There was a time when conversations at work or between friends would purely be about what shows we’ve been watching and what we expect to happen in future episodes. Popular shows like ‘The Walking Dead’, 'Suits’ and 'Silicon Valley’ were what usually sparked office conversations, however, I’ve found myself watching less and less shows to point where now I’ve only really kept up with one show this year, ’Designated Survivor’, yes I know – not the best show but entertaining enough to keep me interested. I use the word kept up loosely as now I’m two episodes behind the latest one at the time of writing this and it feels like I watch an episode once every three weeks. So what happened in my life? What has caused me to spend less time catching up with the shows I loved last year? Well, a few things.

1. Jeff Sheldon

In the grand scheme of things watching TV shows; playing video games, reading certain books, watching certain films, and a handful of other things are a waste of time. No matter how you look at it, there’s always something more productive, more fulfilling and more beneficial one could be doing with their life.

Jeff Sheldon is the founder of an online clothing line called Ugmonk. He’s someone whose story I’ve heard before on podcasts and someone I really look up to. Late last year he arranged an AMA on Instagram where people including myself asked a bunch of questions. I can’t remember what I wrote or his response verbatim, nevertheless, I believe my question was along the lines of; ’do you play any video games?’ His response was, ’No, they’re a waste of time.’

At first, I was shocked and slightly offended that someone I admire could say such things about a hobby so near and dear to my heart, however, after a bit of thought, I don’t believe he was saying it in an offensive tone, which is difficult to grasp in a text. Jeff himself wouldn’t have the time to play even if he wanted to. Running a business and being a father are already quite time-consuming, he would probably want to spend the little free time he has with his child, working on a new idea, or probably losing himself in a tv show, maybe? Everyone has their own way of 'wasting time’, and I guess video games was not his. This made me look at the things I do that aren’t really productive and watching TV series was definitely one of the things I could do less of in place of something else.

2. Video Games

This section follows very closely from the point I made on wasting time and Jeff Sheldon’s comment on wasting time. No video games haven’t taken up the free time I’ve gained from not watching tv series, well, not all of the time. Playing video games is something I’ve done from childhood, it’s shaped the kind of music I listen to, the kind of people I associate with, and even the job I have today. Although it’s a waste of time, it’s something I don’t intend to give up. With the aim of spending more of my free time wisely, tv series are one of those things I am more than happy to reduce and something I was willing to do in its place was play more games, even if it’s two hours or thirty minutes more than the usual amount of time I played for. Nothing beats the escapism of playing a great story driven video game and yes, I do love tv series, the immersion isn’t as strong and, I’d much rather have conversations about games at work than tv shows.

3. Relationship and marriage

Following on ever so slightly from both of the points I made above. Spending time with my fiancé definitely isn’t a waste of time and is something I’m more than happy to give up tv shows for. Although we sometimes watch shows together, New Girl being our current one, it’s not something we’ve kept up with regularly. And we’ve never really had any shows in common to start conversations over so there has been no obligation on either of our parts to keep anything up. Who knows, maybe in the future we’ll spend more lazy afternoons together behind a screen catching up on box sets, but currently that doesn’t look like an avenue we’d go down. We’re more into working on small projects (like this blog) or travelling to places we’ve never visited.

In short, everyone has a thing they do that is a 'waste of time’, and although I haven’t completely stopped, I’ve decided to cut mine down by a chunk to do the things that aren’t a waste of time. I hope you find this post useful in some way.