In my last post I talked about “itching” for YouTube. I’m happy to report that this feeling did pass and I finished my 30 days without further problems.

Practical Advice #

• Use the Unhook browser extension
• Radically reduce your Subscriptions.
• Find other things to do – I never missed YouTube when I spend my day with friends.

In my 30 days I used the unhook extension to hide my home feed and all recommendations on the video page and in the video player. This means I can only bindge on my subscription feed.

I did put over 60 videos on my watch later list that I watched afterwards. Well, a large chunk I actually didn’t. I sorted out some that weren’t interesting to me at all. Started watching or skipping through some more. Don’t get me wrong, I still watched many, but it made me reavaluate my YouTube subscriptions and I removed plenty. Even channels that I would consider “good”, for example educational channels. My problem with these is, that while I felt I learned something, it’s rare that I actualy retain any of the knowledge. So why bother? You could make the argument “At least you’ve heared of [topic] before”. Fair enough. Hasn’t happened yet.

Anyway, after curating my subscription feed down my relationship with YouTube is on a healthier level. I try to limit my entertainment consumption to once or twice a week and it feels better.

All in all with the exception of the first weekend I mentioned in my previous post it wasn’t that hard to change this habit.

Though, I did not funnel my energy into more creative endavours as I hoped.