
How much is watching TV costing you? - ph0rque
http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1692-how-much-is-watching-tv-costing-you
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teej
The first comment nails it on the head:

> What most people need when building a side business is consecutive hours …
> especially in programming.

> 30 minutes here and 1 hour there, in the programming word won’t get you much
> because of the huge time lag for developers when they have to context
> switch.

My issue is that the cost of watching TV is easy to measure, and thus easy to
target. The cost of reading fluff 37Signals articles, however, is not.

~~~
kulkarnic
I don't believe that you need 3+ continuous hours to program. I myself
routinely take breaks every hour or so; and believe the context switch is
amortized at that time-frame.

Also, the point is not purely about television. I've not watched ANY
television at all for the past 4 years. However, random excursions into
Wikipedia or reading blogs do cost time.

At the end of the day, I still wonder if it is worth reading all that-- I
could contribute to some open-source project (reporting bugs) for instance.

~~~
joeyo
I wouldn't be surprised if this depends strongly on the individual in
question. Some people are very good at "reclaiming" small chunks of time--15
minutes here and there--that add up over the course of a day. Other people
have a much more difficult time even getting started unless they have a large
block of time.

~~~
phugoid
To me it also depends on the task at hand.

20 minutes will get me through a chapter from Learning Pything (even if I'm
not entirely sober), while 3 hours doesn't feel like enough to work on my ARM7
development board in Assembler (something totally new to me and not easy).

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jgrahamc
An alternative to the "Don't commute" option for those who can't not commute
is to take public transport. If you take a train or bus instead of driving you
can do something else during the commute.

I'm currently doing this: <http://twitter.com/jgrahamc/status/1630137854>

~~~
Xichekolas
I had the same idea until I actually sat down to figure out my commute via
public transport. Shortest way was three buses and 3.5 hours.

Granted, my commute is 45 miles each way, but public transportation here is
the pits.

As dangerous as it sounds, I try and do my drive with a legal pad next to me,
brainstorming and making a list of what to work on when I get home.

~~~
Tichy
Maybe something with voice recording could work better?

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tokenadult
I spend far less time watching TV than browsing HN submissions and comment
threads.

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jnorthrop
I found when I cut out my TV viewing I wasn't more productive. I do read more
and spend more time playing my guitar, but I don't get more done. However, the
big benefit for me was that I got more sleep.

Now if it is 9pm and I'm tired I go to sleep. Hell I'll go to be at 8pm if I'm
feeling run down. I've eliminated the primary reason to stay up late -- note:
I do occasionally go out with friends...

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mattmaroon
Those numbers are ridiculous (and I say this as someone without a cable sub).
Man cannot work all the time. Most people might watch 4 hours of TV a day, but
it isn't blocking them from doing 4 hours of a part time job.

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rbanffy
I am not sure how much TV costs, but HN and Slashdot must give a quite
impressive number...

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ruslan
I have not watched TV for about 10 years. At home, I have a TV set, but the
only connection it has is my home theatre.

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nanijoe
How about just focusing on getting things done? I find that when I have a list
of prioritized tasks for the week, I usually get them done and when I don't ,
its never been because I watched too much TV. People may want to consider not
taking vacation time any more at this rate , if we are trying to squeeze as
much work as possible into our lives.

There is life outside the internet, and TV does a pretty good job of letting
me know what is happening in the 'real world'

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d-rock
I try to do most of my TV watching when I'm on the treadmill or the indoor
bike.

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dinkumthinkum
The funny thing is that the blogger (bobblehead?) wrote a reference to that
Onion article and yet _still_ made the blog post. Very odd!

