Rant: How I got to learn to NOT watch series I've previewed

When I started watching anime four years back (it all begins with Elfen Lied), I'll watch anything that looks moderately interesting or if anyone recommends it at all. Back then, pretty much my only source of information was Anime-Source.com and I guess due to the demography of A-S, there was plenty of hits and misses. Then I started looking at blogs, with the now defunct Hontou ni sou omou and Kurogane's being my first. It was around that time when I started reviewing all the anime series I've watched on A-S, as a means of keeping track of what I have seen (that was before MAL). We (as in A-S, because I joined as staff) had a rule back then that requires you to complete the whole series before you can review the series. It wasn't taken seriously as before, but at that time I took it upon myself to complete all the series I've ever started due to that rule; with a few exceptions where I just couldn't carry on without suffering brain damage, namely Shaman King, Angelic Layer; Yakitate Japan, Naruto, Bleach.

I left it up to other blogger's opinions about various series before I consider what I'll watch, but when you are only follow a couple of them, the opinions you get aren't really useful. I've come to waste a lot of time on crap like Tayutama and Akane-iro, just to name a couple. Though I've come to discover gems like Hidamari Sketch early on, I must say it isn't really a fair trade-off.

Only recently, I've began to follow a large number of anime blogs thanks to the Anitourney and Anime Nano, so now I have a better perspective on what is good and bad. Then again, partially due to writing a blog, I've began to sample the first couple of episodes of various series myself. I'm fighting the urge to finish up a crap series so that I could bash it in a review, but I guess I won't need to now that I've got a blog and a MAL account to keep track of such stuff now.

P.S I haven't quite applied this rule to series that have finished airing though. I'm struggling through Asobi ni Iku yo! while trying to come to terms with myself...