This hits hard. I recently counted hours watched on YT (via history export) and OH MY GD, it averaged around 3 hours daily throught the year, for several years. I just imagined WHAT IF I have spent this amount of effort and time on ANYTHING else: playing an instrument, learning a new language, coding a side-project. The thought scared me so much, aka the difference between current me and "potential" me that I have abstained from YT... for a week, and then I've slipped back. I am truly powerless, damn. Any other ideas besides cold turkey? I mean, some "quality time" needs also to exist, you cannot abstain from everything, right? Or is this a fallacy that gets alcoholics backs to alcohol?
Very un-HN take but maybe you're not meant to be 100% efficient all the time, maybe having some time to be passive and relax is good actually. Maybe we work far too much already and expecting to be additionally productive outside those hours is an express train to burnout?
I don't disagree with this but the constant state of being "plugged in" is the issue. Mind wandering is a real useful practice and the being plugged in is antithetical to mind wandering.
Some of my most clearest thoughts, ideas, or beliefs came to me when I was just walking on the street not listening to podcasts, audio books, music or browsing social media.
I think it's far more useful to literally stare at a wall for 3 hours than just mindlessly watch youtube videos. I say this as someone who is addicted to social media/internet as well and struggle very hard to overcome.
What I do is use the freedom app to set time limits and ban these sites during periods of the week. I bought one of those timed safes where I stick my phone in to completely stop the temptation for 4 or 6 hours. I know I can't completely end it, but what I want to do is just nudge myself to do something else. Instead of grabbing a phone maybe I'll attempt to read a book, or draw, or work on some data visualizations, or contribute to OSS. All activities I'd say I value more than browsing reddit (or twitter or youtube or HN) for hours every night, but my actions prove otherwise.
I'm not saying I've improved my habits 300% but at the beginning of the year I would read a book for 5 minutes put the book down pick up my phone then read reddit for an hour; at least now I can read a book for 45 minutes without being distracted. It hurts writing this because in college I'd read nearly 500 pages a week + my readings for class, I'd read nearly 200 books a year but over the last 5 years I've probably read 3.
I don't know where I'm going with this, I guess my mind wanders when writing as well...
It sounds like you're already approaching this idea on your own, but if you haven't checked it out already you should have a look at Digital Minimalism [1]. It's a really well thought out analysis of exactly what you're describing. In theory, a few hours here and there shouldn't be an issue. However, the main problem with modern media (social and otherwise) is that it is very insidious. It's not just about the time spent indulging, but also what that indulgence does to your mental state throughout the rest of the day.
Thanks for the suggestion; but after reading one similar book, Stolen Focus by Johann Hari, and another that was tangentially related, Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. I now feel tapped out of the genre.
One thing I enjoyed about Four Thousand Weeks was the story how people viewed work 100s and thousands of years ago, how whatever you didn't finish that day, you had time tomorrow to continue; I think this is a useful idea because modern society feels so "rushed" over work that isn't exactly useful. Also the idea of JOMO (joy of missing out); it was just a new heuristic introduced to me. We make choices all the time, we neglect doing things all the time. It's just a part of life, missing out on things means enjoying others It sounds like it's more stressful but it's not, at least how the book describes this.
With Stolen Focus, I was a fan of the author's interview about his other book "Lost Connections" when he appeared on an episode of econtalk [1]. I won't say much else about Stolen Focus, except his tips on what he does to lessen the nodge toward social media is what I now do as well.
Instead of seeing them trying to maximize efficiency, think of them trying to maximize fulfillment. Now it makes more sense why binging Youtube (or whatever) might be a problem. And it's not about getting work done.
It's about being happy with the life you're living, the life you chose, and being able to take control to work towards your fulfilling desires rather than just choosing the feel-good compulsions forever.
The self-perceived problem with such behavior is not the hours spent per se, but the hours spent in state of absent consciousness. You jump from one compulsory behavior to another, it's not fun, it's just unconscious existence.
Not to say it's a great use of your time, but watching YouTube videos is a fairly passive activity. You can do it when you're otherwise out of energy and barely able to pay attention, so it isn't necessarily competing with blocks of time in which you can do something like code up side projects and learn to play new instruments.
Also, again maybe not for you, but a lot of people's numbers if they're just looking at watch history are going to be totally out of whack if they're using YouTube as a music streaming service. My wife's account is the one logged into our television and this would constitute the vast bulk of watch hours, having music on in the background while cleaning the house, cooking dinner, and doing a whole lot of other things. You definitely can't practice tuba in the background while also cooking and cleaning.
still a lot, imho. considering how much we spend on commute, work, sport, preparing food and socializing, this is basically almost all your time budget as a "free" time. Then its either wasted consuming addictive crap or doing something interesting with it.
I started learning Japanese about two years ago now and now all of the time I used to waste watching YouTube is spent watching YouTube in Japanese as language practice. It's still the same activity but is at least somewhat productive. I barely go on Hacker News too, since it feels like more of a waste of time ("I could be studying Japanese right now!").
It really depends on what you like. I personally just found Japanese versions of what I liked watching in English (cooking shows, true crime, some comedy, let's plays). Interestingly I found a new interest in house makeover shows after I saw some completely insane makeovers on 大改造 (in one episode they put the entire house on rails and pulled it to the side temporarily in order to make new foundations).
The only thing I couldn't find an abundance of is long-form video essays -- it seems that (for whatever reason) that isn't something that Japanese YouTube audiences want to watch. TV shows make documentaries which are kind of similar but those are also fairly hard to find.
Self study is weird. I'm having a hard time finding good resources because I feel like the content is either too easy, not applicable by me, or completely impenetrable. I lack vocabulary and kanji knowledge to actually utilize grammar I've learned, but I also don't do well with rote memorization so I need material that's interesting and practical to learn with.
Yeah, for me my grammar is pretty weak, but I think my vocabulary is better. But I feel the same way about content. It's either too easy, really boring, or way too hard.
Just found it interesting to be honest. I might move there for a short time just to experience it, but I wouldn't plan to live there for the long term.
>I just imagined WHAT IF I have spent this amount of effort and time on ANYTHING else:
That's impossible. You can click on a youtube video instantly at any moment and waste 3 hours thanks to the power of the algorithm. Spending that time on anything specific would require you to plan that into your schedule. You are not going to work on a side project when you think you have 30 min for some "harmless" fun but you sure are going to be trapped by the algorithm for three hours without planning to do so.
> I just imagined WHAT IF I have spent this amount of effort and time on ANYTHING else: playing an instrument, learning a new language, coding a side-project
This is a very unfair set of "ANYTHING else". I am sure you can come up with more real world list of what other people actually do after work, and that might make you feel a little more lenient about your own choices and needs.
I even have cron job which over writes /etc/hosts with an /etc/hosts.bak with that content and i have disabled any dns caching in firefox (don't ask me how). Yet ....
Sigh ....
Oh smart. I sometimes remove it and then forget to put it back, and forget that it was something I was supposed to put back, and also forget that those sites were something I was trying to avoid, so visiting them doesn't prompt me to put them back. The brain is really good at forgetting those minor details.
This is very real. The time adds up and it's often not the best way to relax/learn. Not only you could spend this time being productive, you could also just be resting or sleeping or just reflecting on your life.
Read what Ted has to say about the necessity of going through the power process (paragraphs 33 onward) and the motives of scientists (paragraphs 87 onward) for some perspective in his manifesto on Industrial Society and Its Future:
A lot of the addictive component comes from the ML generated suggestions.
Just curate a decently small list of high quality channels and only browse via the subscriptions list. You'll know when you're all caught up and the FOMO isn't there. You'll still catch the stuff you're interested in, but you won't be pulled in a million other random directions.
That said, I have the YouTube bug pretty bad myself.
If you have YouTube Premium & the YouTube mobile app; click on your profile picture, then YouTube Premium Benefits. It'll tell you there, of all places, your total "Ad-free video watchtime"; doesn't include the hours watched without Premium, not organizing it per day, not the greatest analytics, but its a number that will surprise every person reading this.
Learning to play an instrument is fun and can be just as addicting. I'd recommend a small form keyboard that can be kept nearby at all times. I adore my Yamaha Reface CP, if you manage to find one. The best part - grinding through chords, arpeggios, scales and challenging song sections to get them into muscle memory can be done while watching unrelated videos.
There is no "official" way of doing this (as I imagine it will scare people away). You have to export your watch history as JSON that contains watch date and video ID. Then you obtain API key from google and iterate over all video IDs and add up video lengths. Yes, this is inaccurate for cases when you scroll thorugh a video and not watch it completely.
For all of this there were multiple projects on github that do all of this + with plots.
Ackshually, the mobile apps have statistics on watching, which seem to include what was watched on the desktop. Here's the support page about the feature: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9052667
Apparently videos watched on the desktop aren't counted correctly, but I imagine it's not worse than summing the durations.
