A Genuine Article

Watching TV While I Work

By Marc Carson · Thursday February 6, 2014

[Above: Qantas 747-400 photo by Sergey Kustov]

Recently I read illustrator Andy Fish’s account of his daily routine and learned that he likes to watch horror films, Japanese films, or action movies while he pencils, paints, or inks for his clients’ projects. Far from being a lazy slacker, Andy is a hard worker, values getting work done on time, and seems to have a fantastic reputation.

I think a lot of successful freelancers are like Andy—they like to turn on some sort of background noise, such as music, sound effects, a movie, or a TV show while they do professional-level work. Thinking about this lately, I decided to write up a bit about my own experience watching TV shows and movies while I build websites.

The key discovery for me was that putting something on in the background seems to help me focus on my work and get things done. I felt a tinge of guilt about it at first—TV shows don’t exactly have a reputation as productivity enhancers, but perhaps they should.

This probably has something to do with my personality. Dr. Naomi Quenk, a psychologist, writes about people like me, “Introverted Intuitive types need space and a low-pressure environment to regain their dominant Intuition and auxiliary Thinking or Feeling function.”

If you are also an intuitive introvert (according to the Meyers-Briggs type indicator test), you might find that the comfort of a familiar TV show will lower the pressure in your environment and allow you to regain control of the situation. And for all I know, those with personalities different from my own may have other reasons to watch, or not watch, TV or movies while they work.

Anyway, in my experience this does help me get things done, but not just any title will work. Usually the show has to be pretty familiar to me (I think to avoid wasting time trying to catch up with the plot and characters), and there are some other disqualifiers. For example, while I like some foreign movies, it’s nearly impossible to get anything meaningful done when you have to watch a show with subtitles.

How I Decide What to Watch

It seems to help most if it the film or TV show is pretty familiar and (therefore?) inconsequential to me. If I’ve seen it before and am comfortable with the premise, characters, and genre already, it probably won’t interfere with my work at all. By interfere, I mean I won’t be constantly glued to it for some reason or another.

There are also some characteristics that improve my work output (again, probably by throttling down the overall pressure levels). It seems to help if I’m more impressed by the setting, atmosphere, character, or character ensemble than I am by the plot. There are some truly awful plots out there, but if your favorite character is wandering through them, it may be enough that the writer brings out the best bits of their personality, or that the episode is set in some location you find appealing or comfortable.

Finally there’s the element of mood. If I sympathize with the general mood, or if I’m ready to benefit from a feeling of, for example, “the antihero wins even though he’s imperfect and not everything goes according to plan”, I may get a lift from that.

I was a film major at university, so I learned early on that there is an entire spectrum of films that runs from “makes me feel good” to “throws my whole day, maybe even week, out of balance”. I have watched enough of the latter to learn that I should be careful about watching things that can reinforce a negative mood change. For example, you couldn’t pay me to watch This Sporting Life while working on a client project, Criterion Collection or no. Kitchen sink dramas are right out. And while I enjoy crime dramas of some kinds, I also can’t stand shows like Cold Case that take themselves too seriously and present a world that is constantly tinted blue. These shows go overboard with their didactic approach, stumbling over themselves to convince viewers that things are going wrong all over the nation/world/whatever, and that even when things are fixed, they’re not fixed! That’s…nice, but no thanks, can’t handle the drama right now.

I know that something’s really working for me when I don’t pay much attention to the show itself, and I find myself getting things done. If I start rewinding from time to time to catch moments that I missed while working, or if I feel my mood changing toward pessimism or doubt even by a tiny amount, I generally go looking for something else to watch. I might be completely fine watching those kinds of things away from work, but while I’m at work, my requirements are pretty strict when I have an expectation of accomplishing things.

At least, that’s what I’m finding out by writing about it here. This was all completely subconscious for me until now. After writing all this, I feel like I could use some TV in the background.

By the way, I think the principles here probably apply to music, sound effects, and other external stimuli, too.

What do you like to watch while you work? Or can you stand to watch anything at all?