experiment
I’ve noticed over the last few weeks that I have at least one other issue in common with many Americans - my television is on way too much and too often. Not so much because I’m watching tv itself, because even with cable there isn’t that much good on, but because I’m watching movies, either HBO or something on dvd. Either way, I’m going to conduct an experiment using myself to see what happens.
At a high level, the experiment is this: for one week, I’m going to turn off my television set, well, mostly. Here are the ground rules I’ve decided to play by.
- The tv may be turned on to examine the schedule to see if there is anything I want to record, and/or to program the tv to record a program.
- I can only watch a program I’ve recorded - no ‘live’ television, no movies. Since there are only a handful of shows I watch, this represents a significant reduction, and most of what I watch is on after I go to bed anyway.
- The tv may be used to play exercise dvds. specifically, my yoga dvds or some martial arts videos - all instruction/exercise material.
- The tv may be used for PlayStation2 activities related to exercise. I have a Dance Dance Revolution game that gives a pretty decent cardio workout.
- The tv remains off otherwise. No tv in the background while doing other activities.
So those are the rules. I’m going to start this experiment Monday, March 3rd, and it won’t end until Monday, March 10th.
Despite my publicly professed goals for this year, I have done astonishingly little towards achieving most of them. I’m doing this because I want to see how much more I cna get accomplished in a week if I can’t make the default choice of watching tv while I’m home. How much writing will I get done? How much reading? How much more will I play with my animals?
I can’t really say, because I don’t know. But I do know that lately I haven’t gotten any writing done, haven’t wanted to go to jujitsu class, or do things that would clearly put me on a path to achieving my goals. In fact, for the last two months I’ve been toying with the idea of walking away from the martial arts altogether, but I know I can’t, especially since I’ve said my goal is to get my black belt this year. If I wasn’t as close as I am to it, I probably would just walk away from it and not look back. I remember what it was like when I was going regularly, but I can’t figure out why I can’t seem to make it to class. Besides the fact that I’m being quite lazy.
So this experiment is really about kicking myself in the butt and finding the drive to break out of this rut I’ve stuck myself in and get back into things.