As salaam alaykum, Peace be upon you.

Recently I’ve been going through the archives of the muslim life hacker podcast and checking out some of their earliest episodes :D. Today I spent some time listening to episode number 42 the podcast on TV whilst getting the baby ready for a bath.

Maheen, one of the hosts of Muslim life hackers, shared some really great tips for cutting tv out of your life, and some of the downsides to the way tv can consume our daily lives. She worked out that if you watched just 3 and a half hours of television a day, in a year you would have spent two months of your life glued to the box.

She also points out how negative some of the viewing options can be, and the effect it can have on your cognitive constructs, and how we think about the world. Even a programme like the news can be very one sided.

One of my takeaways is that, when I’m watching tv, I’m literally eating up m time. That’s time I could use to be catching up on sleep; something any new mum can tell you is pretty precious, playing with my baby, trying out a new recipe, taking a walk, working on a new knitting pattern, organising my home, bettering myself, furthering my education, and countless other projects or activities spring to mind.

In order to cut down on TV Maheen suggests; giving yourself a reality check and doing the math to work out how many hours of your life you are wasting on tv, exploring the reasons you’re watching tv- are you procrastinating? do you use tv to unwind?, and also finding a tv replacement activity.

The episode really resonated with me, it made a lot  of sense, and it was really worth the listen. I’ve really been wanting to get more barakah/ blessing, and use out of the  free time that I have. Cutting out TV seems like a really good place to start. So I am taking up the challenge!

30 days. No TV. Day 1 starts now!

I unsubscribed from my beloved Viki -my one stop place for tuning in to Korean dramas. Next up on my list is cancelling my profile on our family netflix account. I’ve also set about unsubscribing from the youtube channels that are more about entertaining me, than necessarily benefiting or teach me anything.

I hope to chronicle this challenge here on my blog, so stay tuned.

In’sha’Allah, I’ll come out of the next 30 days excited to carry on NOT watching tv.

Let me know if you decide to take up the challenge too. I’m sure I could use the moral support, and we could share our challenges and triumphs.

You can get the podcast on iTunes, google play or windows. Or got to the muslim life hacker website and listen to episodes from season 3 on the player.

Take care,

Have a lovely day,

Azeezat