So, you want to GET MORE DONE in LESS TIME?
Well done you! It’s simple, and I’ll show you how.
Yes – a concrete, actionable, specific step for doing more shit.
You’ve got a MILLION plans for world domination. They include, but aren’t limited to:
- Setting up Minnesota’s first holistic spa for retired race-horses
- Establishing the world’s first organic-knitwear-based telecommunications system
- Writing your soon-to-be bestseller: “Tug of War – a history of military masturbation“
But something keeps getting in the way.
Your plans remain just plans, scribbled down on various bits of paper that end up in various lint-lined pockets, on bedside tables and underneath those self-help books that you read but never implement.
“The problem is,” you say, “the problem is that there aren’t enough hours in the day. What with taking the kids to their golf-lessons and the dog to the dry-cleaners I don’t get a minute to myself. By nine o’clock when the kids are in bed, and I’m exhausted, it’s all I can manage to not fall asleep in front of the TV.”
Yeah yeah yeah. WHATEVER.
So here’s the solution to not falling asleep in front of the TV, and freeing up three hours of time in your day that you didn’t have before, so you can work on your world-beating plans:
THROW OUT THE TV
Seriously, do it NOW. Unplug the TV, put it in a fucking hole in the back garden and never look at it again.
Have you done it yet?
No?
OK, I can wait.
…
Done it now?
Yes?
Good.
(Liar)
…
So here’s the concrete result:
Your free time to work on patenting your veterinary-goose-inflater, forming your Hungarian chopstick orchestra or reverse-engineering the CT scanner has just increased MASSIVELY.
Where you once only had 30 minutes snatched between Wilhelmina’s Peruvian pottery lessons and Rupert’s mixed martial arts, you now have AT LEAST THREE CONTINUOUS HOURS every day to get stuff done between reading their bedtime stories and hitting the sack yourself.
Not convinced? Happy with your downtime? (Because its OK to chillax and do nothing. It’s OK – I mean that. But if it’s incompatible with where you WANT to be, and where you WANT to be is compatible with WHO YOU ARE, then you need to make some changes.)
Think of your epitaph (that’s the stuff they write on your gravestone).
Would you rather:
“Inventor, writer, industrialist, innovator, polyglot and lover”
or
“Knew the names of the girls in America’s Next Top Model”
Yep. Thought so.
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
So true, not news, we all know this, but so true — the smaller screens as well, I fear.
If carved today, my headstone might as well read: “She was great on Twitter…”
Thanks kid,
~GirlPie
It’s true.
I tell everybody who wants to do more.
Lose the TV.
Do they listen.
Nope.
Matthew your really funny. Keep up the good work.
I threw out my TV years ago. (Well, let the cable lapse and didn’t get a digital converter thingie for it, which is the same thing.) I still don’t have time for world domination.
What I’d really need to do is throw out my Internet connection. Unfortunately, the Internet also figures into my productivity …
I can’t quite throw my TV out – it was rather expensive and sometimes I need it for strategic hangover-avoidance purposes, but I do agree TV sucks your time away after work when I could be writing that book, plotting my world takeover, and similar.
This is actually one of The Happiness Project London rules (cut TV viewing in half, no destruction required).
Loving your stuff as always
Sasha
How on earth did you know of my plans of world domination via forming a Hungarian Chopstick Orchestra?
I don’t watch TV, so my first thought was “well, what am I supposed to do?”
Then I realized I had only come upon this entry after a solid hour or two of Stumbling.
So I’m contradicted- I’m glad I found it, but I’m not glad I was sitting in front of my computer for hours rather than working on all those things I like to tell people I’m working on.
Anyway, I’m gonna go do some of that stuff now. Thanks for the post.
This is especially home-hitting. While my own personal vice is the internet rather than TV, my mother is the TV junkie. She’s a housewife raising a 2-year-old and 3 teenage girls, I’ll give her that. It’s just no surprise that the house is a wreck when she watches 9+ hours of TV a day and does not even delegate the chores; the 15-year-old took the initiative to do that. I wish there was some way to change it, but I can only change myself.
I always love your hilarious, no bs posts that give me a healthy kick in the behind and keep me motivated.
haha yeah, no kidding. We don’t have cable, which helps. Sometimes I think I should throw out my computer if I want to get anything done. Ironic.