How I break the habit of watching YouTube and use the time to write

If I can do it, you can do it too…

“OMG, I have wasted my time watching TV again.”, I wrote in my journal.

But that was not the worst, the worst is I have been writing that on my journal almost daily for a year or more.

Can you imagine wasting all that time in front of the tube at night and regretting what I did the night before every morning?

No ###ing way, I am not going to return to my vomit like a dog. I need to change.

But how?

How can I kick this bad habit and replace it with a good one?

Oh yes, Atomic Habit comes to the rescue.

I have been reading this book for a while now; it's time to put it into practice.

Step 1: Understand the cue to trigger my bad habit.

The book says there are cues that trigger our habits, whether they are good or bad. To eliminate bad habits, we need to remove the cues and to develop good habits; we need to create new cues.

I went back to my journal to find the reasons and cues for watching YouTube. I watch YouTube when I am mentally or physically exhausted at night.

The cue to trigger watching is sitting in my office at night and opening the laptop.

Understanding the cause and the cue gave me the idea to kick this habit.

To avoid getting too mentally or physically exhausted, I divided the day into time blocks. At the end of each block, I would reset by either stretching, taking a shower, or walking around the block to clear my head.

Since sitting in my office and using my laptop after work hours is the cue to watch YouTube, I avoid going to my home office at night and staying in the dining room instead.

Step 2: Focus on systems over goals to develop good habits.

According to the author, the goal is what we want to accomplish, and the system is how we get there. And the environment has a big impact on our habits.

We can also use habit stacking, which means attaching a new habit to an existing habit and using that habit as a cue for the new habit.

I want to develop the habit of writing at night.

Since I already have a regular routine at night: eat dinner between 6:30 and 7:00, then wash dishes afterward and wipe the dinner table, I just follow the flow to bring my laptop to the dinner table after wiping it and start writing.

The result is amazing.

I have stopped watching youTube at night and replaced it with writing since I implemented the methods above.

I hope my story can give you hope if you have similar struggles to mine.

I am a new writer, and I love to hear your feedback.

Happy writing.