Comment by nanook

The thing that helped me tame YouTube was creating separate channels for my various interests. This keeps all my relevant subs in one place and really helps the algorithm. I turn off all the feeds on my main computer using https://socialfocus.app/. This prevents me from going down a YouTube hole when I don't want to but my searches and views still tune the respective algorithms. Occasionally, a stray recommendation will show up in the feed and I try to mark it "Not Interested".

Now its a real joy checking my channel feeds on the weekend and queueing things up to watch later. I have excellent stuff to chew through when I feel like it - in the gym, cooking, cleaning etc. I really look forward to doing these things now.

Switching profiles takes a few clicks but the upside has been totally worth it. It's a shame they don't make this workflow more obvious (You have to go to Account -> Switch accounts -> View all channels -> Create a channel) to set this up.

I wish more social media allowed you to bucket your feed into "interests". Maximizing clicks/views doesn't have to come at the cost of scattered attention.