"One More Episode" Always Costs More Than You Think

You tell yourself it is just one more episode, forty minutes, easy. But the next one starts with a cliffhanger, and somehow two hours later you are still on the couch, sleep-deprived and annoyed at yourself. The mistake is not watching — it is trusting an estimate your brain has been wrong about every single time before.

Set the real boundary before you press play, not after: pick the episode count in advance, or set a phone timer across the room. Your future self at 1 AM will not make a better decision than you can make right now.