If you live close enough to a Netflix mailing hub, it’s possible to get on the maximal schedule:
- Enjoy a DVD over the weekend
- Mail it back on Monday
- Tusday, Netflix gets it, ships a new one
- Which you get (and watch) on Wednesday
- Return in Thursday mail
- Friday, Netflix gets it, ships a new one
- repeat
This can scale up to multiple discs at a time, but at a time management level, it starts to suck. In particular, you get very little done Wednesday evenings. If you miss either mailing deadline, you fall back to 1 DVD for that week.
A better system is to reward yourself with some movie time after meeting a milestone. That way, as long as your task remains uncompleted, you’re racking up a $15 (or whatever) a month penalty for your own sloth. It seems like most people I know who have Netflix subscriptions tend to slip into a slow pattern anyway–in the mailing room I see the same mailer sitting there for weeks at a time–so why not harness human nature for motivation purposes?
More collected Geek Thoughts at http://geekthoughts.info.