Entertainment is ubiquitous. We need principles to limit the role it plays in our lives, else we are swallowed whole. Here are some of mine.
There are connections to RPGs and how to engage with the medium. Apply at your own risk.
The $1 dollar rule
Before buying an entertainment thing, ask “will I get one hour of enjoyment per person per dollar spent?” If yes, hell yeah, go for it. If no, reconsider.
So if Dark Souls, a single player video game costs $40, I have to ask: “Will I get 40 hours of enjoyment out of this?”
If Settlers of Catan costs $50 and I play with 2 or 3 other people on average, will I get 14 plays of the game? ($50 divided 3.5 players, 1 hour per playthrough).
Root? $60 / 4 players, 1.5 hours per playthrough. Will I get 10 plays?
One month of Netflix? $16 divided by 2 people in my household, so minimum 8 hours of TV a month to be considered “worth it”.
Knave 2nd Edition? $40, variable players depending on if I get it to the table. If not, could I see myself reading it for 40 hours?
Maybe $1 per person per hour isn’t right for you. Maybe it’s $3 per hour of your entertainment. As you like.
The 24 Hour Wait
Before an entertainment purchase, wait 24 hours. See if the impulse passes.
If you’re still thinking about it, chances are you actually desire it, not just in a fleeting sort of way.
The amount of money I’ve saved from Kickstarter’s velvet clutches just by holding back for even an hour proves this is valuable to me.
Stores make a lot off of nonessential knee-jerk grabs. It’s why the sugar bars and gumballs are by the checkout.
Clear your queue
Somewhere, somehow you have a list of entertainment that you have to get to. It’s hounding you for your time.
Downloaded audio, watch later lists, books unread on the shelf.
Clear the queue to unburden yourself. Either it clear with diligence or destruction.
Diligence: Go through the whole list. Don’t add a single thing to the list until you’ve done them all. Do this when you know finishing will be of value.
Destruction: Throw it all out, delete it all. Start fresh. Do this when the idea of finishing saps your determination.
My wife and I inherited a collection of vinyl and promised to not buy any more until we’ve listened to all of it. We’ve discovered some gems just by slowing down and giving time to each one.
My podcatcher was screaming ~40 downloaded podcast episodes of around an hour each. No more automatic downloads until I learn everything I want from there, while giving myself the option to delete anything that doesn’t appeal to me.
There were RPGs on my shelf I couldn’t imagine myself running every again. Cleared the queue by giving them away to loved ones. A friendly destruction option.
Access is better than ownership
Anyone who has mooched off of someone else’s Netflix account knows this. Having a big DVD collection is cool and retro but knowing someone who has a big DVD collection you can borrow from is even better.
It’s why your friends like that you’ve bought all the rulebooks for the next RPG you’re running. Makes it hassle-free on their part.
Some of those games I gave away to clear my shelves were ones I already had in PDF. Made it easy to get rid of.
Balance in and out
I bet the average person consumes content 100x or more of the hours they spend creating it. It’s like breathing in all the time. Creating is exhalation, all of the influences you have flowing from you in unexpected ways.
Balancing in and out can be more tactile than that: I set my gaming budget to be what I make off of selling my own games. Dollars in the bank for the stuff I produce means dollars for me to buy the next game or kickstarter. I’m incentivized to create, folks pay for what they find valuable, I get games.
A cycle of mutual benefit!
DREAMING DRAGONSLAYER 
24h wait? Yeah, solid advice. Procrastination really does have value sometimes.
Clearing the queue. Yes, I do that with stuff like podcasts, videos, blogs. Not so much with games: that queue is for me so hypothetical and in flux that in a sense there’s nothing to clear there.
$1 rule, here my personal assessment is very different. I can happily spend a dozen € for a couple of beers with some friends. And that’s just an extra, we can (and we do) just meet and chat for free. I’ve spent 120€ for a 3-hours concert. Is that too much? I don’t regret it, so, no, not in that particular instance. Would I pay a 1€ ticket for a walk in the woods? No, there’s plenty of woods that I can access for free. It’s very difficult to generalise. On top of that, there’s this consideration: I have consciously purchased games more to support the author than to actually “get entertainment” (yours are on this list, for example). I still do get something: I enjoy reading them, I get inspiration, and who knows, maybe I will play them someday. But sometimes rewarding an author’s efforts and talent is good enough reason for me. And if you put into the equation that most games, music, movies, books, are effectively accessible for free (through streaming, pwyw, piracy, borrowing), then patronage becomes very often the only compelling reason to spend money on them.
Solid post. I like these sorts of things that aren’t “d10 new types of kobold” but “Practically, this is how I exist in the context of someone who plays games.”
Great post. I’ve been limiting my RPG purchases quite a bit the last two years. No point in buying something that isn’t going to be played or at very minimum plundered for ideas.