(Media) Dieting is Making You Fat …

Oh January, with your rush of well-intentioned new-years resolutions. Seems like your theme for 2015 is “Media Dieting”.

Hear ye, hear ye, oh denizens of interwebs world: you do not need to go on a media diet.

You need to get better at curation.

So many well-meaning would be coaches yelling on Facebook,

“You can’t watch TV and make money!”

Simply not true. I run a multi-million dollar company and watch anywhere from 3 to 4 hours of TV a night.

I insist that both Gulliver and I turn our computers off at 7pm. We’ll typically binge-watch 3-4 episodes of whatever we’re on (currently Scandal and Homeland). Then we’ll go to bed and Gulliver will read to me for an hour (yes, really. He’s like my own personal audiobook. For those who care, we’re currently reading “Shift”, the second book in the Wool Trilogy by Hugh Howey). Get a good 7 hours sleep then get up the next morning and do it all over again.

Here’s the kicker, though. We don’t have free to air or cable TV.

In 2015, why would I want to be tied to ads and the networks whims? (Oh, we remember network TV. Those of us who are sci fi fans. How you would fuck with the season finale our TV shows to replay Titanic for the 50 millionth time. And now we have an alternative.)

I carefully curate the media I consume.

I haven’t watched the “news” in the last 6 years (Newsroom is far more informative). I haven’t watched a TV show I didn’t specifically want to watch in more than 4 years. I don’t channel surf. I’m either watching something I enjoy or I’m doing something else.

If you’ve ever talked to me about the future of entertainment (a favourite topic), you would have heard me say,

“The networks and studios are already dead. They just don’t know it yet.”

It’s true. Media is no longer curated for you. You have total freedom to watch (and listen to) what you want, when you want.

You don’t need less media – you need less bullshit.

And by bullshit, I do NOT mean fiction.

There’s this strange attitude around at the moment that fiction is somehow “wasteful”. STOP ENJOYING YOURSELF IF YOU WANT TO BE SUCCESSFUL!

Okay, well, that’s one option I suppose.

Meanwhile, fiction relaxes me. It makes me a better writer. It makes me a better business person.

Let me explain something. You can’t just work. And I don’t just mean physically, although obviously that also.

People who only study one subject – who JUST read about internet marketing, who ONLY read non-fiction books, who take time for industry seminars but not for real life – inevitably end up stale. If you want to be creative, interesting, a well-rounded human being, you literally CAN NOT just engage in business content.

Gulliver and I spent New Years at the Falls Festival, a four day music festival held in the North Byron Parklands. We had the BEST time. We listened to some good music, ate some good food, drank some really bad wine, but most importantly, made a bunch of new friends. People who don’t see us as “The Leela and Gulliver Show”. People we just had fun hanging out with, with no expectation from us to wax lyrical about sales and marketing, people who didn’t want anything from us.

I didn’t even feel compelled to write a “5 Things I Learned from Going to the Falls Festival” blog post.

Imagine.

I know, at the beginning, the business stuff is the most exciting stuff EVER because it’s so shiny and new.

I know, after awhile, it doesn’t feel that way anymore and that creates guilt. You feel like you SHOULD be focusing on the business stuff.

I know, that if you give into that, you’ll not only exhaust yourself, but also bore the fuck out of yourself.

If 4 hours of Jersey Shore makes you feel good – do it. Fuck the judgmental haters. Personally, I prefer Geordie Shore but you just do your thing, Strong Mad.

If Sunday night horror movies is your thing (guilty!) – do it.

If getting drunk and Youtubing forgotten pop songs of the 90s *cough*Take it from me! I’ll be good to you baby! *cough*, gives you a sense of well being – post them on my Facebook wall and I’ll join you.

And remember:

Most of the people who post

“What you need to do to be successful.”

Tropes on Facebook, aren’t.

And if the price of their kind of success is turning into a business zombie who has no interests outside of your business, then that price is way too high.