I recently decided to make tiny, one-time adjustments in my life in the hopes of seeing incremental improvements in my daily routine that ultimately require very little ongoing effort on my part.

One of my habits is to play an unending loop of background movies or TV shows throughout my workday (I work from home most days). I’m usually queueing up episodes of SATC, Friends, Arrested Development or other such shows that I’ve already seen hundreds of times. If I’m not playing something old, I’m selecting new crap Netflix offerings that won’t pull too much of my focus away from work. I got stuck into several weeks of Murder She Wrote – though new episodes to me – the template plots offered a rhythm to watching.

I don’t know why I need this background action. Maybe I’m bored by one task at a time. Maybe it’s just lonely working from home with no office chatter. Regardless, the effort it would take to stop this bad habit seems painful.

Enter an easy, one-time adjustment that could solve my problem: radio.

While not a perfect replacement of the characters, images, and daily life sounds that provide the boob-tube, turning the radio on, specifically the CBC, does yield a warm, nostalgic feeling.

To enable this new positive change, I pulled the credit card out and bought a Model One Tivoli radio. It. Is. Beautiful.

Now, every morning, Richard will turn on the radio while he gets ready for work and he’ll leave it on to help rouse me out of bed. Once it’s on, I’ll let it stay on all day. With any luck (ok, and some effort), I’ll be rid of my TV watching habit and increase my productivity (read: ability to spend more time on Pinterest and Feedly) tenfold.

Wish me luck!