Hulu Was Killing My Business!

Mar 14, 2011 by mandeewidrick

There are currently 12 shows waiting to be watched in my Hulu queue tonight.

They’re 45 minutes each. 12 shows x 45 minutes = 540 minutes.

540 minutes = 9 hours.

Do you know how much one can get done in 9 hours?!

As of last month, I did something that I should’ve done a long time ago. I decided to stop watching TV, just for a little while to see what would happen. I went 8 days with absolutely nothing…no Hulu, no cable, no Netflix. Nada! At first I thought I would miss it, but instead I found myself having the greatest time. I started reading books, I started writing more and I even began seeing gaps in my business that I needed to fix. Crazy, right?

Alright, so I confess, after those first 8 days I did cave and watch Castle (couldn’t help it, I started my “TV fast” right before I got to see part 2 of a t0-be-continued episode!). It was one show, and it’s Nathan Fillion, can you blame a girl? But let’s get serious and think about this…compare that to the 1-2 shows I was watching every night. At nearly 2 hours of TV a day, that’s a huge move on my part!

What’s a little scary to me is that there are 9 hours of unwatched shows waiting to be watched in my queue on Hulu, and that’s all accumulated in about 3 weeks time. So in about one more week, there would likely be about 12 hours of TV waiting to be watched. That’s 144 hours a year. That doesn’t even include the occasional show I watch on cable or the 2 hour movies I like to watch on Netflix. Do you know what I could’ve done in that amount of time? Do you know how much I could accomplish?! Yeah, like a whole crap load of awesome stuff!

So I’m not bashing TV. I’ll still watch it too, but my time has become more valuable to me now than it ever was before. I don’t like wasting time. As an entrepreneur operating a new startup, my business depends on my focus and drive. TV really isn’t something that helps me focus – in fact, I believe that it was affecting my thought process and hindering my mental growth because there was just too much of it. (Don’t start cracking jokes now, I was pretty smart before and y’all know it…now I’m just smarter. )

It’s so, SO important for entrepreneurs to keep their focus. The drive and passion for what we do is what keeps our dream alive, what fuels our love…but passion and drive can be dulled by distractions. Anything done excessively can have a negative impact on your company: too much TV, video games, partying…or even things like false responsibility (taking on too many projects because you don’t want to say no) or trying to do everything yourself because you don’t want to delegate. It’s imbalance and it affects your business. For me, that thing was Hulu. Hulu was killing my business. What’s killing yours?