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

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

#1

Post by angelochecked »

My current daily routine looks like this:

- 8:00~9:00 – Getting ready for work

- 9:00–13:00 – Work

- 13:00–14:00 – Lunch + YouTube

- 14:00–18:00 – Work

- 18:00–20:00 – Break from work + Dinner + YouTube

- 20:00~1:00 – YouTube, gaming, occasional events, personal projects, or sports. Lately, I’ve noticed my screen time during this period has increased a lot, and I’ve been feeling lazy to do anything productive—mostly just doomscrolling or watching videos

What’s your routine like? How do you manage your time, maintain social connections, avoid digital distractions, and stay on track with your goals and learning?

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

#2

Post by gooodvibes »

Delete your watch history and switch off watch history - then you get no recommendations on the home page.

That's a nice balance for me - it leaves more options than completely blocking it but it protects me from being bounced around by the algorithm.

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

#5

Post by biglyburrito »

Install the Freetube client at home ( https://freetubeapp.io ) and stop relying on YouTube's shitty algorithm to provide you with content. Go in search of the content you want... it's more work, but you're gonna find yourself happier with the end results.

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

#6

Post by incomingpain »

Have a purpose. When you're gungho to do something or get something done, and you have tremendous drive to do that and not procrastinate. Do something you enjoy.

Here's a test for you.

If I were to offer you $10 million to do anything you want during your day, what would you do? Would you accept the money? Of course you would.

What if the consequence of accepting was that you don't wake up tomorrow morning? Obviously you say no. But you just found out waking up in the morning is worth more than $10 million.

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

#7

Post by palmfacehn »

I've come to accept unproductive downtime as a counterbalance to highly focused times. If it becomes too extreme, the best bet is to unplug totally. Schedule some tasks out of the house, preferably in nature.

Before you begin, take some time to outline the tasks you need to complete. Now when you return to the home office, you are only there for one reason.

If problems persist, you may need to find more interesting projects.

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

#8

Post by evilmathkid »

(1) Use ublock origin to block reels, comment section and other features

(2) Wipe history and only watch productive topics on your account. Watch all other videos on incognito - I set up violentmonkey scripts to help. Here's a cool secret: your feed will ONLY be related to the videos in your history. My feed is now ONLY ML and music

(3) Delete the app on the phone. Only use youtube through firefox (if you have android) which allows the ublock extension

(4) Alternatives like newpipe helped before I stumbled onto this solution

You still need a little willpower. Find the strength to not use youtube for 3 weeks. Then it becomes much easier

Edit: clarity

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

#10

Post by EbNar »

Oddly enough, Youtube is not among my many addictions. I'm mainly interested in technical topics and can't stand watching a n-minutes videos when I can read a blog with more detailed info in n/10 minutes. For very very VERY interesting topics, I may ask some LLM to summarize the video for me.
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