
What? You don’t own a TV? Why?
That’s a question I get quite often. And the answer is simple: because I’d watch it.
A lot. You see, I really enjoy TV. It’s easy to watch. It’s passive. It’s entertaining at times.
And I don’t have to do much work (unless you consider pushing the buttons on the
remote to work). But there are so many other important things I can do with my life.
Costs vs. Benefits
But the costs drastically outweigh the benefits...
Money
Sure, there are the monetary costs associated with TV.
There is the TV itself, which can cost up to a few thousand dollars. I know one
guy who has eight flatscreen TVs in his house. That’s a lot of money.
There’s the monthly costs of cable or satellite (plus all of the little extra fees for
cable boxes, DVRs, HD service, premium channels, etc.).
There’s the DVD or Blu-ray rentals or purchases, many of which we don’t watch.
Come on, I bet you’ve done it before: you’ve rented a DVD just to return the unwatched
movie a week later. It’s OK, we’ve all done it before. The trick is to stop.
And there’s all of those fancy ancillary items that we think we need: the surround
sound system (I know a guy with a $4,000 surround sound system), the multi-disc DVD
player, the Blu-ray player, and don’t even get me started on video games, that’s an
entirely different—and equally troubling—story (I know grown men in their thirties who
play video games more than five hours per day).
But TV costs us a lot more than money…
Time
TV viewing robs us of our time, our most precious asset. Even with the Internet, the
average person watches more than five hours of TV per day. That’s 35 hours per week.
That’s a lot of TV.
If you get rid of your TV, you can reclaim this time for yourself. We’ll talk about
what you can do with this newly found free time in a moment.
Attention
This goes hand-in-hand with time. TV robs us of our attention. Sometimes we think
we’re “multi-tasking” if we’re doing other things—folding laundry, working on the
computer, etc.—while we’re watching TV. Deep down we know this isn’t true though. We
know that TV distracts us from our tasks, which causes us to either:
• Take more time to complete the task (TV is robbing us of even more of our time),
or
• It reduces the quality of what we’re working on (have you ever tried to write
something—a paper, an email, a work assignment—while watching TV and noticed
that it just wasn’t that good?
That’s because we aren’t able to focus our attention on several things at once and still
expect the same quality in our finished product.
Awareness
Awareness is the most precious kind of freedom. We should cherish it. But TV often
makes us oblivious to the world around us. And thus, in a roundabout way, TV robs us
of our freedom.
Relationships
If you’re watching TV—especially if you’re watching it alone—then you are taking away
from your relationships with other people, time in which you could contribute to others
in a more meaningful way, time in which you could add value to someone else’s life.
Creativity
If we are constantly consuming, then we are not creating. Thus, TV has the ability to rob
us of our creativity.
Alternate Solutions
Sure, watching TV is easy. But is it worth it? That’s the question you must ask yourself.
I’m not suggesting that you have to get rid of your TV to be a minimalist. You don’t. But
you do have some options...
1. Ryan disconnected his cable service during our journey into minimalism. He got rid
of all his DVDs and video games, but he kept his TV. We still watch movies on that
TV from time to time, which brings up another point…
2. If you get rid of your TV like I did in 2009, you can schedule time to watch TV with
other people. I don’t do it often, but if I want to watch something, I can watch TV at
someone else’s house (this includes movies), and we can discuss what we watched
afterwards. Such planned viewing is far less passive and helps you build and
strengthen your relationships, rather than take away from them.
3. You can get the TV out of your bedroom.
4. You can limit your viewing to one day per week. Schedule it and don’t deviate from
the schedule.
5. Or, if you need to take baby steps, turn off your TV for one week. Unplug it and put it
somewhere out of sight if you can. Or cover it with a sheet and make sure you don’t
turn it on for a week.
What To Do With Your Free Time
So, if you get rid of your TV (or drastically reduce your viewing), what are you going to
do with all of your reclaimed time?
The short answer is you can do whatever you want.
It’s liberating to not have a TV. Television sucks so much life out of our lives. It
takes our money, our time, our attention, our awareness, our freedom, our
relationships, and our creativity. And in return it gives us a little entertainment, it
pacifies us for the moment. For many of us it’s our drug of choice.
But if you decide to get rid of your TV, then perhaps you can…
Take some time to declutter your home.
Create something.
Exercise.
Work towards achieving your dreams.
Do something awesome.
Do something impossible.
Or just live a more meaningful life.