I Did a 30-Day YouTube Cleanse
By: Geoff Lane
Tags: Self Improvement, Mental Health, YouTube, Millennials, Productivity

And why you should too

Happy Sunday everyone. It’s no secret that I like YouTube. I like it a lot. And if you’re anything like me, you’ve spent way too many 2 AMs binging random YouTube videos. But that isn’t what made me take a 30-day cleanse.

Nope. What made me ditch the ‘Tube was the fact that I couldn’t commit to long form digital content. Allow me to explain.

Leading up to the cleanse, I was really reluctant to start a TV series. Not any in specific, literally just a series. And as much as I’d like to tell myself that it was for productivity’s sake, it wasn’t. I just thought it was too much of a commitment. Ten freakin’ episodes? No way, I thought. Too much. Too long.

That was red flag numero uno.

Okay, I thought. Let’s just try a movie on for size. But the same thing would happen. I just couldn’t bring myself to sit down for a couple of hours and watch the damn thing. Determined to watch something, I actually broke up a movie over the span of a couple days, watching it in half hour intervals. Pretty pathetic right?

Red flag numero dos.

But what really pushed me over the edge was the fact that the same thing would carry over into my occasional YouTube binge. Even with a five minute video I’d get impatient and start scrolling through the suggested videos for something better. It was weird. I’d start a video and then immediately start scrolling for the next, not even really paying attention to the video I was currently on.

Red flag numero tres.

After doing that for a while I thought to myself Okay this is pretty pathetic. Can I seriously not even make it through a video longer than like two minutes? And honestly the answer was no, I really couldn’t.

Something had to change. Although being productive is very important, downtime here and there is as well. And I couldn’t enjoy my downtime because I just lacked the patience to commit to what seemed like anything longer than a two minute YouTube video.

After a lil’ research, it dawned on me that what I really needed was a dopamine detox.

I wasn’t really scrolling for another vid. I was actually scrolling for that next fix of dopamine. And because I’d need them in such quick succession, TV was a no go. The episodes were too long. I needed my fix and I needed it then and there. Same case with movies.

So I decided to stop YouTube for 30 days. Push the reset button. And thank Christ I did.

Have you ever heard that once you quit sugar, fruit tastes like candy? I think I can attest to that in a way. Once YouTube was off the table, books quickly got a lot sweeter. So I read a lot. Like, all of Malcolm Gladwell’s books. I wholeheartedly recommend anything that man writes, by the way.

Maybe I should title this post “How to Read More” because essentially, this is what the 30-day YouTube cleanse did for me. I put down the phone and picked up the book.

Were there any other benefits? You bet.

Better focus for sure

More quality time with my mom since I can finally sit down to watch an episode of The Undoing with her without getting anxious

The itch to watch YouTube for entertainment purposes is largely non-existent now

MUCH less wasted time on a daily basis

All in all, I just like myself better now. I’m more productive than ever and I’m able to be more present than I previously was.

If you read this and find yourself waving any of the aforementioned red flags, give the YouTube detox a try! You won’t regret it, my friend.