Yesterday signaled the end of my 30 day self-imposed TV detox. During the whole month of September, we watched zero TV shows. When the TV was on, it was playing one of the DirecTV music channels. It was surprisingly easy and liberating. I didn’t miss it at all. However, according to one of my friends at work, I cheated because I DVR’d everything that we would normally watch. Are we going to revert back and become couch potatoes again starting tonight?
The answer is no and yes… maybe… at least a little. There are a few shows that we enjoy watching like Big Bang Theory, Modern Family, Shark Tank (me), singing shows (Jeanne) and others. The plan is to only watch TV on Friday through Sunday. That’s how we deal with eating junk food, so I think it will work for TV too. If you’ve been thinking about doing your own TV detox, go for it. Quit cold turkey. You’ll probably be surprised by how much TV doesn’t matter to you after a few days.
We probably won’t even watch much if any TV this week or next week since we’re gearing up to go on vacation starting this weekend. We’ll be flying down to Sanibel Island Florida and I can’t wait! And since I like to put myself through tech experiments, this vacation is going to be another one. I’ve decided not to take my Macbook Air with us to Florida. Instead, I’m going to be using my new Nexus 7 2013 and an LG G2 smartphone for everything. I’m also bringing along a small Bluetooth keyboard and mouse for times when I might need to enter a lot of text and / or do more computer-y type stuff which works best with physical input devices.
I still need to complete my setup of the Nexus 7 with apps that will allow it double as a “laptop” so I can do some real work if I need to. I plan to write about the experiment and may even do a daily “how I used my Nexus 7 today” journal type posting. So stay tuned!
Gadgeteer Comment Policy - Please read before commenting
Your vacation will be much more relaxing and beautiful if you leave your tablet at home 🙂
I’m on vacation on the Black Sea now and it is a real pleasure not to swiping, clicking and dragging virtual things. Smartphone will be enough for all tasks that REALLY require your attention.
@Dmitriy I don’t intend to work (much) while on vacation. That’s why I’m leaving the laptop at home. But during the evenings, it will be nice to have a bigger screen so I can do a little surfing and email triage. 🙂
Can anyone recommend a good text expander app for Android?
Oh I am drooling! I have a birthday coming up Saturday and I ashed DH for the Nexus 7 2013. Now… to get one and go on vacation! You have a wonderful time!
Hi, I’m in Florida, Tampa area (North Tampa) so if you’re having technology withdrawal I have a Nexus 7 and some MacAir’s. I’ve tried to travel with just a tablet, since I like photography, I usually take my Air and the Nexus 7 works well with wifi cards that stream photos to the HD screen.
I’ve almost detoxed from “evening tv” myself. I stopped watching any of the cable “news” shows, other than NCIS, I don’t watch the network shows. After 6 years, someone finally talked me into watching Big Bang Theory, so I borrowed a copy of seasons 1-6 and one weekend when it was raining, and I had a cold, couldn’t go anywhere, I vegged and watched all 6 seaons. Now that I’m hooked on that one, I’ll just wait til the end of the year and watch it all at once, which is kind of nice, they are only 20 minutes each without the annoying commericals.
During the winter months, I don’t watch much TV at all.. there aren’t any shows that I am interested in.. Spring I will watch Game of Thrones, and currently Legend of Korra and Revolution are the two shows I DVR. (So I can skip commercials and watch it when I feel like it) and then my husband has football on in the background on the weekends. Though, even then, we condense all of our football into 8 hours via RedZone.. so we only watch the good stuff versus endless games. 😉
We also DVR Law and Order: SVU… but we are over a year behind… which shows how much we actually watch it. A month would be easy for me to stop. 🙂
Now… quitting the internet for a month may get me into harsh withdrawals… *twitch*
It’s extremely rare that we watch anything live. We always DVR stuff so we can fly through all the commercials and fluff. Last night we went through over 8hrs of America’s Got Talent in about 1hr.
I’m old-fashioned enough to get a little thrill out of watching a show TV and not DVR’d. There’s something supremely satisfying about settling in one night a week with the remote and some knitting and indulging in live TV! I reserve that privilege for Tuesday nights and NCIS, and DVR everything else.
And as I wrote that I realized just how far we’ve come – that watching a show live is a treat instead of the norm. I love place-shifting with my Slingbox and time-shifting with my DVR, but taking the time to settle down and watch a favorite show is an indulgence.