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Ask HN: How do you fight YouTube addiction and procrastination? I'm struggling
101–110 of 153 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you fight YouTube addiction and procrastination? I'm struggling
#102I built a small plugin that sends you to your reading list whenever you open a common time-sink site. It’s been a simple but effective way to avoid slipping into distraction.
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/detour/ogddhmpffcgk...
Re: Ask HN: How do you fight YouTube addiction and procrastination? I'm struggling
#103Never subscribe to any channels
Install browser plugins like UnHook - which let you disable/hide many things like shorts, sidebar, etc
Uninstall the Youtube app on your phone
Turn off youtube history and have google delete all the history
Go back to old hobbies like art, music, etc or find new hobbies
Re: Ask HN: How do you fight YouTube addiction and procrastination? I'm struggling
#104Procrastination is not a time management problem; it's an emotional management problem. What it comes down to is not having belief in what you do, so you do other things. You might feel trapped, so you pass the time with stuff like YouTube because that is the most compelling thing available to you. A man will walk on broken glass with a smile if he truly believes in what it will accomplish. When I was younger, I was…
The problem is, in real life you're unlikely to find yourself in a situation where your needs are met, or at least have an action plan how to get there. There are tons of things that go wrong and you can't do anything about that. Stuck in a shitty job? Sucks to be you. Marriage drains you emotionally? Sucks to be you. Mother is sick and you need to take care of her? Again, sucks to be you. "Find a passion" is actually a ridiculously unrealistic standard - most people really do spend their free time just scrolling TikTok.
I'm really really tired of people throwing solutions at my problems while one of the problems is that I'm fundamentally profoundly tired of trying and failing.
Re: Ask HN: How do you fight YouTube addiction and procrastination? I'm struggling
#105I'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…
I did the same and it worked very well for me too. Redirect all dumb sites I don't really want to visit with a link to the quote I found inspiring at the time:
"It was a day like this when Marco Polo left for China. What are your plans for today ?"
Re: Ask HN: How do you fight YouTube addiction and procrastination? I'm struggling
#106I wrote bingeblock.com to deal with stuff like this. It kicks you off sites by domain name with no opportunity for snoozing. You set a daily limit in minutes and then you get exactly that. That way you can still access useful sites from time to time without getting sucked into them.
I think Screentime does something similar on iOS so you could try that too but there wasn't anything I could find for Linux.
Re: Ask HN: How do you fight YouTube addiction and procrastination? I'm struggling
#107For channels I care about, I subscribed to the channel's RSS feed. For instance, there's an RSS feed at https://www.youtube.com/@TechnologyConnections/videos . I combined this with the Distraction Free YouTube browser extension that worked really well — no recommendations would display on the home page or on an individual video page. So I'd only look at the videos that came through my RSS reader, and I'd see no other…
Found a uBlock Origin filter list that seems to work reasonably well:
https://github.com/BevizLaszlo/UBlock-Filters-for-Social-Med...
Re: Ask HN: How do you fight YouTube addiction and procrastination? I'm struggling
#108I know what you are going through and what helped me is taking extreme measures. You have to first do a dopamine detox...you mention YouTube but it's usually a lot more than that. You probably addicted to a lot of other stuff (like porn, food, sugar, TikTok). You need to give your brain a break from the over stimulation. what does this look like? get rid of all your electronics except what is essential. for me this i…
Agreed. I'm currently in a regressed state but a few times I've successfully done this and it changes life. Extremely locked down screen time rules are necessary - break the exciting loop of picking up your phone, eventually you'll re-associate the phone when each time you pick it up you're met with disappointment that nothing exciting is allowed.
Life just slows down in a way that allows you to appreciate little things, make better decisions and treat people with more empathy, read more, reflect on life, get better sleep. ADHD is easier to manage. Less decision fatigue and general mental fatigue (I personally feel that scrolling/youtube are not mentally refreshing and leave me just as if not more drained after).
The danger is in letting yourself slip. It's a very quick slope and brain chemicals are usually stronger than our willpower. Even knowing how much better life is during these periods, I'm still currently in a down cycle because I'm struggling to find the energy to make the right choices. Work can also be draining which takes away good choice energy later in the evening.
Re: Ask HN: How do you fight YouTube addiction and procrastination? I'm struggling
#109I'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…
What, did you edit your hosts file or something?
Re: Ask HN: How do you fight YouTube addiction and procrastination? I'm struggling
#110When I was doing a similar schedule, it was a failure of introspection, and a mounting number of unprocessed emotional issues, and unconfronted personal problems. The way I got over it is that I have started realizing, confronting, communicating these issues. I "sat down with myself" daily just to think for 15 minutes, without any distraction like youtube. Communicated what I though were my problems to my partner, fr…
This is a good post, thanks for sharing.