Would you say that books are a mind-suck? Would you say HN is a mind-suck? Would you say listening to music or going to a play is a mind-suck?

Even if you think all those other forms of entertainment are "bad", I'd still ask what's so wrong about being "unproductive" some of the time? I don't think you should seek to be 100% "productive". I think being a cultured person is a perfectly good goal as well.

The primary test that I put any kind of leisure activity through is whether or not I feel better in some way during or afterwards. Most of television, for me, doesn't do that; it's a convenient way to fill some time, but leaves me feeling generally less energized than when I started.

A very good test. I find that even TV can fit this requirement if it's the right kind of TV: A 60-minute episode of The Wire, for example, leaves my mind in a vastly more engaged state than the same amount of time spent watching a few minutes of one show, changing channels, watching a few minutes of another, channel surfing, and finally concluding there's nothing on.

Good point. It's not just what you're doing in your downtime, but how you're doing it. Anything that you can make challenging, relaxing and significantly different (from work) can actually leave you more able to focus, and therefore go towards increasing your productivity.

> Would you say HN is a mind-suck?

No, I've learned a lot through it.

> I'd still ask what's so wrong about being "unproductive" some of the time?

Nothing. But TV tends to make me unproductive for more of the time than I want.

What? That has nothing to do with TV. It has everything to do with your apparent lack of self control. If I spend 45 minutes watching TV or 45 minutes playing with myself, what's the difference? They're both time that I could spend doing other things.

edit: And I never just watch TV anyway, I'm always doing something else, like coding or reading HN or looking at code on GitHub.

> That has nothing to do with TV. It has everything to do with your apparent lack of self control.

I do have self-control, at least regarding TV. That's why I don't watch it at all. (I do have a television, it is gathering dust in a cupboard.)

> If I spend 45 minutes watching TV or 45 minutes playing with myself, what's the difference?

It is quite easy -- and millions of people do it -- to spend an entire evening watching TV. I dunno about you, but I have never spent 5 hours non-stop masturbating :-). So the one activity is self-limiting, but the other isn't.

I watch tons of TV and professionally have done well. I sincerely enjoy watching TV. In fact I'd like to watch more, not less.

The great thing about TV, unlike playing the guitar, is that you can do other things while watching TV. I can workout, write code, write docs, read HN, write blog entries, write emails, clean the house, cook dinner, put up crown molding, etc... And frankly, I enjoy watching TV more than playing a guitar.

More TV please.

It sounds like TV functions a lot like radio for you.

I'm pretty sure that the internet is a far bigger mind-suck than the TV. At any given moment there's probably nothing I want to watch on TV, but there's always something marginally interesting to do on the internet.

And besides, sitting in front of the TV at least feels like wasting time, and yet here I am on the internet while sitting at my work desk in front of my work computer looking like I'm working!

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. I'm sorry, but responsible TV users do exist. I watch maybe 5 hours per week, and I enjoy the down time. Sometimes it's nice to be entertained after a long day of entertaining users.

> Deniers will try to justify its value but honestly, when you look at the hole you choose to fill with TV, there are so many more productive you could be filling it with.

Like pontificating on Hacker News from a pulpit built of gross generalization? Not everyone who watches TV wastes frightening amounts of time on it. I watch relatively little, almost all of it ends up educating me in some way, and that which does not gives some highly desired chances to shrug off stress and laugh a little.

Indeed, and Clay Shirky actually wrote an entire book called Cognitive Surplus on how the shift away from TV will unlock oceans of time for people. I wrote about it some here: http://jseliger.com/2010/06/26/progress-extra-time-efficienc... .