“I don’t have any time”, “I’m too busy”, very common phrases these days I either hear or overhear on a daily basis.  I’ve known traditionally the TV is the biggest consumer of people’s time and did a little research on just how much time TV consumes.  I think you’ll be quite surprised what I found by heading to the ultimate guide on TV watching, the Nielsen Cross Platform Report. 

I’m not going to go over the whole report, you can do that here.  What you’ll be shocked to learn is overall TV viewership has increased 22 minutes per month per person over the last year.  The highest quintile is clocking in nearly TEN hours per day!  The newest trend that is starting to take note is streaming video online and this too is measured since more and more people are doing that.

You’ll see on the above report the highest quintile in 2011 Q1 is 598 average daily minutes for 2+ people.  Divide that by 30 days and divide that by 2 and you get the nearly 10 hours per day they are talking about.  The report is quite interesting however the overall summary on time spent watching TV is that people spend a lot of time doing it!

Those who say they are to busy for the gym, to busy to hang out, to busy to change things about their life, to busy to read, to busy to cook/eat healthy, to busy to involve their kids in other activities or join them in activities, to busy to clean, to busy to walk the dog/take are of animals, to busy for your spouse/date night, and the list goes on and on.  People use this wimpy excuse of “I’m to busy” and for the most of us that’s a crock of you know what.

If you’ve ever said your to busy for whatever, check your TV watching habit and I’ll bet you you can cut out just a few hours a night or even a week and you’ll have more time on your hands for those things that are more important than the boob tube. 

Lets do a little math for fun…(I’ll round down to 9 hours and keep that constant)

• 9 Hours a day x 7 days a week = 63 Hours a week of TV
• 63 Hours a week x 52 weeks in a year = 3,276 hours of TV a year
• 3,276 hours divide by 24 hours = 136.5 days of TV watching
• 136.5 days x 10 years (10 years is within that demographic range) = 1,365 days of TV watching
• 1,365 days of TV watching divide by 365 days = 3.74 years of TV watching in 10 years.

Now that is pretty damn scary when you get down to how many years of TV watching are in 10 years.  Something to think about, however no matter how slice and dice the numbers, people are watching WAY to much TV.