Most people don’t have the concept of ROI on time, although time is the most valuable resource everybody possesses.
Sometimes you feel you are wasting your time. This is a sign of very low ROI of your time.
But nowadays, low ROI activities are concealing themselves with a very short time commitment so that many people are tricked into it.
Just like people don’t feel that bad to buy a small lottery ticket which likely has a negative return, people don’t feel that bad to waste 10 additional seconds.
When your marginal utility of watching one more short-video is low, this 10 additional seconds is a bad investments. What’s worse, you may keep doing this “bad” investments for some time, resulting in low ROI on 30 minutes of an hour.
Additionally, it’s very hard to measure the ROI on one more additional short-video. Someone could argue that the initial few ones are good, as they are likely the good ones based on other people’s feedback, or first few minutes of “taking a break” is good.
But that utility is decreasing gradually for every additional video you watch.
The incremental decline is too small for people to notice.
The best way to counter the impact for me is to stop at the end of the video and think what you get from it, and what else you want to watch instead of just accepting what the app gives to you.
If you watched short videos today, just try to ask yourself before you go to bed – what do you remember? I bet there is not much valuable info.
Be aware of your ROI on your time before you open the app and when you are using it. Don’t let your habit guide you.