1. 1984 by George Orwell
2. Born to Run by Christopher Mcdougall
3. The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
4. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
5. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
6. The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry
7. Ishmael by Daniel Quinn
8. The Last Lion by William Manchester
9. Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
10. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
11. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
12. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
13. The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
14. The World Without Us by Alan Weisman
15. Why We Do What We Do by Edward Deci

Feel free to comment with your own list. I’m always looking for recommendations.

Why? Several reasons:

• I wasn’t learning much from television. The news seemed to be mostly sensationalist accounts and fear based marketing efforts. I couldn’t find the helpfulness in news spots like ‘Killer on the Loose’ when the likelihood of me crossing paths with this particular killer was less that dying in a car accident. As for situational comedies and dramas, it seemed like the vast majority of programming was repeating the same basic worn out plots. I didn’t see a need to watch a reality show when I could just step out my door.
• Research shows that the average state of mind when watching television is depression. Watching TV is a way to zone out and depress out minds. Some find the act of depressing to be relaxing (e.g., drinking alcohol). This is my only life and I don’t want to spend significant portions of my day zoning out – I want to zone in.
• There are better forms of recreation and many other delivery channels for news. I now read at night to relax. In fact, I’ve read about 40 books over the last six months, which is more than I have read over the six prior years. News is readily available online, and I can pick and choose what I read rather than having to sit through that ‘Killer on the Loose’ spot to learn about what is happening with immigration reform.

As for the topic of this blog post, today I found a signal in the television noise. The new gym I joined has nine big flat screen TV mounted at the front of the cardio area, which I find to be entirely distracting from my workout routine. My plan is to wear a baseball cap with the brim tilted down to block my view in the future. However, today I was sucked into a story and found something useful. It certainly wasn’t ground breaking, as I have already forgotten what it was that I learned. My point is that there are often signals in the noise of our daily lives, and our challenge is to turn down the noise enough so that we pick up these signals. Cutting out TV was one of my ways to turn down the noise in my life.