Comment by djha-skin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by djha-skin | Hacker News Reader

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I used to watch between 45 minutes and two hours a day of YouTube when bored at work. At my last place of employment, this skyrocketed though; I was very bored that that job.

In January of 2022 I decided to take a YouTube "fast", kicking YouTube for a while. I couldn't bring myself to commit to more.

It was waaaaaay hard to stop. I got on Nebula as a sort of Nicorette for a while, a month or two. I can recommend Nebula as a sort of sieve for really high quality content btw. I stopped my subscription, but it was great to only be able to watch videos that didn't feel like they were trying to hook me, all while getting some really good stuff out of it. I particularly liked Half as Interesting, RealLifeLore, and Johnny Harris, all of which were on Nebula. These videos didn't contribute to the "hooked" feeling, giving me something to use to wean myself off YouTube.

After my fast was over, it was so hard to stop that I didn't start again.

I will still watch the occasional YouTube, but it's usually either shared by friends or specifically searched for by me.

I have gotten looser in the last few days, but I have regretted it. I started swearing in my head less when I stopped watching YouTube. I had fewer intrusive thoughts. I had a clearer head, and I want to keep that.

My Psychiatrist has told me no screens two hours before bed. I started living by that too, and have found much more rest when I do. I discovered by doing this that I have a screen "budget", that I can't go over that without restless leg, twitching, and pain at the end of the day. Now that I know this, I am less inclined to use that budget on YouTube.

I miss a lot of creators on there, but I went back to watch some of them recently and was disappointed. Other mediums simply provide better content. Blog posts seem to be the best for this.

There are still some creators that are amazing, and I am truly missing out! I miss watching Primitive Technology videos for example. I still allow myself to specifically search for these, by I try to limit myself to one or two videos a day or less. I find that to be the sweet spot for keeping off of being hooked.

> My Psychiatrist has told me no screens two hours before bed

I struggle with this, but it's incredible what a difference it makes when I make it happen. I'm mostly content with watching a show before bed now (which is technically a screen), but this comes from having Netflix/YouTube up, my phone out, and my laptop sitting in front of me (yeah, it's crazy one can operate like that).

More importantly, I've been strict on "no screens in bed" which has also played a key role.

What do you do for two hours before bed with no screen time? Read physical material? I'm not sure what I would do to wind down before bed besides reading or watching something. I do find that I need a similar amount of down time before bed after more engaging activities like going out or playing video games online. I usually try to read longer form articles or watch tv. I'm not sure what else I'd do around the house for that amount of time every night.

My wife and I have been playing chess, and I'm usually reading a light book of some kind between moves. We also usually have some relaxing music playing and not many lights on. We even turn all the lights off and just play chess using a kerosene lamp or candles. It's quite relaxing.

Honestly I can't think of many things that would keep me up and engaged much more than chess. But I only play online rapid matches, I could see it being more relaxing playing with a loved one by candlelight.

I bought a kindle and read programming books on it. I have to stay away from thrillers, fiction, etc., they're almost as bad as screens for driving my heartrate up. But I've really enjoyed the 10-30 minutes making myself smarter while actively helping me sleep that Kindle provides.

I have a kobo gathering dust somewhere. I should find it. Lower intensity reading materials would help I think. I remember reading Game of Thrones in bed and I could never put it down unless I reached a Bran chapter.

I do this with history books. Right now reading Justinian by Peter Harris. I find history doesn't get my heartrate up at all and I can stop reading when I want.

One of the strange things about YouTube is you can get sucked into it and forget what good content actually looks like. It becomes a matter of what’s relatively good on YouTube, not overall.

You’re right that there’s good content on there, but I’m not convinced someone would be missing out on 99.9% of it. Or more.

I’ve used it far too much in the past as well. Today I feel like it was purely a vice and a distraction. My impression of various things being “good” was based on its ability to keep me watching without feeling immediate shame or being made too aware of how I was distracting myself from more important things. Had I never seen most of it, not much would be different. Things would likely be better for me.

The only thing that keeps me from trying nebula is my inability to download videos. There are very few youtube channels that I particularly care for, some of them are pretty small and over the years I've found myself recommending things that have disappeared to people one too many times.

So I run an autodownloader that downloads a bunch of channels as well as my liked videos for posterity. I'd like to give nebula a try, but ultimately it's important to me that I'm able to save the content I consume and access it later

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