What’s your ideal TV intake?

Too little can be as bad as too much when it comes to creativity.

I once heard a life coach on a podcast talk about a healthy attitude toward food, advising that you should know exactly the amount that will make you feel comfortably satiated but not overly full. With that level of awareness, you’re noticing and enjoying the food you eat. Her specific example of enough food to start registering that sated feeling was two fried eggs, with maybe a couple of bites still left on the plate.

I think it’s helpful to look similarly at the content and art we take in. Anne Bogel, host of the What Should I Read Next? podcast, recently talked about how she read too many books last year. Plenty of people would like to be able to read more, and it sounds funny to say, “I read too much.” But as Bogel talked about on her podcast, she read 300 books in a year not because she had that goal in mind, but as a survival mechanism of sorts as she dealt with the grief of losing her dad.

Comforting TV shows have been my survival mechanism during stressful and sad times of life, and I know that there were years and seasons where I watched way, way too much TV. Mindlessly taking in episode after episode helped me survive from day to day, but it wasn’t good for my creativity or long-term wellbeing.

But as I’ve written about before, stopping TV altogether was another extreme that was just as detrimental for my creativity. Without enough TV in my life, I lose an important opportunity to refill the creative well and take in new stories that I’m excited about.

I’ve been trying to drill in more and more to how I respond to specific art and content mediums and why I need to take in stories in those specific ways. I love to read, but books on their own aren’t enough, and sometimes I still get caught up in the numbers game of trying to finish a book just to say I read it. I love finding a great TV show, but mindlessly binge-watching takes a toll on my creative energy. Over and over, it’s about finding the right amount of time to invest in the stories I need to take in.

I’m discovering that there are three main reasons that I return to TV over and over when the creative well threatens to run dry:

1.     A great (or simply enjoyable) TV show reminds me that stories have power and that reminder always makes me want to create.

2.     NBC’s The Office changed the landscape forever by making completely ordinary people’s lives a compelling TV event. I love seeing people from all walks of life glamorized onscreen because it reminds me that we each have that potential. Everyone is living a compelling life if you tell his or her story in the right way.

3.     Last but not least, the right amount of TV is a mental break, a 30-minute or hour-long off switch from my own life that lets me be distracted by other people’s stories for a while and come back refreshed.

For people who need a rapid-fire, hilarious sitcom:

Great News (currently streaming on Netflix) only ran for two seasons before getting axed by NBC, and while I was sad at the time that Netflix or another streaming service didn’t pick it up, there is something special about the fact that this sweet, weird, underrated little show only had 23 episodes. Co-executive-produced by Tina Fey, this workplace comedy has that 30 Rock quirkiness but treats its ensemble cast of characters more gently – while never letting up on hilarious throwaway one-liners.

Katie (Briga Heelan) is an ambitious young TV news producer dealing with a big problem at work: Her mom, Carol, is interning at the station. Great News could have been a perfectly fine mother-daughter comedy, but it’s the ensemble cast that makes it special. (Hear me out: Nicole Richie.) It’s hard to create this kind of rapport from the very beginning of the show, and the B stories and rapid-fire dialogue interwoven through Katie and Carol’s high jinks make me wistful for what might have been if Great News had continued. Most sitcoms take a couple of seasons to get this good.   

For anyone else (like me) who struggles with low energy and anxiety and knows what needs to change:

The idea of “quitting sugar” seems insurmountable when it’s an ingredient in so many prepared foods and a reliable, inexpensive, comforting treat. But I Quit Sugar author Sarah Wilson (also known for her anxiety memoir, First, We Make the Beast Beautiful) makes this challenge both accessible and nourishing with her two main steps for quitting sugar: 1) Ease yourself in instead of trying to immediately deprive yourself of all sweet things and 2) add healthy, delicious fat to your meals so you stay full.

Sugar is possibly our society’s sneakiest addiction because it seems so innocent. But if you’re someone like me who knows that not eating sugar = feeling good and eating sugar = feeling bad (read: continual low energy, erratic blood sugar, fluttery heart, exhaustion at the end of the day, severe anxiety and mood swings), then you might be ready for this book. I love Wilson’s kind and literally nourishing approach that’s all about crowding sugar out of your life by filling up on real meals and homemade treats.