There are so many books you would like to read and movies you’d like to watch, and they keep producing them, so there’s absolutely no chance you’ll read and watch everything that interests you before you die. No chance.
But there is a way to save time on watching. Most modern players can increase playback speed, and unlike older models, which made voice sound cartoonishly funny or just turned off sound altogether, modern machines increase the tempo without increasing the pitch, which makes almost no noticeable distortion to the dialogues. I watch movies on my Playstation 3. It was speed up playback feature built-in. Just press right arrow on the gamepad while playing a video and it will be played 50% faster, which is indicated by 1.5 multiplier in the left bottom corner. As you can see, the dialogues are quite clear and the movements aren’t that fuzzy at all. It will take quite some time for an unaware person to notice that the playback speed is up, that’s why this trick is often used in movies broadcasting to squeeze in longer commercial breaks in the same time frame. For you, 1.5 speed multiplier means you’ll save half a hour by spending only 60 minutes to watch a 90-minutes long movie, or you can watch 3 episodes of your favourite show in the time frame of 2. No artistic value loss even for classic films, let alone modern Hollywood productions which mostly lack it in the first place. Sped up playback is also of great help when you realise the rented movie is a complete disgrace after mere 20 minutes into the film, but it is painful to turn it off right now cause you paid for it. On the other hand, it is painful to lose more time on this junk. Accelerating playback may be a good compromise between greed and pity. If you’re using a computer to watch movies, most popular players have playback speed control. Of the many free software, the one worth mentioning is VLC Player, mostly because it is available for all major platforms. You can add speed control buttons to the user interface. Feel free to speed up to 50%, most movies are totally watcheable at this speed. The same applies to audio books. Unfortunately, few audiobook players support speed control, but you can always speed them up in an audio editor. Audacity is the best free audio editor, and it has a special plugin built in, which increases tempo without increasing the pitch. If the audiobook is divided into many files, you may use chain option to batch process them. So, try speeding up playback. If you can’t prevent wanted media from piling up, you could at least spend less time on it.