{"id":966,"date":"2013-04-30T21:45:43","date_gmt":"2013-05-01T01:45:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.earplant.com\/?p=966"},"modified":"2022-09-03T02:37:54","modified_gmt":"2022-09-03T02:37:54","slug":"how-to-gain-back-13-6-years-of-your-life-in-an-instant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chrisbailey.com\/how-to-gain-back-13-6-years-of-your-life-in-an-instant\/","title":{"rendered":"How to gain back 13.6 years of your life, in an instant"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3>Gain it back<\/h3>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-219791\" src=252772357_e5e0115d32_o-1024x682-151f1.html alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"682\" srcset=\"https:\/\/eyi2a29pdc4.exactdn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/252772357_e5e0115d32_o-1024x682-1.jpeg?strip=all&amp;lossy=1&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/eyi2a29pdc4.exactdn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/252772357_e5e0115d32_o-1024x682-1-980x653.jpeg?strip=all&amp;lossy=1&amp;ssl=1 980w, https:\/\/eyi2a29pdc4.exactdn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/252772357_e5e0115d32_o-1024x682-1-480x320.jpeg?strip=all&amp;lossy=1&amp;ssl=1 480w, https:\/\/eyi2a29pdc4.exactdn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/252772357_e5e0115d32_o-1024x682-1.jpeg?strip=all&amp;lossy=1&amp;w=216&amp;ssl=1 216w, https:\/\/eyi2a29pdc4.exactdn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/252772357_e5e0115d32_o-1024x682-1.jpeg?strip=all&amp;lossy=1&amp;w=648&amp;ssl=1 648w, https:\/\/eyi2a29pdc4.exactdn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/252772357_e5e0115d32_o-1024x682-1.jpeg?strip=all&amp;lossy=1&amp;w=864&amp;ssl=1 864w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 0px) and (max-width: 480px) 480px, (min-width: 481px) and (max-width: 980px) 980px, (min-width: 981px) 1024px, 100vw\" \/><br \/>\nAssuming you live to be 70 (which is almost near-certain considering today&#8217;s <a href=index-710.html>life expectancies<\/a>), you&#8217;ll spend an impressive <a href=index-711.html>34 hours a week watching TV<\/a>, which will amount to 13.6 years throughout your life.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Relaxation is important, of course; we need relaxation to allow us to recover from the stress we put on our minds and bodies at other points in our lives. But I personally feel guilty laying on my couch, vegging out and watching an hour or two of television. It seems like a complete waste of time. It&#8217;s not an easy habit to break: there&#8217;s a ton of great and captivating stuff on TV, but at the end of the day, I don&#8217;t think TV serves a purpose in my life. As the overused and corny clich\u00e9 goes, you only live once. The answer I&#8217;ve found was simply to cut the cord.<\/p>\n<h3>What to replace it with<\/h3>\n<p>A few years ago when I stopped watching TV, I was left with a giant TV-sized hole in my life, but as time went on and I weened myself off of the TV-teet (man, sorry about that analogy), I filled that hole with much better and more productive things. Now I have more time for..<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Meditation.<\/b> I wrote an article on the benefits of meditation last week. It helps me relax, defragment, focus, and even saves me time.<\/li>\n<li><b>Writing.<\/b> I probably wouldn&#8217;t be writing this post right now if I still watched TV. I don&#8217;t want to pretend like I was addicted to television, but TV presented an attractive enough alternative that I would have chosen it over writing any day of the week.<\/li>\n<li><b>Listening to audiobooks or podcasts. <\/b>I love audiobooks and podcasts, and carry a few of each around with me on my iPhone all of the time. (You can download both from the iTunes store; most podcasts are completely free, and audiobooks cost about the same as a physical book.) Often I&#8217;ll throw on a few chapters of a book and clean my apartment, top to bottom; my body cleans my apartment while my mind is absorbed in the book.<\/li>\n<li><b>Reading.<\/b> I don&#8217;t have a ton of time to read, but I would have none if I still watched TV. Last year, even though I had job and school commitments, and took the time to learn about Buddhism, meditate, write, exercise and get a good amount of sleep every night, <a href=73988787582.html>I still read 21 books<\/a>. I wouldn&#8217;t have read a single one if I had some precious TV to watch.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>How much unnecessary TV do you watch a day? How many other unproductive time wasters soak up your time and energy and leave you from doing cooler things?<\/p>\n<p>Time is a terrible thing to waste. It\u2019s priceless, and it never grows back.<\/p>\n<p><a href=index-712.html><em>Broken TV image source.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Assuming you live to be 70 (which is almost near-certain considering today&#8217;s life expectancies), you&#8217;ll spend an impressive 34 hours a week watching TV, which will amount to 13.6 years throughout your life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1045,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>How to gain back 13.6 years of your life, in an instant - Chris Bailey<\/title>\n
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