Unjustly Demonizing Netflix: Why People Do It

I totally get it. We live in the western world, where success, money, fame, and work are what truly matters in life. And who am I to argue against that? Exactly: Just some random Serbian writing his blog in three languages because he can’t decide on one. 

Meet the Devil

We have now reached a point where people who like watching TV series or movies are seen as unproductive, lazy, and unworthy of their salary, with a bunch of state-of-the-art shaming coming their way.

Guess who’s seen as the devil in disguise and the entertainment industry’s biggest proponent. You bet: it’s Netflix!

This horrible overlord of amusement and fun that has hijacked our lives and brains that would otherwise be tirelessly working and creating value. “Oh, if it only weren’t for Netflix, I could’ve been the next president,” this is how somebody who’s always making excuses sounds. 

Let me get this straight: You’re saying that the sheer existence of a streaming service and your conscious, intentional subscription to it is preventing you from doing or achieving something? You don’t say! 

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for hard and smart work and getting stuff done. However, as with many things, there’s a silver lining here. 

This streaming service’s customers have been criticized into silence just for having some leisure time that doesn’t include self-improvement every single second of our existence. Guess what! You’re allowed to entertain yourself and not work your ass off every day all day long. 

Let’s stop philosophizing: I’ll tell you how I use Netflix to boost my productivity. Yep! You read that sentence correctly: using Netflix to boost my productivity. Really?

Reward Me, Master Netflix

I work between 6 and 10 hours every day from home. I have just recently put on my freelancer hat, allowing me to be a charging rhinoceros who is completing all his tasks on time. Actually, before time.

This still doesn’t mean that I dedicate whole days to work. Actually, every two hours or so, I sit down to watch a Netflix episode of Better Call Saul, Freud, or Ozark. It’s a small but effective reward system that I’ve created.

Every time I hit a milestone, like translating a worthwhile project, closing a big deal, or completing a demanding task, I treat myself by watching some cool show. 

Somebody might say: “Hey, Stefan, you’re so freaking dumb. Imagine what you could’ve done if you spent all those hours on your work!” Although this sounds disturbingly true, I don’t think that’s the case.

There’s something that people often call “the brain budget.”

Simply put, it means that we have limited capacity in our brains and that it gets spent after some time during the day, leaving us to just quit what we’re doing and focus our attention ― or what’s left of it ― on the things that are made to amuse us and put our brains on autopilot. Turns out that’s a good thing.

Inspire Me, Master Netflix

There is a bunch of educational, funny, and just plain awesome content on Netflix. For somebody growing up in a poor developing country with pretty deficient publicly available content, I’ve come to enjoy Netflix as a place to inspire me, and give me ideas about what I could be thinking or doing next in my life.

Obviously, this doesn’t mean that I’m going to turn into a drug lord (wink-wink).

However, ingesting creative and pure masterpieces seems like a good place to start if you’re a knowledge worker or content creator of any kind. 

For example, if you haven’t noticed, I write a blog regularly and it really gets my juices flowing when I watch some outstanding show or movie. It helps ramp up my creativity and inspiration. It works every single time. Give it a try!

Fill My Leisure Time, Master Netflix

Because why the heck not. 

If you’re one of those people who yield to pressure more quickly than a banana succumbs to a raging monkey on the tree, then you should really practice your excuse-avoiding skills.

People will shame you to death for doing stuff they don’t deem productive, so you really need to nurture your resilience by starting a regular meditation practice, working out, and building your overall buoyancy (now, that’s what I call a fancy word for keeping your head above the water).

Don’t beat yourself up if you occasionally enjoy watching entertaining content and fill your free time with movies and TV shows. It’s okay if you think it’s okay, which it is.

• 
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