You can approach this from different "zoom levels". In the narrow sense, disable recommendations for channels that are the most useless timesinks with irresistible titles and thumbnails that you find annoying in retrospect. You can click the three dots and click "Don't recommend this channel". Similarly you can click that you're not interested in a recommendation. This will make the main page less of a candy store. uBlock origin can help hide Shorts and other annoyances.

Still, you may then do something else that can also be considered a distraction, like refreshing the news, or Reddit or HN. So the more "global" approach is to look at your life setup and figure out why you feel the need to fill time like this.