One of the very few non-Christian, non-baseball blogs I follow is Seth Godin’s ^[1]. He is a marketing expert who writes about productivity in the business world (and in all of life) and other related topics. He recently had a post titled But it’s better than TV ^[2] that I really appreciated:

At the local health food store lunch buffet, they offer stir fried tempeh.

I never get it. Not because I don’t like it, but because there are always so many other things on the buffet that I prefer.

That’s why I don’t watch TV. At all. There are so many other things I’d rather do in that moment.

Broadcast TV was a great choice when a> there weren’t a lot of other options and b> when everyone else was watching the same thing, so you needed to see it to be educated.

Now, though, you could:

• Run a little store on eBay
• Write a daily blog
• Write a novel
• Start an online community about your favorite passion
• Go to meetups in your town
• Volunteer to tutor a kid, in person or online
• Learn a new language, verbal or programming
• Write hand written thank you notes each evening to people who helped you out or did a good job
• Produce small films and publish them online
• Listen to the one thousand most important operas
• Read a book or two every evening
• Play a game a Scrabble with your family

None of them are perfect. Each of them are better than TV.

And of course, as Catholics, we could add many more to this list:

• Go to Adoration
• Pray the Rosary
• Help in a soup kitchen
• Visit your neighbor

And the list could go on and on…