Schedule your screen time

Choose when and what to watch to make screen time more fulfilling

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
tip is to schedule your TV time. Screen Time is
more fun and memorable when it is chosen and fits
into your evening like a puzzle piece, rather than taking
over the entire time. So I've been trying to spend

(00:35):
my evening hours better, and over the past few months
I've been sharing lots of suggestions with people.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
About how to do that. A key part is to
set an evening intention, something that takes thirty to sixty
minutes and that you know you would enjoy. When people
hear that suggestion, many assume that setting an evening intention
is about spending life us time on screens, and it

(01:02):
certainly can be, but your intention can be screen time.
The key is that it is chosen and you have
thought about how to fit it into your evening. For instance,
one item on my Winter fund list this year is
to watch some basketball games. I get busy and sometimes

(01:22):
forget it is basketball season until the season is almost over,
So as part of planning my weeks, I have looked
up the Philadelphia seventy six ers schedule and seen when
they have games on nights where I don't have something
else to do, watching part of the game, maybe from

(01:43):
seven thirty to eight thirty or so before I need
to do the bedtime routine can be my evening intention.
As this episode is first airing, lots of people will
be watching the Winter Olympics. This is definitely something special
that can be an evening intention. In particular, you could
tape the coverage, then figure out which particular sports you

(02:05):
most want to watch, and watch those segments during whatever
window you have. I know that for a lot of people,
watching YouTube videos has replaced watching old fashioned television. With that,
I still think we are best off choosing what we
will watch with intention. Maybe you see that one of
your favorite creators has a new video posted. You could

(02:29):
save that for the evening and watch that as your
evening intention. Queue it up when you know you will
have time, maybe while your kids are watching a different
video or after they go to bed. Pay full attention
to it rather than multitasking, and when it is done,
get off the screens and go do your next thing.

(02:53):
By scheduling screen time, we take charge of this time.
We choose how it fits into our our evenings. Rather
than having it fill the whole evening unintentionally. We can
even watch better things. If you and your spouse want
to watch a two hour movie on a weekday, you could.
You just need to get the kids in bed on

(03:14):
time and have it queued up and ready to go.
But that would make for a much more entertaining and
memorable evening than watching random YouTube shorts because nobody put
any thought into it. There is a lot of great
movie and television entertainment out there. Best to actually enjoy
what we want to enjoy, rather than feeling like we've

(03:37):
just wasted time in the meantime. This is Laura. Thanks
for listening, and here's to making the most of our time.
Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas,

(03:59):
or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura
vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app,
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