Anime/Manga The Dreaded Backlog

If you're anything like me, you have a plan to watch list that likely contains more hours of weeb material than you have left in your lifespan. How bad is your backlog and how do you choose what to watch from it, or between series in your backlog and interesting new stuff just coming out?

According to MAL, I have 172 series on my plan to watch list so I would say the backlog is quite extensive :D Even with the backlog though, sometimes I'll look through it for the next series to watch and still see nothing that captures my eye depending on the mood. It feels random in terms of which series I choose to watch next but generally I'll try switch between genres - e.g. might watch shounen then move onto slice of life then move onto sports, to keep everything fresh. I doubt that I will ever get through all of the backlog though as some series I just put in there as a 'might be fun', but I feel like I wouldn't be able to watch all of it.

On Anilist (another site similar to MAL) I have 153 anime under "plan to watch." It used to have over 250 shows, but I trimmed out anything that doesn't interest me anymore. When I want to watch something, I just filter the plan to watch list by genre and choose something that looks interesting. Due to how long my plan to watch list is, I avoid currently airing series altogether. The only exception being new seasons to series I already like. Otherwise I keep my attention on the backlog.

I keep a mental backlog and it surprisingly isn't that long, it's only a few anime at most. I actually don't have any series under "plan to watch" on MAL. I consistently change my mind on what I plan to view next and thus don't think I would benefit much from creating an extensive watch list.

On MAL, my PTW list is 811 series long.

And that's just of the stuff I've bothered adding to MAL instead of only to my queues on other platforms I watch anime on. I think most of my queues on platforms are around 100 series long.