Seriously I do not believe the science on that is so settled as to justify such an absolutist position. Watching lots of crap has a whole mess of negative impacts and the nature of television makes passive interaction more the default than active intellectual engagement, but reading a Casper comic is not better than watching an episode of Cosmos or even an engaging who-done-it.
I read a lot as a kid but the consumed information that had the biggest impact on my young intellectual development was not from a book but the television series “Jacob Bronowski’s The Ascent of Man” on PBS and maybe the evenings sitting with my Dad trying to each be first to figure out how Columbo would prove the bad guy did it.
I’d like to see a study that supports this claim and does so by separating the effects of being sedentary from whatever it is the boob tube supposedly does to you.
I would expect people who binge-watch TV to have suboptimal health outcomes since people who binge-watch TV are more likely to be planted in one place for hours on end. And they probably eat a lot of junk food too.
But the same is probably true for someone who “binge” reads.
Seems to me a better recommendation than “pick up a book” is to try to seek out content that educates more than entertains. There is a lot of programming out there that provides stimulating food for thought, and a lot of reading material that is garbage.
I don’t want to derail the thread with a discussion on TV vs book readin’, which could be the topic of it’s own. Certainly quality of programming matters. If you’re going to watch TV, certainly educational programming is better than Real Housewives. And my education on the subject is primarily from researching the effects of TV on small children (since I have 2 of them). Part of the problem with TV is its passive nature. You just sit there and zone out staring at the screen while it feeds you images. And for small children, there is an opportunity cost associated with them not using that time to play with toys or develop their imagination.
Either way, I don’t see much of a down side in limiting TV for my kids as much as possible.
Heck, a lot of those miners who will be dead at 50 were succesful at reproducing. I haven’t, but then, I was never particularly keen on having kids. Was mine a failure of process, or of intent? And, since we can be reasonably sure I’m not removing from the gene pool any unique genes, should anybody give a shit?
A friend once exclaimed “yeah! Work hard, party hard! Ain’t that right, Nava?” “Hell naow. I work hard so I can take it easy on my own time :p” would high five Chimera but she’d have to reach over and it’s too much effort
Good grief. This guy sounds like a real blast to hang out with.
You: I feel like a pint. Pub?
Him: IS THAT A HIGH QUALITY ACTIVITY
You: ?? I was just gonna hang out with the gang. Want to come?
Him: ARE THE GANG LOW FREQUENCY INDIVIDUALS
You: ?? They’re good people. We’ve been there for each other through good stuff and bad stuff. We have a great laugh.
Him: IS THE PUB FRANKLY MEDIOCRE
You: It’s kind of a dive, yeah.
Him: YOU HAVE NOT EVOLVED
You: < leaving >
I’m successful, by most measures including my own. One of my criteria for success is that I don’t have to spend a lot of time obsessing over how successful I am and how to become more successful and whether my life is spent optimising my successful successfulness. I just do my thing. Regardless of how high-quality it is.
There’s a difference between “successful” and “comfortable”. I think most people are content with being comfortable. Success takes a lot more hard work and is a lot riskier.
Or perhaps a more realistic conversation:
You: I feel like a pint. Pub?
Successful Person: No thank you I:
a) have to prepare for a presentation tomorrow.
b) have class in the morning
c) I’m going to a networking function for my industry
d) I’m taking care of the kids tonight
You: ?? They’re good people. We’ve been there for each other through good stuff and bad stuff. We have a great laugh.
Successful Person: Yes, they are nice enough people. But you know what’s going to happen. Steve is going to bust out the shots and call anyone who wants to leave early a “pussy” until they relent. Mike and Jim are going to start a fight and get us thrown out of at least one bar. Barry will hang out for all of ten minutes until he starts hitting on every girl he sees, in spite of the fact he’s been married for a year. Dave’s going to be in the bathroom every ten minutes like we don’t know he’s still doing coke like it’s the late 80s. And after an evening of having to take care of these idiots, I’m going to wake up the next morning exhausted and too hungover to do anything but binge-watch TV. We’re not 22 anymore and it’s time these guys grew up because no one is laughing at their shit anymore.
Successful Person: Sure, why not? I have the extra time to kick back and have some spur-of-the-moment fun because I’m whiz at time management:
Spent all this week preparing for the presentation at tomorrow’s meeting, so that’s good
Class is in the morning but no big deal because I did all my reading already
Networking is an ongoing thing and one night of not doing it isn’t going to fracking kill me
My husband can take care of the kids tonight because I do it most nights and he enjoys having more one-on-one Daddy time.
Successful people make sacrifices all the time, don’t get me wrong. But true successes enjoy healthy work-life balance. They make room in their lives for low-pressure fun. If “having a pint” every so often is what keeps someone from burning out or falling into a slump, then it’s okay to reserve some time in one’s life in that.
Celebrate AFTER the presentation. Drink on a night where you don’t have to participate in class the next day. Get rid of those distracting kids and husband!
People who are successful tend to have a single-minded purpose about achieving their success. And I’m talking about real success, not reaching some comfortable point in your career where you can now afford to balance work with drinking with your buddies or playing with your kids.
I know both those people. They’re cool. I am both those people, on occasion. My point was that the guy quoted in the OP sounds like an entirely different thing from either of those people.
But if people are happy being comfortable, and it lets them balance work and life to the exact extent that they want to, how is that not success? Why is having more money but no life the universal definition of ‘real success’? Obviously it’s some people’s definition, and fair enough. But how does that make it more ‘real’ than other people’s definition?
I genuinely don’t get the idea that the only ‘real’ definition of success is, basically, ‘MORE MONEY MORE MORE MORE’.
So Real Successes never go out to the bar, never veg out on the couch, never do anything except single-mindedly pursue achievement, achievement, achievement?
There are two things a person needs, in order to feel that he has been successful in life: Love, Health and Money. Any two of them will do, and make up for the absence of the third.
If you’re really a hot shot, there is never a time when you’re not preparing for something. Because after the presentation or class, there’s always something else. But successful people prioritize. They know how to make a “celebration” a semi-productive affair (like intermingling “shop” talk with chewing the fat). They know how to celebrate in moderation (drinking to get a buzz rather than to get wasted)
If that is what “real” success is, then most of us are losers and will always be.
I don’t think most of us are losers. We may not be at the “top” of our respective hiearchies, but most of us don’t want that anyway. If success doesn’t equate to getting what you want out of life, then why should it be worthy of aspiration?
Right. Successful people are generally well-rounded; you don’t acquire well-roundedness by being inflexible or hyperfocused.
It’s not a mistake that people voted as Most Likely to Be Successful in HS weren’t the kids who got straight A’s because they were always in the library studying. They were folks who were impressive at multiple things, including academics, seemingly without breaking a sweat.
Bottom line, if you’re too busy and achievement-minded to hang out with a buddy occasionally because YOU DON’T GET TO BE SUCCESSFUL THAT WAY, then you’re doing something wrong.
Not “losers”. But mediocre. Middle of the road. Average. But I think most people are ok with that. Or we allow ourselves to be content with our relatively small successes.
The wait to get married until they have achieved enough success to land a suitable trophy wife. Pick a weekend during a relatively slow time at work to get married, invite all their friends, family, clients and professional contacts and after a short honeymoon spent impregnating the wife and messaging clients, it’s back to work, slacker!
I may be repeating myself but I have been privileged to know quite a few people who by any reasonable standard would be called quite successful. Tops of competitive fields successful. In medicine, academics, business, and otherwise.
Focused disciplined competitive … all yes. Single-minded? No. Their friends may have tended to be what would satisfy the standards but just because those were the people they hung around, who shared their interests, and who they had fun with. They were not friends as means to an end.
The premise just does not fit with what I’ve observed.
Prior to age 40 I think my limiting factor was how much I was willing to gamble. I always wanted the odds heavily in my favor. I was willing to invest small amounts to test the water with advertising and such but seldom would I go in big. Coming from where I came from being a high school drop out I considered anything over 6 figures to be successful. I was very good at hitting my goals in business year after year but once I hit them I tended to slack off. I had some fears of getting too big and being overwhelmed.