I would watch YouTube for an hour before bed. It got to the point where I needed it to fall asleep, usually with it playing in the background.

Replaced it with reading books and now I just read until I'm sleep enough, usually when I realize I have to reread sentences repeatedly.

After about a week I had no desire to scroll my YouTube feed for videos. I didn't block YouTube or anything, I still watch videos from creators I follow, but I no longer instinctively reach for it to pass time.

Thanks for sharing, that's something I can probably draw some inspiration from. I never really thought about how often I reach to youtube to kill time, including putting something on when heading to sleep.

I've slowly pushed away the classic attention manipulating applications -- basically anything that will find new content to keep you engaged. Tiktok feels like the maximalist example, but other similar apps, social media text feeds, and parts of Youtube (though, I've so aggressively tuned Youtube that it has a very limited content base to show me.)

TV isn't for TV's sake; it's for relaxing a little with someone I care about.

I can read longer form news articles and not need to stay abreast of what's happening daily.

I've found that I'll eventually grow bored and annoyed with things meant to steal attention, at which point I'll excise them from my life. It just might take an unfortunate while to get there.