I find YT a valuable resource for my geeky/tech interests. My approach to avoiding time suck is:

• use RSS rather than browsing to catch new vids from creators I value
• download with yt-dlp
• pull down “talking head” vids as audio-only and add them to the podcast queue instead of video queue
• work around the house wearing headphones for most vids, looking at the screen only when something visually important is happening.

While I’m writing this yt-dlp is pulling down the day’s video queue and storing it on the media server for later consumption.