What if I told you that Youtube can be a threat to personal agency? Personal agency is the ability to make a choice free from strong outside influences. It is the idea of my choices being aimed at benefiting my long-term good rather than distracted from my goals.

My brain is not always rational whenever I sit down to watch Youtube videos. Youtube is something I can watch on my own for 5-10 minutes, but when that becomes a habit over the course of a day, that can become a wasted 40-60 minutes per day. I already spend 5-6 hours of my workday on a computer, so I consider it a problem to spend my free time staring at a screen.

To spend time on Youtube in 2021 is to be in contact with lots of people desperate for you to subscribe to their channels who are often funded by corporations. Some call this the “commodification of our attention” as both self-employed Youtubers and the corporations that run advertisements. Perhaps Youtube was a neutral space 5-6 years ago, but when I explore Youtube now, I feel I am being aggressively pursued by people who do not care about my free time. There are excellent how-to videos, quality entertainment and social commentary on Youtube. But I do feel there comes a point to where I must unplug myself from this and make some of my own choices.

Is it Possible to Be a Rational Person While Looking at the Recommendations on the Youtube Home Page?

There are two questions that I think influences me whenever I get on Youtube. First, I ask “How can I be distracted for 5 minutes?” The Recommended Page can be a dangerous place to be if you do not have a curated Youtube account. Since I have a Youtube account I can pick and choose what kinds of videos I see. I can unfollow lots of Youtube channels that I do not want to watch. If you do not have a Youtube account--------then you will get all kinds of videos to choose from. It seems that not having a Youtube account in which you habitability unfollow click-bait content might make you more susceptible to distraction. The Recommended Page on Youtube is programmed to serve me videos that will steal my time.

The Google homepage is a stark contrast to the Youtube homepage. The Google homepage is blank on a desktop aside from a graphic above the search box. The blank searchbox prioritizes my own desire of "What do I want?" rather than suggesting what I need. The blank page offers me space to think about what I want. Google has a superior model in terms of allowing the user to make choices. This simple "blank page design" that Google has used for years may be part of the reason for the company's success. In contrast, Youtube's Home Page of 6 recommended videos is designed more for distraction rather than user autonomy.

The second question that slightly influences us when watching Youtube videos is “What is everyone else doing?” We see the view count in the lower right hand corner of each video. And to see the comment list. It means that you are not the only person watching. If we ever question ourselves “Am I spending my time the right way?” we can always look at the view count in the lower right hand corner of the screen. We can see that 2 million other people have watched this video since October 2020. There is something comforting about knowing that you are simultaneously doing something that everyone else is doing.

These two questions I've mentioned here are the wrong questions to ask when you are on Youtube. Rather, I believe in the age of the algorithm we need to prioritize the question “What do I want?” Yes, the answer to that question can be problematic, unhealthy to yourself or even harmful to others. The question of what we want is not always a good thing. But in general, truly wrestling with this question allows us to take responsibility for our own time and choices rather than just being a victim of a system that is created to distract us from our own personal well-being and pursuits.

Use a Blank Piece of Paper to Be a Prioritize What You Want

I believe the best way to actually be aware of what you want is to get a blank sheet of paper and write down what you want. Goals, actions and dreams are often jumbled and confused when they are in our minds, but become clear when they are on a physical piece of paper. Joan Didion once said “I write entirely to find out what I am thinking.” The ideas in your mind are amorphous feelings floating around until they are on paper. Words on a page allow us to actively respond.

If I can get a blank piece of paper and start listing things that I want, I am on the right path. Typically, I use the back of unused pieces of paper, the back of a student’s essay, the back of an electricity bill, the blank back of an agenda for a meeting at work. I hate wasting paper. Having that blank slate is key so that you can give your mind space to unpack what needs to happen.

There are three different ways to organize your thoughts on a piece of paper. Each way has a different way of unpacking the question “What do I want?” The first is a quick to-do list. The second is a “tomorrow list.” And the third is a list of unrealistic “big ideas.” I go into the details and purposes for each below.

I also recommend getting away from the television, your iPhone or your laptop when you make your list since those are the devices where people watch Youtube videos. I typically watch the most Youtube vides on my laptop, so I try to leave my laptop in my kitchen and go to my office or dining room to write out my ideas on a piece of paper. Obviously, this is unavoidable if you are typing out your ideas on a laptop. Switching your device to “Airplane Mode” can help with this.

1.) Get a White Piece of Paper and Write Down Three Things You Want to Do in the Next 60 Minutes.

Goal: Intentionally knock out small tasks you may be avoiding in the moment.

Time of the Day this is Helpful: In the Afternoon When You Are Tired But Still Have Hours to Get Things Done

Part of the reason you may be wasting time on YouTube is the fact that you may be trying to escape the pain of small tasks. I stumble into a Youtube watching session is because I may have received a difficult email from work or hesitate to knock out tedious tasks around my house.

I recently had to pack for a 2 month trip I am taking to Massachusetts to spend at my self-directed study at L'Abri. In order to go on this trip---------I needed to totally pack all my things for being away from home for 2 months along with clean my entire house to prepare for my new roommate. While I was very excited about being able to travel to another state for the summer break------this required that I do a tedious list of chores. When the human soul encounters boredom, what does it want? It wants to escape it, so my soul coped with the tedious nature of chores by briefly looking at the Youutube Recommended List for 30 seconds.

But that’s a recipe for a rabbit trail.

The question is: What did I want to happen in the next hour?

So on that Friday afternoon I wrote down 4 things I needed to happen:

What I often realize when I do a 60-minute quick list on a Friday afternoon is that the tasks often seem overwhelmingly hard, but I am often surprised at how much I can get done if I devote myself to a tasks for one hour. Notice I put “Friday Part 2” because this was a short list I had made.
Cleaning my room only took me about 30 minutes. Texting my friend Daniel only took about 1 minute. Packing up my car took longer than 60 minutes. But just by writing it down, I did start by cleaning out my car so that I could start putting bags in it. I did not read for 1 hour, but that really wasn’t a priority.

Rather, I knocked out small tasks that helped me take one step closer to my larger goal of spending 2 months in my self-directed theological study at L’Abri. The 2 months in a self-directed study was truly what I wanted. We have to take note that knocking out a 60 minute task list can be small steps towards a goal that we truly want. Go through the painful small steps in order to get the delayed gratification.

2.) Get a White Piece of Paper And Write Down What You Want to Do Tomorrow.

Goal: Gain a vision for what projects and tasks you want to happen the next day. This is more of a dream for you. This is a kind of delegation.

Time of the Day This is Helpful: After 6pm when there is less time in the day to accomplish tasks.

I often find myself watching a Youtube video at 7:45pm, at the end of the day, in this indecisive time. Technically it is the end of the day, a time to relax. But even as I am watching the Youtube videos I am still slightly anxious. In this moment, I need to dig deeper into why I am being indecisive about fully relaxing or “finishing my work day.”

One of the best things I can do to truly relax is to take 10 minutes to write out what I can put off for the next day. Here’s a list of tasks I have jotted down, likely on a Sunday night that center around what I need to do Monday.

The two hardest tasks on this list were #6 and #7. Those all took at least an hour each to complete. Some of these are not urgent, such as “Future Messages From Dwight” as something I wanted to create for the "Office" theme party I had at my house on May 1st 2021. “Yellow Fin Grill” was a restaurant I wanted to eat at. Those are truly things I wanted to do, but also needed to remember. My “tomorrow list” is a mixture of things I needed to do, but also things that I knew I would not
have time to get done today.

Big ideas typically come to me late at night. They loom in my mind and weigh me down. And sometimes I escape into Youtube in order to escape those dreams and tasks. But to write these ideas on a piece of paper for tomorrow is a form of healthy intentional procrastination. Procrastination can be a good thing after 9pm since it is often impossible to get anything done late at night.

Again, big ideas that have nothing to do with work come to me at 8pm, things that I want to do. In an article “Stop Spending Time on Things You Hate,” Arthur Brooks argues that the practice of writing out non-work related things by “time blocking” tasks and ideas things that are fun. This is a kind of scheduled fun and scheduled downtime:

“Time blocking doesn’t have to be limited to work. For many people working from home during the pandemic, job and life have commingled in frustrating ways because there is no exoskeletal time structure imposed by a formal workplace. My answer is to block everything, including hobbies, leisure, and even daydreaming. For example, you might write “Goof off” on your planner from 1:30 to 2 p.m. tomorrow. Since goofing off is no longer an uninvited guest in your schedule, it doesn’t throw off your rhythm, and your odds of being back to work at 2 rise dramatically.”

You may decide to spend your free time watching Youtube, then that’s good. At least it will be an intentional choice for you to watch some funny videos or a TED talk. The key is that it will be an intentional choice that you made. You didn’t just fall back into it as an unconscious habit.

3.)Get a Blank Piece of Paper and Write Out a “Within The Next 2 Months” List

Goal: To give yourself freedom to be intentional about documenting ideas both big and small that you might want to do in the next month or two. Give yourself permission to think about things both realistic and unrealistic that you might do. This is a kind of intentional procrastination as well.

Time of the Day This is Helpful: After 7pm when your have a full list of tasks to accomplish for the week.

This last style of writing down what I want is aimed more at bigger ideas that I’d like to accomplish that cannot be accomplished tomorrow, this week or even next week. These are ideas that need perhaps a month or more to accomplish. These are general ideas I’d like to attempt in the future.

This part of the “What I Want Blank Paper Brainstorm” is more aspirational and gives me freedom . I think it should really be aimed at things that will take time, risks and serious effort. It is possible that you might have a bad habit of watching Youtube videos because your dreams are weighing you down. Sometimes our dreams become burdensome because they seem unattainable. Some of your dreams may be unattainable, some of them may be realistic and possible to achieve. Yet sometimes we believe we can make our dreams happen overnight. This is an immature attitude to have about your big ideas.

I need a "big ideas over the next month" list so I can actually identify my ideas and develop the perseverance to stick to those particular ideas. Below is a list I made for May and June 2020:

Here is an overview of some of the accomplished items on my list:

2.Buy a car I wrote this on my list on April 30, 2020. This started the process of identifying the who, what, where, when, how and why of my idea of simply buying a new car. But it took me a long time to do Craigslist research on cars, figure out what kind of car I wanted, discuss with knowledgeable people the process of buying a car, etc. That idea alone took a lot of research. I found a 2014 Volkswagon CC (Passat) in August 2020. I bought it.

5. Take a road trip with Jacob Brotzman This is a goal that I failed to accomplish. Jacob, his brother Gabe and I tried 2 different weekends to go camping at Roan Mountain in June 2020. Both weekends were rained out. I believe I spent 5-6 hours planning out these trips. This required a lot of emails and research. But both times our plans were canceled by summer thunderstorms. I remember just getting pissed while looking at the 10 Day Weather reports online for the Boone area. Even when you plan things, sometimes they don't work out. This never happened.

13. Swapping Houses With James This is something I wrote down in June 2020. I didn't accomplish this until December of 2020. My friend James Vaught, who lives in the Appalachian Mountains, comes has come to visit me every summer since 2018. I told him that we should swap houses for a week, where I go to his house and he brings his family to my house. We didn’t exactly accomplish that idea, but I went to spend 4 days in the Appalachian Mountains with James in December 2020. His wife and kids were out of town, so James and I went hiking in the mountains and played frisbee golf. It took me over 6 months to accomplish this goal. To achieve this goal of my visit to the mountains took multiple texts between James and I during the fall of 2020 in order to make sure COVID had not grown worse over the Christmas holidays. This wasn't a simple goal to achieve either. However, intentional planning on my part helped me take small steps towards planning with James so this vacation would be possible.

15. Buy a stock pot from Bed, Bath and Beyond This is something I had been procrastinating because of the price of a stock pot. I'd visited Bed, Bath and Beyond and looked at the price tag. I thought it was absurd to pay $50 for a large pot. Yet I knew if I bought one of those large steel pots I could have Low Country Boil at my house for all my friends. Buying this pot meant I could have more parties. I am a careful buyer. I looked around online for a cheaper pot, but could not find one. So I finally bought the pot in July of 2020. And since then I’ve cooked maybe 7-8 big low-country boil meals for friends. My purchase of this stock pot resulted in my ability to gather friends, which likely resulted in me watching less Youtube videos and spending more time with friends.

As you can see, the "Within the Next Two Months" list is not a list of gigantic goals like “Hike the Appalachian Trail” or “Start my own company.” The time-based stipulation on this list makes me think more practically, even though most of the goals on this list take me longer than two months. A time-bound goal can make me more practical. In the case of the stock pot (#15), this made me more likely to shut off Youtube and drive 5 miles down the road to actually go look at stock pots on a weeknight rather than daydream about it.

Every person has great ideas. Yet we forget our ideas. And we also forget that we live in a culture where there are industries devoted to stealing your attention. Would it be too extreme to say they are stealing your dreams? I don't know. But I'm sure that you have a lot of good ideas you'd like to make happen.

What good ideas do you have? Do you write them down? If so, what steps do you need to take to make those ideas happen? Shut off Youtube get in a room with a blank piece of paper and just start writing. This will give you a vision for what you want and get to work making that particular thing happen.