Media Diet – follow up
A couple of months ago I wrote a post about the impact that media has on our spending. The constant bombardment of seductive adverts for the latest gadget would drive anyone to use their plastic. I know I’m not alone when I say that more than once I have been duped into buying something I didn’t need by slick advertising. This in turn has often blown a large hole in my budget.
Anyway in that post – which you can read here – I explained that I was toying with the idea of going on a media diet. The thought of reduced stress and anxiety coupled with more time and mental capacity seriously appealed to me.
If I’m honest the results of my media diet were very mixed.
I think its best if I break down each media channel so I can explain what happened.
Internet.
I use the internet a lot for my job and for this Blog. I find that a lot of the time when I am on browsing the web that I have lots of websites opened. The thing is none of these websites relate to each other. I could have a finance website open while at the same time I could have a sports website. My brain has problems processing the unrelated pieces of information at the same time.
The net effect of having all these websites open was that during the day my thoughts became scattered. To combat this and help me reduce the amount of time I spend on the internet I downloaded a free trial version of a website blocker software. I then loaded the details of my favorite websites into it.
Every time I tried to log on to my favorite websites I got a “page cannot be displayed” message. Initially this was very frustrating but eventually I did lose a lot of interest in those websites and my productivity did improve…for a while at least.
TV.
I mentioned in my last post about a Media Diet that I recorded all my favorite TV shows and watched them all in one go at the weekend. When I was watching them I would simply skip the ad breaks.
This had a big impact. It freed up a lot of time in the evenings as my evening was no longer centred on a TV show.
I did find that when people that I work with were talking about the previous evenings TV shows that I felt a little left out. Small price to pay I reckon.
Newspapers.
I stopped reading the daily newspapers – most of them I read online anyway so I simply blocked their websites. At the weekend I would buy one of the Sunday broadsheets. These usually give a good overview of the weeks events.
All this was shaping up nicely and for a couple of weeks I was seriously reducing my exposure to the media. The thing was that after the initial period my enthusiasm began to wane. By having my favorite websites blocked I felt that I was missing out. Missing out on what I’m not sure but I just felt that I was isolating myself in some way.
One by one I removed the block on the websites so that I could access them ‘just this one time’. I don’t feel isolated anymore and I am up to date with all the current affairs and sports results but at the same time my media exposure is right back where it was when I started this exercise. I have even fallen back into the habit of watching my favorite TV shows in the evenings instead of at the weekends. Not good.
When I am trying to be productive – either at work or trying to write this Blog – I’m back in the habit of jumping from website to website and back to writing. This leads to incredible frustration as I know what I am doing wrong but I am finding it hard to break this habit.
But Mike - what were you trying to achieve anyway?
It was easy to lose sight of the original reason for going on a media diet. My prime motivation was to reduce the negative influence of the media on my bank balance. Simple as that. As a side benefit I was hoping that my productivity would increase as a direct result of my free time.
While now it looks like my media diet was unsuccessful in a way I have achieved what I originally intended to do. Now I find that whenever I am confronted with a purchase I ask myself how much of my purchasing decision was influenced by the media. I probably won’t ever be able to give an accurate answer but at least it gets me thinking about my buying behavior.
No longer do I go blindly about my shopping. Often I find myself asking the question “Is this generic product as good as a branded one?” To me this is what going on a media diet is all about.
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