My year without television
By: Kate Agnew
Tags: Resolutions, Self Care, Gamification, Productivity, Binge Watching

Picture it: January 2, 2020. I just closed Netflix after watching the last episode of Bones in the course of 6 months — a total of 246 episodes. Half of this time was spent in my last trimester of pregnancy, the other half with a newborn. Despite the mental and physical demands of newfound parenthood, that is still a lot of TV. Surely there was a more effective way to use 168 hours of my life.

Just a week prior, while out to dinner for Christmas, I had reviewed with Joe my plans for the new year: create a startup, run for office, and of course get promoted in my day job while also learning to be a new mother. I had nothing but ambitions heading into 2020.

So, when I had spent another 4 hours one evening after work in front of my laptop watching Bones and playing Candy Crush, I realized: something’s gotta give. As much as I love Temperance Brennan, I couldn’t see how I could achieve all I wanted while also continuing to binge.

For me, there is no such thing as a happy medium. I couldn’t, for example, “just watch one episode after work to unwind.” This would turn into an entire evening because ultimately, I have an extremely addictive personality. “Well, the night is already ruined because I started watching TV, might as well close out the night with another 3 episodes…”

This is how I made the decision to forgo all television content (including movies!) for the entire year.

This is how I did it:

1. Still find time to relax: The first few weeks were the hardest. I had to retrain myself on what to do after work. Instead of hunkering in to relax in front of the TV, I needed to use my time in a more productive way. I still needed to find the time to relax without it becoming the only thing I did for the evening. Through shifting my content consumption from video to books, I went back and forth between “educational” and “fun” reads to forge a “productive” feeling. My “fun” books included Kathy Reichs’ Bones series (of which the show is based on) — this felt borderline cheating but at least I was reading!

I also set time limits on some of my other “relaxation” methods, such as phone time. I used the iPhone App Limits feature to cut my time on social media and phone games.

2. Turn “relaxation” -> “self-care”: Turning relaxation into self-care meant doing something for myself, not something that just equated to sitting on the couch. Getting out and going for a walk around the park after work was just as rejuvenating (or even more so!) than watching an episode of TV. On bad weather days, I would sit in the bath with a book and wine or go for a ride on the Peloton (more on that next). I found that re-framing the way I thought about what I needed to get into another mental headspace helped me become more productive in the evening, on things I truly wanted to be putting my time to.

3. Set goals and gamify: I’m extremely motivated by badges and rewards. It is for this reason that when I finally started using the Peloton my husband purchased in 2019, it only took me a week to get hooked. There are badges for working out 3 days in a row, and then 7, and then 30 and then 60 and once you are at 30 how can you not go for 60? The extra challenges (ex: do 5 strength workouts in the next 2 weeks) also helped expose me to new things.

One of my many goals of 2020 was to get down to my wedding weight, which I was approximately 40lbs heavier than; having just given birth in October 2019, I was struggling to get rid of the pregnancy weight. The global pandemic made this feel literally impossible. After the first two weeks of the lock down, I had gained 5lbs and knew I could not go on, both physically and mentally. I’m someone who has always struggled with her mental health. I had been on anti-depressants for 10+ years prior to getting pregnant, and while going back on was always something I had planned on doing, I wanted to wait until I needed it. The pandemic made me feel like I needed it. It was March in Minnesota — the days were short, it was hard to get outside, the world was crumbling around me. Yet, something strange happened at the exact right time it needed to happen: I really got into Peloton. It became a drug for me. I realized that 30 minutes on the bike in the morning and/or a 30-minute power walk half-way through my day directly put me in a good mood. Like any addictive mind, I doubled-down and for me, physical activity really improved my mental health. The badges kept me coming back on days when getting out of bed was still a struggle.

Side note: my husband gave me a Quip for Christmas and while I thought I had been a regular brusher prior to that, I realized the numbers of time I was just too tired and skipped the nighttime brush. With a checkmark at risk though, I absolutely would get out of bed and force myself to do it. I wonder what else I could be convinced to do with simple rewards?

4. Commit: I took on three additional commitments in 2020: I became the Communication Director of the Macalester Alumni Board (a new role that I was tasked with defining); I joined the Laura Jeffrey Academy Board of Directors (a girl-focused STEM Charter School); and I was appointed to the Edina Planning Commission. All of these endeavors required monthly meetings (or more!), reading meeting materials, communicating with people between meetings, and otherwise staying on top of my responsibilities. Committing to external people/organizations was a way to keep me accountable and on schedule. Nights that I dedicated to reading my meeting packet for the school board, as an example, also put me into “work mode” and likely meant I also wrote a few emails or researched other issues that were relevant to either the board or another cause.

5. Embrace my natural energies: I wanted to read a 500-page textbook on Parking Policy due to my role on the Planning Commission. Initially, I told myself I could be done in less than 2 months by reading just 10 pages a day. However, two months later, I hadn’t made much progress. Why? I pushed this task towards the end of the day and tried to get it done once my daughter was in bed, a.k.a.: when I no longer had the energy. Pivoting, I began to carve out 15 minutes in the morning to do this reading and found I was getting through even more than 10 pages a day. Sometimes just shuffling the tasks can make them easier to accomplish.