Don't have any self-control? I might be different than most but as I'm at my desk coding and surfing 10 hours a day the last thing I want to do fsck with a phone while I'm watching a movie. That's escape time.
In short, I decided I don't want to and therefore don't, simple as that.
Also, productivity pundits will recommend checking mail/news once or twice a day max. Any more is a waste of time.
There seems to be some irony here. Namely that "escape time" is staring at another screen.
Nothing personal here - what you do with your time and how you unwind is entirely up to you, I just thought it was worth noting this isn't entirely different physically than sitting at a desk, starting at your computer screen.
Although the physical position is the same (sitting) and the object of focus is the same in a general sense (a screen), the two activities are very different.
Watching a movie can be much like reading a book: a concerted focus on a long story. In contrast, reading Reddit on your smartphone might be more like browsing the funnies in the newspaper.
As an analog analog, you wouldn't say that reading Dostoyevsky and reading Zits are very similar activities, despite that both involve sitting and staring at paper.
He mentioned watching a movie, so that's what I replied with. Escape time can be a lot of different things, but the common thread is the "escape" (from work and obligations) part.
In short, I decided I don't want to and therefore don't, simple as that.
Also, productivity pundits will recommend checking mail/news once or twice a day max. Any more is a waste of time.