First: I very much suffer from this myself. If you're not already familiar with the Japanese word
Tsundoku, you may find that of interest as well:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsundoku>
(I'm afraid I've just added to your reading pile...)
To the extent I have addressed this problem with some level of satisfaction if not success in clearing the lists:
- Our time for content is limited. Even for the maximally passive form of television, U.S. households peaked at just under nine hours per day (8h55m, in 2009-2010: <https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/when-...>). For books, you'll be lucky to find an hour a day, and quite possibly far less.
- Think about why you want to read something, and how it might benefit you. Much content, especially news and gossip, has a very short shelf life. For news, getting 5--10 minutes of headlines once or twice a day is almost certainly sufficient. I've all but entirely curtailed what was previously a heavy news-radio habit, though podcasts have substituted for much of that. Philosophy podcasts hit a sweet spot of long shelf life, topical relevance by way of illuminating current events, whilst not wallowing excessively in current-news-cycle topics. Otherwise, entertainment, learning new skills, awareness of the world, topics of mutual group interest (family, work, friends, intellectual circles) might all be motivators.
- Keeping tabs on what you read, watch, and/or listen to and how valuable it seems to you after the fact can be useful. Some sort of media diary (perhaps part of a bullet, OrgMode, or Obsidian journal, Zettelkasten, etc.) might be useful.
- I've come up with a very informal concept I call BOTI (best of the interval), which is based on a round-robin / circular file concept. Roughly, I note the top ten or so items I've read within the past week / month / year, and bubble the best of a shorter interval to the next longer one. Increasingly I'm steering toward longer periods and shorter lists, but those tend to be pretty solid.
- Topic-of-interest + foreign language is often a useful value-multiplier, if you happen to be learning (or brushing up on) a foreign language. E.g., foreign-language news gives more utility than mother-tongue news, all else being equal.
- A group which is addressing material together can be a great motivation: a book club, research group, class, family reading time, etc. This isn't always possible, but it's one way to socially create and sustain interest.
- An awful lot of content which looks like it might be interesting, often based on headline or title, grievously under-delivers. Titles which are simultaneously vague and grandiose can almost certainly be ignored. "This Changes Everything" is my canonical example (See: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35278745>). Likewise any clickbaity title hacks --- several are mentioned though you'll need to scroll about halfway through this article to find them: <https://venngage.com/blog/7-reasons-why-clicking-this-title-...>).
- In the case of information overload, the most useful thing to have is a cheap, no-regrets, low-cognition discard function. Unbiased would be a nice feature to have as well. Randomly striking items from your list is probably an effective method. The inverse of that is treating your list(s) as a suggestion pool from which you randomly select an item when you need something to read.
- Noting why you added something to a list may help in deciding why you decide to discard it. "I was bored" or "it looked like it might be interesting" aren't high-salience recommendation mechanisms. (Nor is "it popped up in my socials feed".) Recommendations from friends, critics, awards bodies, etc., may be more reliable. Good authors / directors / screenwriters, combined with topics / subjects of interest, seem to be most useful to me.
- Reading and listening are different, but often if you want to plough through material, finding an audio version can be useful to steamroll through. Libraries, Librivox, and services for the disabled may offer free audio books. Podcasts and AI text-to-speech can also be of use.
- For cinema, I'd suggest keeping a list of items you really want to watch, and then consulting that when you're picking items (public library, streaming services, etc.). It's quite helpful to know what you're looking for before you hit the menu or displays of available offerings.
- You don't have to finish everything you start. If it's clear that attention, entertainment, education, or whatever else isn't being served, drop with no regrets. It's your life and time, not the book's / film's / series's / whatever's.
Finally, Mortimer Adler's How To Read a Book remains an excellent guide to reading, the different levels it operates at, how to cultivate a good practice, and a starter list of excellent books through the ages. And I'm only about halfway through it....