Watch Later on YouTube

YouTube is fantastic video machine. The fact that anyone can create a video and upload it - have users discover the video through its recommendation engine all while being free for the user and paying the creator all done in real-time.

It’s a marvel of software engineering.

I find the YouTube machine so powerful that whenever I start using YouTube late at night, there have been times where I goto bed late - too late, because I went down a “YouTube Hole” - where the recommendation engine is so good, I just keep watching the next recommended video.

It’s so hard to resist!

Other than outright banning YouTube from my life - I found the next best solution to let me watch videos on YouTube without falling into a hole:

The Watch Later Playlist

When ever I load up the YouTube app and see videos on the home page that I really want to watch - I put the video onto the Watch Later playlist. When I want to watch something on YouTube, I watch from the bottome of my Watch Later playlist instead of the home page.

This is kind of “time-shifting” my entertainment desire - everything on my Watch List is something I found interesting enough to put on in the past. I can watch the video with a more even head instead of the excitement in the moment.

Watching YouTube videos also leads me to: “what was I thinking?!” when the video popped up or even: “I’m not so interested anymore” response.

This approach to watching videos on YouTube is healthier for me. I still enjoy great videos from YouTube and a sustained pace.

I also don’t stay up so late because of YouTube.