You become bored with the show and miss out on the subtle nuances that make it so great.
It works the same way with other things too, like food.
When you pace yourself with TV shows, you give yourself a chance to think about what youve watched.
Youll have time to come up with your own theories about whats going to happen next.
Essentially, youre seeing things through for the sake of finishing shows and removing them from your queue.
Whatever the reason, do yourself a favor and just drop it.
You gave it a chance and now its time to move on.
Break out of that never-ending loop of cliffhanger-resolution-cliffhanger by finding a loophole in the shows storytelling.
Just look for a lull in the narrative arc in each episode.
It could be in the middle of the episode or somewhere around three-quarters of the way through.
Thats whyMichael Hsu at The Wall Street Journal recommendsyou turn off autoplay on all of your streaming services.
For Netflix:
Heading to theNetflix web sitein your online window.
Sign in and go to the Your Account page.
Find the Playback controls link in the My Profile section and click it.
Under Preferences, uncheck the box next to Play next episode automatically.
For Hulu:
Heading to theHulu web sitein your internet tool.
Sign in and choose a show and episode to watch.
Once it begins to play, mouse over the video and smack the gear icon.
Find the auto play section and set it to off.
For Amazon Video:
Heading to theAmazon Video web sitein your internet tool.
Sign in and go to options.
Under the Player Preferences section youll be able to switch autoplay to off.
Turning off autoplay gives you a natural break where there wasnt one before.
Suddenly its obvious that yourechoosingto binge-watch instead of just allowing it to happen.
That moment is your chance to think of the other things you might want or need to do.
Set an Alarm
Stopping your binge-watching habit doesnt have to mean no TV at all.
You just have to regulate how much time you spend in front of the screen.
When the alarm goes off, thats it, youre done!
Youll get more time tomorrow.
Make Yourself Earn Each Episode
Sometimes the struggle is just too great.
Youll feel proud of your accomplishments and wont turn into a TV zombie by the end of the night.
Its just enough to let you sleep at night knowing you arent a total couch potato.
Whenever your favorite character appears, instead of doing a shot, do jumping jacks for one minute.
Or every time a character says one of their tag lines, do 10 pushups.
Illustration by Fruzsina Kuhari.
