As the author says in this article, it’s not their original idea, but this is the first time I’m hearing about it.
It basically boils down to play a game from your backlog for a bit, and whether you liked it or not, or kept playing it or bounced right off, you now have permission to remove it from your backlog. It sounds very freeing.
I take perhaps a little too much pride in having a very small catalogue of unplayed games (not because I play games a lot, but because I am dreadfully cheap and hardly ever buy anything lol), but even an old miser like me could probably benefit from a little tidying.
The funny thing is I play less than once per week, but I own so so many games I am ashamed of confessing that if I tried this approach, it will probably take me decades.
Maybe you need to edit the approach. Like, you consider every game, then decide whether to keep it on your backlog or remove. Could even just be done by glancing over your current backlog and rejecting anything that doesn’t jump out at you.
You can always go back and find something you dismissed initially if you really want to.
That’s mostly what I do with new games. Whenever there’s an offer, I ask myself “Am I going to play this for at least one or two hours right now?” If the answer is no, then I don’t buy it.
That’s not the same for local cooplayer games, though I have way enough to fulfill two lifetimes, and recently we’re just playing through the Wii catalog.
(I didn’t want to be dismissive of this approach, I was just airing my grievances)