The first comment nails it on the head:

> What most people need when building a side business is consecutive hours … especially in programming.

> 30 minutes here and 1 hour there, in the programming word won’t get you much because of the huge time lag for developers when they have to context switch.

My issue is that the cost of watching TV is easy to measure, and thus easy to target. The cost of reading fluff 37Signals articles, however, is not.

Awesome point, how much time do we waste reading about innovative business practices preached by 37Signals compared with how much time we spend actually implementing said practices. Even though the article you may be reading might be genius or hugely informative, it's still the same as watching the History channel on TV if you do nothing about it, or spend less time actually doing something then you spend watching or reading about it.

I don't believe that you need 3+ continuous hours to program. I myself routinely take breaks every hour or so; and believe the context switch is amortized at that time-frame.

Also, the point is not purely about television. I've not watched ANY television at all for the past 4 years. However, random excursions into Wikipedia or reading blogs do cost time.

At the end of the day, I still wonder if it is worth reading all that-- I could contribute to some open-source project (reporting bugs) for instance.

I wouldn't be surprised if this depends strongly on the individual in question. Some people are very good at "reclaiming" small chunks of time--15 minutes here and there--that add up over the course of a day. Other people have a much more difficult time even getting started unless they have a large block of time.

To me it also depends on the task at hand.

20 minutes will get me through a chapter from Learning Pything (even if I'm not entirely sober), while 3 hours doesn't feel like enough to work on my ARM7 development board in Assembler (something totally new to me and not easy).

Zing!

I hate TV and see no reason for it to be around, but I think it's dubious they're singling out TV. They could just as well target video games, reading, just relaxing, or other things that aren't particularly productive. It's a little too easy for people these days to see downtime as valueless, I just hope it never gets to the point where people think you are lazy if you aren't working every waking moment of your life.

Singling out TV is pretty easy because, first, it consumes a significant portion of the majority of American's lives and second, because there is a lot of reliable data measuring that time. There isn't anything that takes up that much time outside of work unless you count sleeping (and god damn what I would give to cut that out of my daily schedule)

"There isn't anything that takes up that much time outside of work unless you count sleeping (and god damn what I would give to cut that out of my daily schedule)"

Actually I wonder if it would make as significant a difference as you'd expect, or even at all. Reminds me of those school research projects where I'd have 2 months to do the project, do nothing at all except worry a bit for the major portion of the time then do everything in the last 2 days and get a decent grade. I wouldn't have done better or worse if I had been given 1 week or 4 months instead.

An alternative to the "Don't commute" option for those who can't not commute is to take public transport. If you take a train or bus instead of driving you can do something else during the commute.

I'm currently doing this: http://twitter.com/jgrahamc/status/1630137854

I had the same idea until I actually sat down to figure out my commute via public transport. Shortest way was three buses and 3.5 hours.

Granted, my commute is 45 miles each way, but public transportation here is the pits.

As dangerous as it sounds, I try and do my drive with a legal pad next to me, brainstorming and making a list of what to work on when I get home.

Maybe something with voice recording could work better?

I can't do anything on car or bus rides because looking downwards for more than a few minutes gives me nausea :(

I spend far less time watching TV than browsing HN submissions and comment threads.

I found when I cut out my TV viewing I wasn't more productive. I do read more and spend more time playing my guitar, but I don't get more done. However, the big benefit for me was that I got more sleep.

Now if it is 9pm and I'm tired I go to sleep. Hell I'll go to be at 8pm if I'm feeling run down. I've eliminated the primary reason to stay up late -- note: I do occasionally go out with friends...

Those numbers are ridiculous (and I say this as someone without a cable sub). Man cannot work all the time. Most people might watch 4 hours of TV a day, but it isn't blocking them from doing 4 hours of a part time job.

I am not sure how much TV costs, but HN and Slashdot must give a quite impressive number...

I have not watched TV for about 10 years. At home, I have a TV set, but the only connection it has is my home theatre.

How about just focusing on getting things done? I find that when I have a list of prioritized tasks for the week, I usually get them done and when I don't , its never been because I watched too much TV. People may want to consider not taking vacation time any more at this rate , if we are trying to squeeze as much work as possible into our lives.

There is life outside the internet, and TV does a pretty good job of letting me know what is happening in the 'real world'

I try to do most of my TV watching when I'm on the treadmill or the indoor bike.

The funny thing is that the blogger (bobblehead?) wrote a reference to that Onion article and yet still made the blog post. Very odd!