Breaking the Feed
I’ve had blogs before. Two, maybe three incarnations. None made it past five posts. They were for readership - for getting people to care about what I write. This one is different. This is me writing for me, documenting things in a way that won’t get lost.
That this blog exists at all is because of something I did in October.
For years I was a consumer. YouTube, X, podcasts. Some of it was genuinely interesting - long-form interviews, technical deep dives, things I’ll remember. But the overwhelming majority was forgettable. Non-Lindy. Stuff I could have found if I ever actually needed it. Too much attention on things way beyond my control. Geopolitics. Culture wars. US politics. Memes that felt sharp in the moment and dissolved by the next day.
I wasn’t unhappy. I was just… full. No space for anything to form.
At some point in October I hit a wall. Not dramatically - just a quiet realisation that I wasn’t reading books anymore. Wasn’t building anything. Was just receiving.
So I decided to break it. Cold turkey. But I wanted to do it properly.
I could have just deleted the apps. That’s the efficient move. But I didn’t want efficiency. I wanted to make the algorithm itself unavailable - so that even if I opened YouTube again on my laptop, it would have nothing to recommend. And I wanted to feel the weight of what I’d accumulated. Every subscription, every follow, every signal I’d sent to the machine about what to feed me next.
It took two hours.
Two hours of clicking “Not interested” on videos. Unfollowing every handle on X. One by one. It was tedious. That was the point. Each click undid something I’d done casually, instantly, without thinking. Following someone takes a second. Feeling the mass of two hundred follows takes two hours of your evening.
By the end my feed was blank. The algorithm had nothing.
Within weeks I’d built Runistry - a web app to analyse my running data. Then Slate - a keyboard-first todo app that works the way my brain does. Then this blog.
I don’t think any of that happens if I’d just deleted the apps. Something about the ceremony mattered. The purge created space, but it also marked a line. Before and after.
The feeling now is different. When I sit down to work on something, there’s no pull. No gravity drawing me back to check what’s new, what’s happening, what I might be missing. The ideas have room to develop. Problems stay in my head long enough to actually solve.
Looking back, it’s hard not to see it as addiction. The language fits. Tolerance - needing more content to feel stimulated. Withdrawal - the restlessness of the first few days. The ritual of the purge itself, like flushing pills down the toilet.
I’m not writing this as advice. I have no idea if it would work for anyone else, or if I’ll sustain it. I’m writing it because I’m genuinely thankful I could turn the corner. I could still be watching YouTube Shorts. I could have discovered TikTok. Instead I’m here, typing this.
Scott Adams died a few days ago. His last words asked people to pay it forward. Be useful. I don’t know if this is useful to anyone else. But if documenting what worked for me helps even one person recognise the weight they’re carrying, that’s enough.
This blog exists because of two hours of clicking “Not interested.”