A New Approach to Watchlists and "My Stuff"

Up top in the headline, the two labels used by Apple TV, Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, Peacock et al to group movies and shows I want to watch.

These lists have gotten way out of control: last night I counted over 75 titles between all of them.

Whenever I want to find something to watch I end up clicking through all of them, trying to find one that fits my head space at the moment.

Not to mention how annoying all the sites are to use: when you click on a title to see what it's about and then want to continue scrolling instead of returning you to where you were, instead the site returns you to the very beginning over and over again so you have to go through all the titles up to where you were again and again and again.

It's tedious, and my thumb gets tired scrolling around sideways and up and down and back and forth with Apple TV's crummy remote.

Time for a new approach.

Long story short: From now on I'm gonna watch the first 5-10 minutes of each title in my lists: if it's good, I'm set and I'll get my popcorn and settle in with my kitty for the duration.

If it's not I'll delete it and move on to the next one.

On average, about 1 in 5-10 movies in my lists turns out to be good; about one in 20 that I've never heard of — usually foreign — knocks my socks off.

With this tactic I expect to winnow my on tap titles down to single digits in the next couple weeks.