TV = Unhappiness

Want to be happy with your life? Spend less time in front of the TV.

That's according to a study detailed recently in the New York Times. The study found that, over time, people who watched the most TV were the most unhappy. I covered a lot of my own reasons why watching a lot of television is a bad idea some time ago in my post "There's a Reason It's Called "The Idiot Box".

At the time, I dealt with one of the main faults I find with television: it sucks up a lot of time you could be using to do something much more productive. I want to make one thing clear: I do watch TV. In fact, I have a list of favorite shows, but most of them are on "The History Channel" "Discovery Channel" or "BBC America". When I watch TV, I try to watch something educational (not counting "The Shield" or "Prison Break").

There is another downside to TV, too...especially this time of year. It can lead to people buying a lot of useless junk that they don't need. Case in point: a couple of months ago, I posted my thoughts on the ShamWow commercial, featuring annoying pitchman Vince Offer. Since then, it has been one of the most-visited posts on this blog. Do we really need to buy rags from Vince? Nope.

I'm not saying everyone should permanently ditch all TV, but at least try to cut down. Use one hour a night that you would normally use to watch TV to do something else. Could you use an extra seven hours a week to tackle a project at home, take up a hobby, read a book or do that one thing you wish you had the time to do? Put down the remote for that one hour each night. You'll be happier for it.