I’m excited to write this post because I’ve recently made a big step in overcoming something that I’ve struggled with for a few years.

In the past, I sometimes got into a pattern where I stayed up late every night, woke up early for school, and felt tired all day. Since I wanted to get to school on time, the place that I tried to shift things was in staying up late.

One thing I tried several times was to decide to go to bed earlier. This meant doing less each night; specifically, watching less YouTube. This eventually failed because I felt deprived and like wasn’t watching as much as I needed to, so I would stay up late catching up.

It really stunk because I often didn’t even enjoy watching the videos. I was giving up having energy the next day to spend time doing something I didn’t enjoy.

Since my phone won’t let me uninstall YouTube, another thing I tried was to hide the app so that I wouldn’t use it. This worked for a while but eventually I caved and started going into the hidden apps menu and watching YouTube anyway.

 

Recently, I was reading an online thread about bad habits people have gotten into, I found this comment that really stuck with me:

“I only stay up late to do something that I would wake up early to do. There’s very little I would wake up early for.”

Since about a week ago when I read that, I’ve hidden the YouTube app again, and now every time I look at the blank space where it used to be and wonder if I should try to get around the hidden thing and use it anyway, I stop, I ask myself if I would get up early to do it, the answer is no, and I go to sleep.