Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I gave up TV, then qualified for Olympic marathon trials and got my PhD

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 38 posts

Re: I gave up TV, then qualified for Olympic marathon trials and got my PhD

#2

Post by rdlecler1 »

This article makes the assumption that people are not watching TV as a mental decompressor. Depending on your job and hours you may very well not have the physical and mental energy left over to engage in extreme physical and mental activity.

Re: I gave up TV, then qualified for Olympic marathon trials and got my PhD

#3

Post by hiddencost »

rdlecler1 wrote: post #2

This article makes the assumption that people are not watching TV as a mental decompressor. Depending on your job and hours you may very well not have the physical and mental energy left over to engage in extreme physical and mental activity.

Ego depletion is a controversial model.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_depletion#Reproducibility_...

Re: I gave up TV, then qualified for Olympic marathon trials and got my PhD

#4

Post by imjk »

rdlecler1 wrote: post #2

This article makes the assumption that people are not watching TV as a mental decompressor. Depending on your job and hours you may very well not have the physical and mental energy left over to engage in extreme physical and mental activity.

I'm pretty sure the article mentions this specifically.

Re: I gave up TV, then qualified for Olympic marathon trials and got my PhD

#7

Post by doctorpangloss »

Narcissism, I would argue, is a far more dangerous thing than TV. The author's narcissism lets her celebrate all these unlikable cliches: being a fitness guru, being an "aspiring writer," being an academic overachiever, having a perfect husband and incoming baby or whatever. Then the style: preachy, written in the first person, chronologically. As though the only way to write about yourself is like an upbeat propaganda travel log.

The beautiful thing about a show like Friends is that it takes broken people and makes them likeable. Girls does a great job at mocking a character like the author, and arguably does more to encourage people to do good for themselves than the author does.

Re: I gave up TV, then qualified for Olympic marathon trials and got my PhD

#8

Post by wesm »

rdlecler1 wrote: post #2

This article makes the assumption that people are not watching TV as a mental decompressor. Depending on your job and hours you may very well not have the physical and mental energy left over to engage in extreme physical and mental activity.

I was also a bit offended by the premise that TV (or video games) has any causal relationship with achievement. I think it's the other way around, some people are not ambitious and spend their idle time watching TV. But watching TV does not keep you from realizing your ambitions. Completely uncorrelated in my view.

I'm a high-producing programmer, and TV and video games play an essential role for me (as does exercise) to restore mental energy.

Post reply on HN