How to Stop Being an Entertainment Junkie

Take back your time and your energy by turning entertainment to your advantage.

Your eyeballs are like a heroin addict’s veins.

Every day you pump yourself full of juicy, dopamine-filled content just to get through it all.

A short video here. A quick scroll there. Anything to take the edge off.

But the suffering is never gone for long. And then you need another hit.

You’re an entertainment junkie.

And so am I.

A terrible habit I got into recently was falling asleep to YouTube videos. It started doing it when I got sick for 2 weeks with Covid, and then I just didn’t stop.

I often struggle to sleep because my mind is whirring. But when I’ve got a nice, long video to listen to as I lie awake in bed, I can usually drown out my thoughts long enough to pass out.

This is especially necessary when you’re sick. It’s an easy choice between taking a nap while watching another video or worrying about how much you’re going to need to catch up on when you return to doing life.

This worked fine when I was ill, because I could sleep all day.

But when I recovered, I didn’t stop. And this one habit killed both the quantity and quality of my sleep. Which then, of course, negatively impacted the other areas of my life.

It took until literally yesterday for me to make the choice to overcome this bad habit. From now on, tech goes off at 10:30, I read until 11:00, and then it’s lights out.

It’s working so far, and I’m committed to it.

But this process also got me thinking about all the other ways entertainment is ruining our lives.

So I thought I’d make a list and offer some solutions that I’m personally implementing.

If you want to know how the right entertainment can lead to a happier and healthier mind and body, read on.

Is entertainment even a problem?

I get it, you’re sick of people telling you you’re wasting your life on entertainment.

You like watching TV.

You like scrolling through TikTok.

You even like bingeing Netflix (unless you were one of the people who helped wipe out its share price the other week!).

Entertainment is a necessity. You need it to relax. You need it to recharge. You need it to get through the day.

You’re completely correct that entertainment plays an important role in your life as a way to decompress.

But if you’re honest with yourself, you know you’re spending too much time using it.

The average American spends 3 hours in front of the TV and over an hour on social media every day.

You’re losing over 4 hours of your time to entertainment. That’s 1,460 hours a year — or 1/6 of your life — spent staring vapidly into a screen as you slowly edge closer to death.

Surely there’s a better way to get some R&R?

There is. And for the first time ever, I can even say it’s not that hard to do.

But first we should look at the core reasons why entertainment is ruining your life.

You are the sh*t you consume

No doubt you’ve heard the phrase “you are what you eat”.

I stopped eating meat about a year ago, and although I’m yet to turn into a carrot, changing my diet to a healthier one has made me feel more healthy.

It’s exactly the same with your mind.

You wouldn’t put a piece of sh*t in your mouth and chew it. But the vast majority of entertainment is the mental equivalent of spoon feeding crap into your brain.

Cable news, reality TV, viral dances, conspiracy theories, celebrity gossip, pornography, gaming videos — the list is endless.

And what’s worse is that it’s not just the entertainment that’s penetrating your mind, it’s the advertising.

The entire world revolves around putting eyes and ears in front of things to sell. How many hours of your life have you wasted on 5-second YouTube ads — or god forbid those bloody 30 second ones?

Mainstream advertising is bad because it conditions you to want the vapid things it’s selling.

Ads drive shallow, consumerist desire. They fill you with dumb groupthink. They condition you to expect easy results, to crave money and fame, to chase after magic pills, and to wallow in despair as you wait for someone to save you.

And look at how well that’s going for society.

As your body is the food you eat, so your mind is the content you consume. And your mind is literally creating your reality, so you should probably choose to put some good things in there!

Entertainment breeds passivity

When you consume content, you’re passive. You’re lying there with your brain switched off, soaking it all in.

The problem with this is that you get the false feeling that you’re achieving something. It feels good to watch a celebrity hike through the jungle. It feels good to watch an Instagram model vibe in a pool in Bali.

By tuning in to their content, you get to “join” them. You get the feeling that you’re doing that too.

But you’re not.

You’re at home, in bed, feeling broke and depressed.

Your happiness comes vicariously from other people.

And, sadly, it doesn’t even feel that good.

The only way to achieve real happiness is to go out into the world and get it for yourself. Yes it’s harder. But it’ll feel a whole lot better than merely watching on the side-lines and never living up to your potential..

Too much entertainment wastes your time

Time is perhaps the most valuable currency there is. If you don’t have control over your time, you don’t have control over your life.

And you don’t have control over much of your time, do you?

You spend an hour getting ready in the morning, an hour travelling to work, and at least 8 hours working your job. Then you need to travel back home, workout, eat, catch up with friends and loved ones, and try to get at least 8 hours of sleep.

If you’re spending the precious few hours in between these important activities passively staring at a screen, then you’re likely wasting your time.

The way most of us use entertainment devours the precious few hours we have to do the things we truly want to do with our lives. To build something that might one day help us gain real freedom.

You’re never going to achieve that freedom if you spend over 3 hours a day watching television.

Entertainment makes you negative

Humans have a negativity bias — it’s what kept us alive. It’s better to act as if there is a sabre tooth tiger hiding in the dark than to wander out and get eaten.

Focussing on the negative has helped us survive and solve problems.

But nowadays we don’t have many problems that directly threaten our survival or that are directly solvable by us.

Big issues like global warming are scary, but you as an individual can only do so much.

Yet TV, mainstream news, and various online pundits across the political spectrum will tell you the world is absolute trash.

Negativity is the easiest way to get eyeballs, and so our media has shifted over time to become more and more focussed on the terrible aspects of life.

Our world has its problems, yes. And there is lots more we should do. But we’re also so lucky to be living in the most developed time ever. There’s a lot of good in the world if you look up from your screen and open yourself up to it.

You’re deluded about the value of entertainment

Do you want to know the funny thing about TV and social media? Your brain likes to trick you into thinking you’re getting value from it.

Watching TV helps to expand your worldview by showing you situations you’d otherwise never see. It can broaden your perspective as a person.

Social media, for all its flaws, is a great place to meet people, build a community, and gain some real value (especially on Twitter).

This is correct… but only to a degree. Because let’s be honest: how much do you use entertainment to “broaden yourself” and how much do you use it as an escape?

However, entertainment is still important in helping you to relax and get through the struggles in life. Too much escapism is bad, but so is working 24/7.

So what can you do to ensure entertainment is helping to improve your life, rather than slowly destroy it?

Train yourself to enjoy higher quality forms of entertainment

You can’t just eliminate entertainment from your life.

But what you can do is be selective about the content you consume.

You can choose to watch TikTok dances, or you can choose to watch a self help video.

Human beings are very adaptable creatures. You become the content you consume. And if you consume quality content, your tastes will change over time.

Just as you can trick your brain to like doing hard tasks, you can trick your brain into finding personal development and spirituality content relaxing.

Image how different your life would be if you never felt the urge to binge watch Netflix? How much time you’d save? How much more money you could make?

Imagine how much clearer your mind would be. How much more time you’d spend doing meaningful things. How much more better you’d be at improving your life.

If you’ve been inspired to start changing your entertainment habits, pick one area of your life, such as your bedtime routine, and make the commitment to improve the content you consume during that time.

This little change will have massive cumulative effects in the long run.