Earlier in the week, I talked about my writing habits and pointed out that one of the difficulties for me was not a dearth of ideas, but rather a lack of time. So beginning this week I am going to try and combat that somewhat by regaining some lost time. How?
No TV after work.
It’s that simple. I am going to forgo TV after work and allow TiVo to do it’s job. Assuming I get home at 5 PM, that gives me three and a half hours to pack lunch, eat dinner and do some chores. The rest of the time is my own. I can, for instance, spend an hour or so reading. But at the very least, I am trying to reserve the 7-8 PM hour to write. I get too easily sucked into TV and perhaps this will help reclaim some time.
So when will I watch all of the accumulated TV? Sunday’s, of course, my free-day. With the shows that I TiVo, I expect that I’d be able to get them all watched on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Now you might be thinking that I am really not gaining any time. You are wrong on two counts. First, I can skip the commercials of the TiVo’d shows, so I gain 20 minutes per hour (sad, but true). Second, while I could spending my Sunday afternoons writing for 5 hours, that’s impractical for me. If I sit down to write for an hour in the evening, I can usually get something done, and feel accomplished at the same time. (Sometimes, I may even write longer.) It doesn’t work the same to block out five hours on a Sunday and then try and write that whole time. With rare exceptions, I just can’t sustain that and I’d come away feeling like I didn’t meet my goal.
So I’m giving it a shot. No TV after work, which essentially means no TV until next Sunday. I’ll let you know how it goes.
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