How to be more productive and waste less time. Billion dollar algorithms defeated by one simple trick!
April 16, 2024, Last Modified: August 29, 2024
Every application is trying to keep you on it for longer and longer, and they're getting better at it. The TikTok-style short-form content is so effective that I'm convinced the only way to one-up them is to add eye tracking to these apps.
I don't have a lot of time because of school, and I do not want to spend it all watching reels after accidentally clicking on one while messaging a friend. It's no secret that all these companies are trying to make it easier for you to slip into this trap.
Fortunately, there are ways to fight back, and I'm proud to say that I haven't watched a single short-form video in years.
Taking it further, I've also stopped watching unnecessarily videos on YouTube, and now rarely go on social media sites at all.
I take my productivity very seriously, and I've set several measures to prevent myself from entering this spiral.
This is going to suck if you have an iPhone
Thankfully there are many modified versions of applications that do not have short-form content. There are APKs for YouTube which allow you to disable shorts, and there are APKs for Instagram that let you disable reels. I've gone further and disabled viewing posts on my Instagram as well, so pretty much all I can do is message people.
While it's easy to just... not install TikTok, I can't really do that with YouTube and Instagram because I actually use it for other reasons. YouTube can be a great source of information, and a lot of people I know communicate through Instagram. So, using custom APKs really help.
On Desktop browsers, you can easily disable the shorts shelf by using uBlock origin and deleting it. Although you can still view shorts through links, since you can't navigate to a short, it is sufficient.
Additionally, you can use an extension DeArrow to automatically use a crowdsourced video title and thumbnail. I've found that this makes videos on my food look boring and is quite effective in making me not want to watch them. Taking this a step further, I've used uBlock origin to disable YouTube thumbnails entirely.
In addition, I found it useful to sign out of YouTube, and regularly clear the watch history. If you're signed out, YouTube bases your recommendations on your watch history, so by clearing it, the algorithm can't figure out what you like, and have a harder time recommending interesting videos. This results in you spending less time on YouTube because you're not interested in half the videos. To be signed into Google but not into YouTube, I use Firefox containers and put YouTube into its own container.
I sometimes use Facebook Marketplace, which means I end up looking at my home feed, and once in a while something interesting pops up. For this reason I just hid the entire main page of facebook on my desktop browser using an extension.
Sites like Reddit can contain incredibly useful information, so much so that many people append "reddit" at the end of their search queries. (e.g. best 4k monitor 2024 reddit).
However, Reddit is also addicting. So, what I did was use an application called Cold Turkey Blocker to block the main reddit site (reddit.com) but not block any specific posts (reddit.com/r/foo/comments/bar). This way, you can't browse reddit, but you can still view individual posts if you need them. Of course this isn't perfect, but it's a lot better than doing nothing.
I've found that the biggest issue with Cold Turkey Blocker for me is that I'll sometimes disable it because I actually need to access the sites I'm blocking, but then forget to re-enable it later. Luckily, the application has an interface you can interact with using a batch file, so I added a custom task on Task Scheduler to re-enable the block whenever I turn on my computer.
I've found it best to have several levels of blocking, and only make the lowest level turn on automatically. If you are too strict with your blocks, you'll end up regularly unblocking it because you actually need it, then the blocker is effectively useless.
Cold Turkey Blocker has a pomodoro feature and when I need to be productive, I'll use that. It works great for me and I get so much done.
Through these methods, I've drastically reduced the time I waste, and increased productivity.
Now only if I could fix my gmail addiction...