In July, I wandered into the world of cable TV, a novice waiting to be slaughtered.
Because we pay for cable TV, we are tempted to watch lots of it. "We paid for it; we ought to use it." This is like an all-you-can-eat cafeteria. We eat too much, gain too much weight, and the food is rarely top-notch. Why do we do it? To get our money's worth.
Money is cheap compared to the value of our time.
Channel-flipping, annoying to wives, is a huge time- waster. We hope against hope that the next channel will offer something good. It probably won't. Even if it does, we will come in late. It took too long flipping channels to find it.
I have learned to spend half an hour a week to identify what the week's main attractions are: classic movies, regular shows ("House"), documentaries, and maybe something on the Discovery HD Channel, which offers viewers visual masterpieces. I cull the "catch," throwing out the Minnows.
My investment of 30 minutes more than repays me for the time I would otherwise waste flipping channels. That bad habit is not easily broken, once it is picked up.
If you have TiVo or some technological equivalent, use it. Watch re-runs under controlled conditions. It might be worth buying or renting a programmable recorder just to force yourself to schedule programs in advance. What is your time worth? Save 20 minutes a month, and you'll pay for the recorder.
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