How Much You Could Have Earned While You Watched Game of Thrones

If you watch your favorite TV shows week to week it’s easy to lose sight of the actual amount of time you’re spending in front of the TV with your favorite characters. As a result, taking a look at the total runtimes of some of the most binge-able TV shows can be a bit unsettling. For example, for Game of Thrones lovers that have watched the entire series, you’ve devoted a total of 3 days and 16 minutes to Westeros. It’s hard not to wonder what you could have been doing or accomplishing with all of that time.

Thankfully a new study has the answers for us. The study combines two popular activities today, binge-watching and side hustles, to determine how much you could have potentially earned if you’d been working on a side hustle instead of watching popular TV dramas and sitcoms. And the results are a little, shall we say, depressing…

Balance is important, so by no means should you cut TV out of your life completely, but there is merit in the study’s findings. Sticking with Game of Thrones, the average missed earnings for the various side hustles were about $1,000.

The side hustle topping the list of potential earnings was freelance writing. Spending the 3+ days working on freelance writing jobs rather than watching Game of Thrones could have added nearly $1,700 to your bank account. And the least lucrative side hustle? Waiting tables would have resulted in less than $500 in earnings, so your time honestly may have been better spent with the people of Westeros.

Surprisingly, bartending and waiting tables were the two least lucrative side hustles across the board despite how common they are. In addition to freelance writing, some of the other most lucrative side hustles were teaching fitness classes, tutoring, and mystery shopping. Freelance writing presents a great earnings opportunity because it’s something you can totally do while binge-watching. Working on a few freelance writing jobs while bingeing Game of Thrones or The Office truly sounds like the best of both worlds.

Some of the other long runtime shows in the study with somewhat unsettling results were Grey’s Anatomy, Law & Order, The Walking Dead, The Big Bang Theory, and The Simpsons. If you’re a fan and longtime watcher of these shows, you may want to take a look at what you missed out on as a result of your binging.