When TV went Main Street USA in the mid-1960’s, millions of families changed their daily routine. Instead of reading or chatting it up with family, friends and neighbors, almost overnight, millions instead sat in front of their TV for hours at a time.
Adding fuel to the fire, in the late 1990’s our TV addiction was augmented by a new addiction – the Internet.
Thanks in large part to the success of Internet giant YouTube and Netflix, millions today have a brand new addiction – video streaming.
What’s the point?
According to my Rich Habits Research, 96% of those who rise up from poverty or the middle-class to become wealthy, all share one thing in common – they read to learn 30 minutes or more each day. Self-made millionaires are habitual readers and their daily reading habit leaves them with less time for time-wasting habits, such as video streaming.
While these self-made millionaires continue to learn, grow and build wealth, the rest of society falls behind, content with streaming videos.
If you’ve ever watched any of those man on the street interviews, where the interviewer asks young people about facts everyone should know, you understand what I’m saying – the YouTube generation does not have a firm grasp on everyday facts. They lack fundamental knowledge because they are not reading anymore. And they are not reading anymore because they are spending what free time they do have streaming videos.
Society’s recent video-streaming habit/addiction has replaced reading and in the process, learning. This is unfortunate because reading to learn leads to increased knowledge, which enables you to grow. Only by growing in knowledge is success possible. And this video-watching habit prevents you from growing.
In fact, video-watching actually dumbs you down.
What’s the solution?
The first part of the solution is to acknowledge that you may have a video addiction problem.
The second part of the solution is to wean yourself from this time-wasting, video-streaming habit and incrementally replace it with the reading habit.
Example: I will watch fifteen minutes less video each day and replace that with fifteen minutes of reading to learn.
This gets the new habit started. Remember, forging any new habit is made much easier when you baby-step your way into it.
