Create A 465-Day Year – How To Take Back 21 Years Of Your Life

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It’s always fasci­nated me how people spend their lives. How some people are successful and others stay poor, coming from the same back­ground and oppor­tu­ni­ties. How people will complain about their health and misery, yet it’s obvious to many how simply lifestyle changes could trans­form their lives. That’s why when I saw the above info­graphic on video and TV usage by average Americans, I was blown away.

Taking what’s presented, I decided to do a few calcu­la­tions and put into perspec­tive how much of people’s lives are being wasted infront of the boob tube. While there’s some inspi­ra­tional and educa­tional shows on TV that even I person­ally dig, we all know the chances of main­stream America are more fasci­nated by the mating rituals of guidos in Jersey than geckos in the jungle. I’m not against enter­tain­ment itself — just 33 hours a week in brain-numbing amounts of it. The last thing I want to have on my deathbed resume is 1/4 of my life spent accom­plishing nothing and numbing myself infront of a screen.

So check it out:

Based on these find­ings by Nielsen, the average American spends 33 hours per week watching TV. So we take that (33) then multiply that by the amount of weeks in a year (52), and we get 1,716 hours/year watching tele­vi­sion. Divide that by the average waking time in a day 17 (24 hours in a day, minus the average hours of sleep 7) and you get 100.9 actual waking usable days. That’s a bit more prac­tical than simply using 24, because how can you compare hours of active television-watching to sleep? Assuming the average amount of sleep per person who watches TV and who doesn’t is fairly similar, their choice of what to do with the remaining 17 or so waking hours is what’s more useful and rele­vant to discuss. Even if not — even if we used the full 24 hours — 71.5 days is still an incred­ible amount of addi­tional life regained.

Whoa. What would happen if we stopped watching TV completely?

If the typical American got rid of their TVs, they’d free up and gain 100 usable days of life back. That’s like having a 465-day year. For the average American, that adds up to a mind-blowing extra 21 years of waking, consciously avail­able, life (according the average life expectancy of roughy 76 [average is 78–2 for adjust­ment of Nielsen stats based on ages 2+).

Let’s take this a bit further. There’s roughly 114,500,000 homes in America with TVs (source). Each house­hold has approx­i­mately 2.6 people (damn those pesky half people messing every­thing up!) (source). So let’s be generous and low-ball all figures: 100 million homes X 2 people X 30 hours/w = 6,000,000,000 or 6 billion hours of TV consumed per week in America. That’s 312 billion hours of TV a year. Being even more generous and rounding down again, that’s 300 billion hours.

In about a year’s time, Americans as a whole, waste a combined (approx­i­mated and low-rounded) sum of 821,917,808 years watching tele­vi­sion. That’s insane, even if the math was off. So, greatly rounded down yet again - over 800,000 mille­niums worth of atten­tion is given to a little box in the living room by the aggre­gated total of Americans in one year.

Mind blown yet?

Let’s come back to a more prac­tical view, that’s actu­ally compre­hendible. Just imagine what you could accom­plish in an extra 100 days a year compared to the average American. That’s over 27% of your entire waking life. The average American wastes over a quarter of their conscious waking life watching tele­vi­sion. Imagine being able to liter­ally flick a switch and extend your life 21 years. How much travel and exploring the world could you do? How much extra income could you generate on a side busi­ness? What kind of health improve­ments could be made now that you “have the time”?

I wouldn’t have believed this if I didn’t just get pencil-protector, goggle-eyed nerdy and do the math for myself.

Even if you didn’t completely get rid of tele­vi­sion alto­gether, and simply cut back to watching one full hour of TV/day during the work week for your favorite series or two — compared to the average American, you’d be getting a whop­ping 85 more usable days in your year and almost 18 addi­tional years of free time.

My Personal Reasons And Experience

Personally, I have stopped watching TV years ago — and in fact, just real­izing it as I write this — I have never actu­ally purchased or owned my own tele­vi­sion. When I was a kid I watched tons of cartoons and played exces­sive amounts of video games — but that was my parent’s TV. When I moved out on my own since turning 18, I was simply watching TV that my room­mates had. Most of my enter­tain­ment was via my computer through video games, movies, and internet nonsense during that time.

Since about 2008 I reckon, I gave up news and TV completely — consciously by choice. Now I only watch it if it’s already on from other’s watching it around me, and it sucks me in for a few minutes. Or, on occa­sion, relaxing with a movie with friends and family (and by occa­sion I mean less than once a month, not once a day).

When I started getting into personal devel­op­ment, human poten­tial, and truth aware­ness studies — it became quite clear that TV was just a life suck. I had done a lot of research and common sense thinking about what was going on, and with having a busi­ness to run, I had no time for video games or getting hooked on a TV series.

While I’m not perfect, and tend to spend vast amounts of time on my laptop — I’m often learning about some­thing that improves the quality of my life, working, profes­sion­ally social­izing, or writing things like this to help others. Generally accom­plishing some­thing. Sure I enjoy the occa­sional LOLCAT like everyone else, so I’m not here to take away people’s happi­ness — just to serve as a wakeup call that true happi­ness doesn’t stream from a box in one’s living room.

My reasons for giving up TV were quite simple:

1. I spent enough time infront of my computer as it was
2. News was just propa­ganda and nega­tivity I wanted out of my life
3. The loss of commu­nity and of touch with reality, and it’s desensitization
4. Most programs were simply a waste of time, and I had more fulfilling things to accomplish
5. TV, by design, was made for adver­tising, brain­washing, and compliance
6. As a trained hypnother­a­pist, I fully under­stood it’s designed to hypnotize
7. People are liter­ally addicted to it, and often freak out going through with­drawals when deprived — just like a drug
8. I could see first hand the effects those 7 reasons had on myself and all those around me

When you check out those 2 links for your­self and do some inde­pen­dent research not produced by mass media, gov’t, or corpo­ra­tions, you’ll have a much better picture of TVs true inten­tions. Hell, even if you still don’t buy into the brain­washing (because you’re brain­washed), you can’t deny that TV is based on advertising. Literally, shows are created in order for you to pay atten­tion long enough to get streamed conscious and sublim­inal adver­tising. This is unde­ni­able fact.

It will start to become obvious why everyone should start reducing time infront of the TV, and redi­rect towards activ­i­ties with more suste­nance. While you’re free to do what you wish, just realize the entire true purpose of tele­vi­sion and sucking you back in is by devious design. Becoming aware of this is the first step. You might begin to see how true it is when I say “you get part of your life back”.

Not only will you take back 100 days worth of new found time, freeing up 21 years of your life for things that actu­ally matter, but you will also take your mind — and life — back.