How I reduced my video usage and replaced it with books
Is it possible, given that someone has an impenetrable will, to stop watching videos? Maybe, but videos are addictive: an immersive experience where all you have to do is sit back. I grew up with Netflix taking Blockbuster, YouTubes rise to fame, and anime on the screens of every Asian teenager (including me).
From my childhood to my teenage years to adulthood, I consumed videos endlessly. If I wasnt playing games, I was watching videos, and I often wasnt playing games. Id click a video, and when it ended, choose the next video from the suggestions sidebar. Then I would go into an infinite loop of videos until I realize Ive watched a bunch of videos about something I didnt care about and didnt need to know. A said something about B behind their back and C watched but kept quiet, and D roasted them for not contributing, but E also wants to stay out of the drama and doesnt take any responsibility, so the comment section grills them.
Ive developed a sickness for videos. Well, not for videos themselves, but for the experience of endlessly watching videos. This type of consumption has lost its allure. I cant watch video after video after video anymore: Im too aware of how much time Im wasting. You can make the argument that Im learning something from every video, and its true, every video teaches something. But theres an opportunity cost to it: you could be learning more.
And it also doesnt change the fact that theres a state of pure passivity that you eventually reach, a state where your mind is not conscious of anything youre doing anymore. You click because you cant handle the void.
Maybe Im unfair, perhaps some people watch every video with a genuine active interest, with the curious electricity of a mind absorbing and adding information and creating a clearer mental model of the universe. But I dont think so. Im sure that others have the same brain-drain feeling after getting lost in a hedonic loop.
I tried to quit videos all at once a little over half a year ago. But I kept facing the blank space, the void. Having nothing to do terrified me so much that I couldnt do it. If I were a strong man, I would face the void, the darkness. But Im not. I cant handle being alone with my thoughts. Maybe for a little bit, and perhaps even better than most people can. I meditate for twenty minutes every day, which Im sure improves my ability to be alone.
But still, left for too long, Ill go back to watching videos. I couldnt quit all at once, so I decided to set some rules to reduce my usage. I didnt want to stop watching videos altogether anyway.
So I set some rules for myself:
The most valuable resources on YouTube for me were exercise form and routine videos, podcast clips like Joe Rogan, and videos about books that Bill Gates recommends (and others like that). I now never get addicted to watching one video after the next. Theres only a certain amount of learning I can do before it gets boring, and it gets boring fast. And so I rarely touch YouTube except to listen to music, in which case Im letting it play in the background while I do something else.
The sitcoms-only rule comes from my personal experiences with TV. I found that dramas like Game of Thrones stir my feelings, interest me in the plot, and leave my mind wanting more, probably why its so popular. Sitcoms do the opposite. They make me feel good, and they barely have a plot; I can more easily stop myself from watching another episode.
On weekdays, I have breakfast and lunch at work, so I dont watch Netflix there. And often, I have dinner outside (sadly, I dont have a family to come back home to, so I eat with friends). This means that on weekdays, I watch one episode of a sitcom, and on weekdays, I watch two or three. It took me 7 months to complete The Big Bang Theory, despite it being the only show I watched the entire time. One of my friends laughed because she could finish a season per day. Thats okay; Im trying to reduce my usage, not increase it.
What did I do with the extra time? I started taking exercise seriously. I went six days a week. Four days at the gym, two days running. After work, I spent more and more time at the gym because I was afraid of going home only to have nothing to do. Avoidant, yes, but it resulted in positive behavior, and Im grateful for that.
At this point, you might be wondering: Why dont you just become comfortable with the void? Ill be honest: Ive tried, and its hard. I dont know if anyone has ever tried to sit in a room by themselves without doing anything, away from technology, from books, from any possible stimuli, but not only does it make me feel like Im wasting time, my thoughts rampage in a chaos that I know I can stop by doing anything. I still try, though. Like I said before, I meditate for twenty minutes every day. But thats not enough for me to become comfortable sitting in a room silently, after all, monks do meditate for hours on end to achieve that state.
I started reading more, a lot more. I read 70 books in the past half a year. Okay, fine, I wont brag. There are many novellas and poetry collections on that list that inflate that number. And most are regular-length, easy-to-read novels that only take a few hours to finish. I intentionally read books I was comfortable with because I was now reading for entertainment (unlike when I was reading non-fiction to learn).
My friends call me a voracious reader. We live in a society where content has become shorter and more passive: from books to movies to videos to TikToks. Were losing the ability to read long-form content, including me. A few months ago, it wasnt easy for me to read. I spent a long time trying to muster the concentration, and even longer absorbing the stories.
The reading has made my friends think Im a disciplined man. But Im not. Reading is reading, and I do it for the same reasons everyone else watches Netflix: to escape the void. But Ive learned a lot, things I wouldnt have found. From fiction, I learned of the mutual suffering we all experience. And I never got that sick-to-the-stomach feeling of wasting my life away. Ive improved my concentration, not just for reading, but I can now concentrate on a task for hours on end without stopping, which has, in turn, made my writing better.
My rules arent unbreakable. If my friends wanted to watch something with me, Id gladly do it. But as a general rule, I follow my rules. I read instead of watch.
Im happy with my video diet. Feel free to copy it, mold it, carve it into your own life.
More here:
The Netflix and YouTube Diet That Changed My Life - Medium
