The decision

You've got the argument and the method. What's left is to decide, and I'd like the decision to fit in one sentence.

Autoplay is off. I decide the number before the first episode, and I stop at the credits.

Three parts.

The first is the setting. Every service, every device, tonight. The countdown gone, the credits back, the stop restored as the default.

The second is the number. Said before the first episode. The stop at the last credits. The cliff test when the door opens.

The third is the evening. An end time, worked back from the alarm. The last credits as the start of the ending. Something after that isn't a screen.

There's a form of planning that helps with rules like this, and it's been tested many times. Peter Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran reviewed ninety-four studies of it in 2006. You decide in advance what you'll do and when, in the form "when this happens, I'll do that", and people who plan that way follow through much more often than people who only hold the intention. So write three.

When I sit down to watch something, I'll say how many episodes before I press play.

When the credits of the last one roll and I want to know what happens, I'll ask whether I can find out tomorrow, and stand up.

When the screen goes off, I'll put the kettle on and read for ten minutes before bed.

What to expect. This is my expectation and not a finding. The first night with autoplay off, the credits will roll and the menu will appear and you'll feel a small absence where the countdown was, and you'll sit for a moment and then decide, and most nights the decision will be bed, and it'll be quarter past ten, and it'll feel early. The cliff will be loud for the first week. You'll stand up during it, and the standing up will feel like leaving a room mid-sentence. By the second week you'll have found out, six times, that the door was still there in the morning and that you'd spent the day pleasantly wondering, and the cliff will start to feel like part of the show rather than an emergency. The mornings will change first and most. You'll notice it around the third week, a Tuesday that isn't flat. And somewhere in the first month you'll finish the series, on a night you chose, at a time you could go to bed on, and you'll remember the ending, which you haven't done with a series in years.