Our recent binge on OTT was the series “24”. Jack Bauer kept us awake for several nights as we watched episode after episode. I kept remembering what James Clear says in his famous book about will power – that you don’t have it. 🙂 Do read my earlier post – Willpower & Temptation to understand it better.
OTT Addiction
We got onto the OTT platforms only in May 2021. Quite late according to many friends. I just got the subscription to Disney Hotstar because we wanted to watch Masterchef Australia as it was being telecast. In India it’s shown around Aug-Sept but in Australia its telecast from May 1 onwards.
Slowly, I added Netflix, Prime was anyway available as I am a Amazon Prime member, Zee, Sony, Voot etc…. and for folks who have never watched TV serials (soaps) we just got hooked. Binge watched several web series – Suits, Chicago Fire, Fauda, SWAT, Jack Ryan, White Collar, The Family Man, Special Ops, Criminal Justice, Panchayat, etc etc etc.
Binge Watching
When I started writing this blogpost, I didn’t know binge watching was an addiction … I just used the word because that’s how it felt. The minute we would click on the next episode button, we were hooked. I just read this article that shows exactly why we binge watch – What happens to your brain when you binge-watch a TV series. Following are two quotes excerpted from the article that tells us precisely why we binge watch !!
Getting de-addicted
A year or so back, my friend Kiran had sent the following quote on Netflix and other OTT platforms –
The first thing we did was to not renew the Netflix subscription. It’s almost a year now and we don’t miss it. I didn’t renew any of the other subscriptions. Today we have just Amazon Prime and Disney Hotstar and life is good.
When we were on our long trip recently, we didn’t watch TV even for a few minutes. That’s how we were always. We would watch National Geographic or History channel for their amazing content, but maybe for 45 minutes or an hour every other day. The binge watching started with OTT.
Even having just the subscription to Disney Hotstar and Amazon Prime, we got hooked to “24” and Jack Bauer. Thankfully, I remembered the book Atomic Habits and the concept of Temptation Bundling. I decided to do my walking, blogging, reading etc before getting to watch any episode. That way we missed watching 24 for several days.
Binge watching is a thing and do watch out for the addiction it brings on … first get to whatever you need to do before switching on the TV. Just one episode won’t really work as we really don’t have much will power. Learn to create an environment where temptation is reduced :):).