Talk to any group of people about self-improvement endeavors and quite a few of them will complain about how they don’t have any time available. It doesn’t matter if the subject is hitting the gym, taking a class to further career goals, or getting out into the field to improve social skills. You will, inevitably, hear the same thing over and over again: “I don’t have time to do that.”

Playboy magazine recently published the following mind-blowing statistic that illustrates just how much of an illusion this lack of time is for many people.

“On average Americans have just under 37 hours of leisure time per week and spend about 50% of it watching TV.”

Think about that for a moment…

A full half of your waking hours outside of work or school are devoted to mindlessly staring into the tube. Those are thousands of hours lost to Jersey Shore marathons and meaningless ballgames between last place teams. What is most amazing is that almost all of those hours of TV programming aren’t episodes that you really want or need to watch. Instead, they are shows that you fall into after flipping the brainlessly and then you look up and realize you’ve suddenly lost 3 hours.

So when you find yourself falling into the trap of thinking, “I don’t have the time,” simply put down the remote control.

As an experiment for the next week, select 2 television shows that you simply cannot live without. Write those shows into your schedule. And then Do. Not. Turn. On. The. Television except for those scheduled episodes. Use those free hours to get out into the field and socialize. Or do some jumping jacks. Or learn a few new phrases in Italian. Or pursuing whatever self-improvement topic interests you.

But don’t say you lack time while your hand is clutching a television remote control.

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