Television and a DVR

For some of you, countless hours in front of the television may be your idea of a great way to relax. Let's look at television in terms of the 4 basic factors:

Health: Sitting on the couch is not conducive to a healthy lifestyle. The fact is, when you're watching television, you're typically not very active. TV gets a low rating of Health.

Cost: TV can be costly in terms of having to buy a television and buying a cable subscription (yes, you can get television for free via other methods, but that is not often the case). Even if your television subscription is $25 a month (that's on the very low end if you're in a metropolitan area), you're looking at $300 a year that could be spent elsewhere.

Education: Well, this one is where television can offer SOME benefit. If you happen to be watching the Discovery Channel or the History Channel, for instance, the multimedia presentation in front of your very eyes with little to no effort makes TV great in terms of educational value (a high education value). If you're watching mindless television (no need to mention specific shows, celebrity gossip summary shows are pretty high up there), the education value drops to low. Let's give TV an education value of medium to be fair.

Time: Television is time consuming and time inefficient. From watching commercials to just the general value of getting information, television gets a low rating of Time.

So TV isn't great for your health, costs money, can possibly educate you, but is time inefficient. What do you think I'd propose about television?

GET RID OF IT.

There are so many better things to do with your time that are cheaper, take up less time, and are more fulfilling. Examples of what to do instead are coming up, but you can see why television is just not worthwhile if you want to streamline your life.

If you must have television in your life, the only way you should go about it is to have a Digital Video Recorder to go about skipping commercials and allowing you to watch television when you want. I'd highly recommend TIVO which has the slickest interface of all DVRs I've used, although the cost of a monthly subscription may outweigh the benefits of having the DVR. As you'll see in future posts, the time factor can be quite an expensive factor, and often the cost to maximize your time may be prohibitive depending on your financial situation. Interestingly, your financial situation largely hinges on your education. Interesting how this all ties together, isn't it :)