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Ask HN: How do you fight YouTube addiction and procrastination? I'm struggling

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Re: Ask HN: How do you fight YouTube addiction and procrastination? I'm struggling

#111

Post by famahar »

Theodores wrote: post #55

Go full North Korea at home. This means building your own parallel universe of culture. This means music you don't have to stream, books you don't have to stream, video that you don't have to stream and some reference works such as a dictionary. No WiFi or mobile phone data allowance means you have to leave the door every time you want anything on your phone or computer. You would be surprised by how well this works.…

I saw this amish documentary and how they still need to use some modern tech to do their work. One of the people had a cellphone that they only use in a tiny shack a bit of walk from their home, so it adds a lot of friction.

Re: Ask HN: How do you fight YouTube addiction and procrastination? I'm struggling

#112

Post by sshine »

walterlw wrote: post #21
quaintdev wrote: post #12

YouTube is easy to block. Just clear all your history and disable history. This stops home screen recommendations and also disables YouTube shorts

highly recommend that as well. Disabling history greatly reduced my time spent in the app. UnTrap plugin for Safari helps as well. Can't say that I feel like I spend a reasonable amount of time on the platform still, but now it's mostly me having an urge to distract myself, opening the website and finding the videos I have seen already then closing the tab.

I also do that; open the site and look for content. I have enough subscriptions to always be able to find something. Yet somehow not falling into the Shorts attention trap is what saves my time.

Re: Ask HN: How do you fight YouTube addiction and procrastination? I'm struggling

#115

Post by nunez »

quaintdev wrote: post #12

YouTube is easy to block. Just clear all your history and disable history. This stops home screen recommendations and also disables YouTube shorts

It's also easy to stop smoking. Just avoid anything that looks or feels like smoking. Problem solved! /s

Addiction is like a weed in the ground. Cutting off its head just makes it regrow faster and angrier, with deeper roots to boot.

Addictions love nothing more than superficial attempts to stop them! The only way to _manage_ addictions is to get them at their roots.

Re: Ask HN: How do you fight YouTube addiction and procrastination? I'm struggling

#116

Post by aklemm »

card_zero wrote: post #58

I eschew social conventions, treat my goals with skepticism, and consider "learning" bogus if it's scholastic and isn't any fun. Thus I can do what I actually like, and the problem is solved. I am cautious if anybody uses the word "healthy" outside of the context of actual diseases like pleurisy and conjunctivitis. I am aware of a below-the-radar societal battle over way of life, and proper conduct, and the battlegro…

You need to be in service of some other(s), and that’s about all there is to it.

Re: Ask HN: How do you fight YouTube addiction and procrastination? I'm struggling

#117

Post by manbitesdog »

dvh wrote: post #41

I'm a programmer, a creative person, working on my projects, and regularly I need a short break, so on every break I usually lay in bed and checked the news and I often ended on YouTube watching more videos, wasting hours every day. What eventually helped me was use css to replace entire YouTube (and other doom scrolling websites) with a motivational picture that says: "One day, you'll realize that your dream died be…

That's just a first step, your muscle memory to open youtube.com for instant gratification requires time and motivation to go away. But the extra effort of having to disable an extension to fall into patterns you decidedly wanted to end is maybe enough to get you going.

Re: Ask HN: How do you fight YouTube addiction and procrastination? I'm struggling

#119

Post by mkbkn »

It boils down to unconscious habits/patterns.

What worked for me was to install an Android app called Regain. It asks for how much time will you use while opening an app, like 5 minutes, 1 minute or 3 minutes or maximum time in a session. And then I also used another app called Farhan. So it gives you a reminder and a pop-up that you have scrolled something for like continuous 5 minutes or 10 minutes. You can set the timer. Both of these apps made me change my habits and now I don't have that much urge even without these apps.

I have uninstalled these apps. But I can now choose not to play anything on YouTube or Reddit or Telegram. And I also like I keep YouTube history off so it doesn't show me anything like that. And I try to use third-party YouTube apps like FreeTube. So that doesn't show suggestions, recommendations if you like. That can also block certain channels, shorts also. And I try to use every new browser wherever possible. That helps.

On laptop, I use News Feed Eradicator and Leechblock. You just have to use them to break your unproductive habits, that you can uninstall them.

I was heavily addicted to Twitter and Reddit. Not anymore.

Re: Ask HN: How do you fight YouTube addiction and procrastination? I'm struggling

#120

Post by the-mitr »

I have a procrastination problem. but when the work really needs to get done one of the things that helps me is to set smaller time frames using the pomodoro technique. this way you do focused work for 25 mins, then take a break for 5 and so on. 25 mins may not look much at the beginning, but focused work in those 25 mins 4-5 times a day can actually get the work done much better than loitering around for 5-6 hours with no focus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique

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