{"id":620587,"date":"2026-04-21T03:59:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T03:59:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/620587\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T03:59:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T03:59:15","slug":"what-i-learnt-about-myself-after-quitting-tv-for-a-month","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/620587\/","title":{"rendered":"What I learnt about myself after quitting TV for a month"},"content":{"rendered":"

Late last year, I quit watching telly for a month.<\/p>\n

It was partly an experiment in self-control and habit-breaking, but also a response to the unhappy realisation that watching shows had become my crutch to zone out.<\/p>\n

So, I decided to kick the habit for a bit, cold turkey.<\/p>\n

Surprisingly, in TV’s place slotted things I often felt too tired for \u2014 playing music, doing puzzles, exercising, gardening and heaps more reading.<\/p>\n

Realising mindless TV-watching wasn’t always restful<\/p>\n

Worn out by work and the exhausting churn of climate crisis and chaotic world news, I’d retreat to screen-based monotony, spending hours watching TV or streaming the latest series.<\/p>\n

I knew it wasn’t great for my health \u2014 all that sitting and snacking \u2014 and worse, it stole motivation and time from things I love, such as veggie gardening.<\/p>\n

\"Koren<\/p>\n

Sometimes simply being in the garden fills Koren’s cup. (Supplied: Koren Helbig)<\/p>\n

But often, flopping onto the couch and flicking on a show felt like the only thing I had energy left for in the evening. And I don’t even have the relentless responsibility of kids.<\/p>\n

Examining it closer, I realised I was equating TV to “rest”, yet I still felt tired all the time.<\/p>\n

And I worried that I was numbing out, using binge-watching as a comforting distraction from stress or a way to avoid dealing with emotions.<\/p>\n

My two-fold approach to shifting unhealthy habits<\/p>\n

Last year was a gradual process of examining such crutches in my life, one by one.<\/p>\n

On New Year’s Day, I decided to change my relationship with alcohol and ended up cutting my drinking by about two-thirds.<\/p>\n

Later, I wound back processed sugar and capped my daily social media use.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Koren has been able to play her ukulele since carving back some more screen-free time. (Supplied)<\/p>\n

Each of them had unintentionally become a fallback to numb out when life got hard, a way to soften stress or sidestep uncomfortable feelings.<\/p>\n

My strategy to shift them was two-fold: make the old habit harder and keep a healthier option waiting in the wings.<\/p>\n

For example, I stopped buying processed sugary stuff and kept more fruit in the house. I put my phone in another room and borrowed more easy fiction reads from the library.<\/p>\n

Small environmental tweaks, I realised, often worked better than relying on sheer willpower.<\/p>\n

And rather than calling behaviours “good” or “bad”, I started asking whether they moved me toward the life I wanted or away from discomfort.<\/p>\n

What filled the space<\/p>\n

When it came time to tackle the mindless TV-watching that was swallowing too much of my life, I created what I like to call a personal “library of rest”.<\/p>\n

Because what’s “restful” can depend on the day, I realised. Sometimes shovelling compost filled my cup, other days I could barely muster the energy to run a bath.<\/p>\n

\"Koren<\/p>\n

Koren’s library of rest includes low-energy activities such as reading. (Supplied)<\/p>\n

My library of rest collated alternatives I could turn to when tempted by TV, categorised by the energy and capacity levels each one required.<\/p>\n

For example:<\/p>\n

Low-energy rest: reading light novels, doing a puzzle while listening to music, weaving, gentle stretching, napping and hanging with my pets.Higher-capacity rest: bike riding, a long walk, cooking, planting veggie seedlings, playing ukulele, journalling and reading heavier non-fiction books.<\/p>\n

I modelled that on the “spoon theory”, coined by disability advocate Christine Miserandino, which highlights the need to pace and prioritise when managing fluctuating energy levels.<\/p>\n

The list helped reduce my mental load when choosing TV substitutes and find doable ways to rest, no matter how worn out I was feeling.<\/p>\n

TV habits as a prompt for self-awareness<\/p>\n

Quitting TV for a month also helped grow my awareness of what it feels like when I’m overloaded or off-kilter \u2014 and get better at sitting with stress or emotions instead of numbing them out.<\/p>\n

And because I love to apply permaculture thinking across my entire life (not just in my garden), I used its framework to self-reflect and build lasting positive habit changes.<\/p>\n

For example, permaculture’s fourth principle of “apply self-regulation and accept feedback” helped me build self-awareness about when and why I resort to marathon TV sessions.<\/p>\n

Now, I consider the itch to binge-watch a helpful flag or feedback loop, indicating that I’m emotionally overwhelmed or that I’ve been pushing myself too hard and need to slow down.<\/p>\n

This year’s goal: moderation<\/p>\n

When I mentioned my telly-free experiment in a group chat recently, several folks said they’d permanently quit TV, even sold their sets.<\/p>\n

I take more of a “things in moderation” approach to life, rather than being rigidly all-or-nothing. So, it’s not a no to TV forever, for me.<\/p>\n

I’ve kept my set and a streaming subscription, and still regularly watch shows and movies. But I now approach it as more of a conscious choice \u2014 a treat, even \u2014 rather than a daily fallback habit that eats precious hours of my life.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, the experiment reminded me that time is my most finite resource and richest form of wealth, and that a more fulfilling life begins with mindfully choosing how I spend it.<\/p>\n

Koren Helbig is a freelance journalist and sustainable city living educator who practices permaculture and grows organic food in the backyard of her small urban Tarntanya\/Adelaide home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Late last year, I quit watching telly for a month. It was partly an experiment in self-control and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":620588,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,99,7749,434,427],"class_list":{"0":"post-620587","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-screen-time","12":"tag-television","13":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620587\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/620588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}