Today I want to talk about watching movies, you can probably apply most of what comes next to a lot of other forms of entertainment, but for the sake of simplicity, I’ll just talk about movies and tv shows today. Movies and tv shows are a huge part of life for many people, it’s more than many would think, just say an average person spends 3 hours a day watching some kind of movie or tv show (which isn’t too crazy, considering that a lot of movies these days go 2 - 2.5 hours easily, and a lot of people watch tv shows during their work break or just during the day) of course this number can vary a lot in both directions, but I have the impression that most people watch at least one movie or one episode of a tv show per day. Anyways, if we calculate that to a week that’s 21 hours… 21 hours of pretty much doing nothing, and to a month (4 weeks) that’d be 84 hours, 3.5 days exactly. And most movies and tv shows aren’t something you’d remember even after a day or so. They’re just time wasters, they don’t bring anything of value, they just occupy time that you’ll never get back. Many people say they watch movies to relax, or for pure entertainment, but I’ve never seen anybody who said that they were “relaxed” after watching a movie, or that they’d say it was worth watching it. Of course there are exceptions to that because it is an art form after all and I myself have watched a bunch of movies that were life changing and just worth watching. I am aware that these people usually mean that they don’t have to think about their own life for a bit, but seriously, what’s the benefit of that if you’re not spending that time thinking about something else? You’re just putting your body at idle to do nothing and waste your precious time on this earth that you would otherwise complain about not having enough of. I know the temptation of trying to get away from one’s own life is high, but there are far better ways to do that than to watch a movie, for example, you could start making a tea and learning something new, even if it is just in the form of watching a video or a documentary. Otherwise one could just take a walk outside. Or go for a run, that’s great for your health. But what if you don’t want to move around, or learn about a new thing, but instead you really want to relax? Then do just that, but don’t occupy your mind with something that doesn’t give you any value and just sit and think about nothing for example, instead of watching a movie before going to bed, go to bed straight away, if it’s too early to go to bed, then don’t go to bed at all yet.Just try to remember the last movie you’ve watched, or the movie before that, or the movie before that one, just go on and on and you’ll most likely find that you can remember few if none of them, and maybe there were 2 worthwhile movies you’ve watched in the past week, but that still means that the other 5 weren’t worthwhile.. 7.5 hours (1.5h per movie) that’s almost an entire work day in most place. Don’t waste your time people.

This problem is really profound with forms of entertainment that take all of your attention, like movies & tv shows, books, etc. With music and podcasts and such it’s usually better, but only if you’re actually doing something else (like thinking or taking a walk).

I think a good place to start would be to just stop watching a movie every evening before going to bed, that’s something that probably most people do. Watch something if you find something interesting, but otherwise, don’t waste your time with it and you’ll find that suddenly your evenings just got a whole lot longer.

I hope you enjoyed this blog post and I wish you the best of luck and have a nice day :)