How to actually find something to watch
Most evenings the problem is not that there is nothing on. It is that there are forty thousand things on and no way to choose between them. Here is a method that takes about five minutes and reliably ends with something playing.
1. Decide the shape before the title
Do not open an app and start scrolling. Decide three things first: how long you have, whether you want something that asks for attention or something that does not, and whether you are watching alone or with somebody. A ninety-minute film and a six-episode series are completely different commitments, and picking the shape first cuts the list by about ninety per cent.
2. Use the guide, not the home screen
Every app's home screen is trying to push what it wants you to watch, which is usually the thing it spent the most money on. A TV guide, sorted by what is on now, is a much shorter list and it is not trying to sell you anything. If you have an EPG, start there.
The two-minute rule
Give a thing two minutes. Not ten. If nothing has happened that makes you want a third minute, stop it and move on without guilt — you are not obliged to finish anything you are not being paid to watch.
3. Keep a list of three
The single biggest improvement you can make is to stop choosing at the moment you want to watch something. Keep a note on your phone with three things on it. When somebody mentions a film, it goes on the list. When you sit down, you are picking from three rather than from everything, and the decision takes seconds.
4. Watch the thing that is leaving
Services rotate their libraries every month. If something has been on your list for a while and it is about to leave, that is the one to watch tonight. It is the only deadline in the whole business and it is surprisingly effective.
5. Sport is the exception
None of this applies to live sport, where the whole point is that it is happening now and you cannot pause it without somebody texting you the score. Check the fixtures at the start of the week, not at kick-off, and make sure whatever you are watching on can actually carry the channel before the match starts rather than during it.
Half the evenings that end in nothing being watched end that way because of buffering, a login that expired, or an app that needed updating. Sort that out on a Tuesday afternoon, not ten minutes before something starts.
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