Waste Not, Part 2

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, through reading John Piper's book Don't Waste Your Life I've been challenged to think about my own areas of wastefulness. One area I've been contemplating is the time spent watching television.

Quite often I find myself turning on the TV mainly to give me some background noise while I do some household chore. Occasionally I do sit and actually watch it to be entertained, but usually I'm doing something else like folding laundry or emptying the dishwasher or even reading while the TV's on.

Lately I've been thinking about ways to reduce the amount of TV that I watch (or the amount of time that the TV's on). One way is to cancel my cable service. Now, I'm not sure I'm ready for such a drastic step as that. Perhaps I can start with cutting back to basic service rather than expanded basic. Although nearly all of the channels that I watch are in the "expanded" plan rather than the basic plan. And I'm not sure I could stand not having ESPN/ESPN2 access once football season starts.

Another idea is to watch TV purposefully. What I mean by that is to plan ahead what I want to watch, and limit my TV viewing to just that. No more channel surfing. When the TV show I planned to watch is over, I should turn the TV off.

So those are a couple of ideas I've had so far. I'm still ruminating on it. Deep down I know that I'd be better off with less TV in my life. I've gone through TV fasts before (even lived for a while without expanded basic cable, although I'm not sure that it was during football season) and know that there are many benefits to changing my TV viewing habits. Still, it's a hard habit to break.

Anyone have any ideas and/or wisdom to share regarding TV viewing?