YouTube Delay Line
I’ve been reading Deep Work by Cal Newport and one of the tenets of his method is embracing boredom. Rather than filling idle minutes with scrolling through a social feed or reading vapid articles, taking a break from stimulus allows your brain to relax and subconsciously process the events of the day. Another benefit of avoiding distraction during these times is exercising your self-discipline, which will make it easier to focus on a necessary task when it counts.
Rather than doing nothing during these idle moments, Newport recommends deliberately planning a relaxing activity, rather than reaching for whatever is most-appealing at the time. Deciding in advance gives you something to look forward to, and lets you make sure that whatever you choose is aligned with your goals and values. Some examples of alternatives relaxing activities are reading a book, crafting, sports, or any other well-structured hobby. All of these avoid the internet to get away from the rapid distractions and demands on your attention that it generally provides. One of the section headings in this section of the book reads “Stop Using The Internet For Entertainment”.
One of my go-to leisure activities is watching videos on YouTube. This activity is inherently tied to the internet, so I started thinking about ways to disconnect it somewhat. I had the idea of caching videos from channels I subscribe to for offline viewing, then watching them away from the YouTube UI with its endless lists of personalized recommendations, click-bait titles, and attention-grabbing thumbnails.
The first way I thought of to accomplish this is to write a script to monitor when a video I care about is released, and automatically download it to watch later. I can then watch it outside of the browser without exposing myself to unnecessary distraction. I still need to go on my computer for that, so I had the idea of batching the videos and burning them to a DVD that I can watch on a device that has absolutely no connection to the internet. I think I probably don’t need to go that far. The amount of plastic wasted in the DVDs wouldn’t be too good either.