Achieve Laser-Focus By Eliminating Your YouTube Diet
Using science to make YouTube boring, so you can get back to everything that matters
Ever wonder why you aren’t getting as much done as you’d like?
If you’re a typical American adult, you’ll spend about 6 hours watching videos today. Since YouTube is the 2nd most popular website (ahead of Facebook), it’s no wonder many people consume an unhealthy diet of YouTube videos.
YouTube’s algorithm is designed to find you videos you want to watch. Specifically, it uses your watch and search history to predict what videos you find enjoyable. So every time you watch or search for a video, YouTube can feed you with more personalized suggestions. The more you use YouTube, the more pleasurable the experience is.
Instead of using self-restraint, we are going to make YouTube less interesting. If you stop allowing YouTube to save your watch and search history, YouTube’s algorithm can no longer predict what you want to watch.
Over time, you’ll receive videos that are less interesting. YouTube will be boring, so you’ll want to quit it. So let’s see how to make that happen.
How to Depersonalize YouTube
There are really only 4 steps:
- Disallow YouTube to save your search and watch history
- Remove YouTube’s notifications
- Hide Subscriptions
- Continue using YouTube normally
Let’s see them in action.
1. Disallow YouTube to Save Search and Watch History
This is really the heart of depersonalizing YouTube. First, find your watch history. Usually, it’s in the left menu labeled “History”. On the right menu bar, click where it says “Turn off Watch History.”
Great! Now YouTube is no longer recording your watch history.
Let’s also disallow recording your search history.
On the same page, click “Search History” under “History Type.” Then click “Turn off Search History.”
Now, even if you continue using YouTube, you won’t get any more personalized suggestions.
Tip: Don’t delete your watch and search history. Just turn it off. That way, YouTube will gradually become less interesting and you will be less likely to develop another social media addiction.
2. Remove YouTube’s Notifications
Now that we’ve made YouTube not as interesting, it’s time to make get rid of external cues bringing you back to YouTube. That way, there’s nothing nagging you to come back.
Go to YouTube’s account notifications page, and turn off every single notification.
This will eliminate all email notifications, push notifications, and browser notifications. This is a must.
3. Hide Subscriptions
Once we’ve gotten rid of notifications and personalization, you’ll want to hide your subscriptions. That way, you can’t manually find interesting videos.
If you use Chrome or the new Edge, download the DF Tube extension. It gets rid of all distractions that can keep you hooked on YouTube.
Here are my personal settings. As you can see, even related videos are hidden. YouTube cannot even give me suggestions based on the current video. Autoplay is also off to force me to decide to click on a video. Now, the only interesting part of YouTube is the videos (which, as you know, will become less interesting).
4. Continue Using YouTube Normally
Finally, continue using YouTube normally. If you stop all of a sudden, you could easily replace YouTube with another source of entertainment. Our goal is to eliminate our YouTube diet, not to break or replace it.
Here’s the Science
Your YouTube diet is really just a habit, and habits have three parts: the cue, the routine, and the reward.
The Cue is the thought, idea, or trigger that starts the habit. For instance, you might go to YouTube because you’re bored. Or perhaps you got a notification for a new video. Or maybe you’re already on YouTube and see an enticing thumbnail and video title. Without a cue, there’s nothing to trigger the habit.
The routine is the action you take to complete the habit. For YouTube, it’s simply clicking on a video. YouTube makes the routine as simple as possible to get you the reward with the least amount of effort.
The reward is some results that fires up your brain with pleasure. For YouTube, the reward is watching that entertaining video. It’s often the cure to your cue. If you were bored, now you’re intrigued. If you saw an enticing thumbnail, now your curiosity is satiated.
The reward gives you a reason to act on the cue. When you see that thumbnail, your brain knows you will be happy if you click. So you click.
Making Videos Less Interesting Destroys Your Habit
Because personalization makes YouTube’s suggestions better, both your cues and your rewards become stronger over time. That’s why it feels like an addiction. It’s the same reason why gambling and drugs are so addictive.
So let’s take a look at some research on how to quit smoking:
Judson Brewer explains is that for smoking, once you shift your thought process from the pleasure of smoking to the disgust of the smoke inhalation, you remove the reward from the habit. So, over time, you quickly begin to associate smoking with negative emotions.
So instead of thinking, “I’m bored or alone, let’s smoke to be happy and feel cool,” your brain thinks “I’m bored and alone, smoking will just make me more miserable.” See the difference?
The same thing goes with watching YouTube. Which means you will start thinking about how much time you’re wasting being on YouTube. It will no longer be a way to “pass the time” or “be entertained.” Rather, YouTube will be a “place to be miserable,” “time to do nothing,” “tool that sucks you away from your friends into social isolation.”
Will that make you want to click on the next video?
My Experience
Of course, theory is great, but how does this work in real life? Well, I was once addicted to YouTube, and here’s what happened once I depersonalized YouTube.
At first, nothing changed. But after a day or so…
I started seeing videos I’ve already watched. Weird, right?
I realized that because YouTube wasn’t saving my watch history, it didn’t know I already saw those videos! That’s a win!
But of course, as time changes, your preferences on YouTube change, too. Mine certainly did. And the YouTube algorithm knows this. Normally, after you watch dozens of videos on one topic, it will start feeding you suggestions for related topics.
But YouTube didn’t know my preferences changed. So it kept feeding me the same type of videos. After a while, none of them really intrigued me!
For me, YouTube transformed from a place to be entertained whenever I was bored to a deep hole where I felt miserable doing absolutely nothing.
I started becoming more productive
I no longer wanted to be on YouTube. Sure, I’d navigate back every once and a while. But after like 5 minutes, I remembered that it was so boring. Now, I’m interrupted less while working.
I can stay working for longer.
I got more done.
I did higher-quality work.
Eventually, reaching a hard problem no longer meant going to get an easy distraction. Because solving the problem became the more interesting option. It was no longer a choice between being productive or YouTube.
I can now sit down laser-focused and do what needs to get done.
And you can, too.
