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drflox

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  1. Thanks. I've been developing my own morning routine lately, (something that is recommended by all the health enthusiasts and successful people). Starting with a few simple things first, until I turn them them to a habit, and build on that. So far it includes: Not checking my phone when waking up (which was often the first thing I did). No social media, reddit or whatever for the first 30min or until I leave the house. Smile (feels still a bit forced though) Drink a big glass of water immediately to rehydrate and start metabolism. Spend a couple of minutes exercising (on my stationary bike), just ~3mins to wake up. Take a cold shower. (Its tough, but you feel like reborn afterwards) After breakfast, do some guided meditation (10-15min), to help stay more mindful throughout the day. I'm still working on getting to bed on time, to wake up refreshed without the snooze button and have more time for myself in the morning.
  2. I am big fan of Prof. Jordan Peterson's work and his youtube videos. So after hearing about this personality assessment method that he developed together with many other psychologists, I decided to give it a try (understandmyself.com, warning: the test is not free of charge). I thought it would help me gain some insights, but it turned out I am more puzzled and worried now than before. What it showed is that compared to the 10'000 people on which this scale was designed, I am scoring "exceptionally low" on the trait Extraversion, and I found the description quite fitting: "They find social contact rapidly draining and tiring, and uncontrollably crave time alone to recharge. They rarely plan parties, tell jokes, make people laugh, or volunteer for community activities. They are much more likely to be depressed and to have lower levels of self-esteem. [...]" Also I scored exceptionally low on Enthusiasm which is one aspect of extraversion. "They can be extremely hard to get to know, as they are neither chatty nor bubbly. When they do talk – and they do so rarely – it tends to be about things in which they find exceptional interest. They open up to other people with great difficulty, particularly in larger social gatherings or parties. [...] They clearly prefer solitude and find it difficult to enjoy themselves around other people. At most, they can handle social contact in tiny doses...." While its certainly better to know the truth than to live in a self-delusion, I am also quite discouraged by these results. First, I should probably learn to accept myself, because according to research it is very difficult, maybe even impossible, to change personality traits. But on the other hand they prevent me from making social connections, for which gaming has long been a convenient replacement. How could I possibly improve myself in those areas? Since I am such an extreme outlier compared to a really large population, I am not sure if thats even possible without professional help. The problem is though, that I am in a foreign country for the next couple of years, and the opportunities for social gatherings are more limited that somewhere where I would speak the local language.
  3. Day 71: I've been realizing during the last week or two, that I've started becoming less productive and neglecting my healthy activities (reading, workout, meditation..). Somehow, after an initial motivation boost, I unconsciously started filling my newly gained free time more and more with useless youtube, browsing, tv shows, porn, etc.. As some people in this forum also noticed and suggested, to really get the detox benefits, one has to either quit all electronic entertainment altogether or, what I think is possible, be very organized and strict in time management. I therefore started, in addition to this public journal, a daily mini-journal, where I just put some checkboxes and keywords of small things/goals that I want to achieve everyday. I've been reading up a lot about habit formation, breaking habit loops, how to build self-esteem, etc. in the last months, but haven't really applied any of this theory. Therefore I've come up with a list of small manageable steps, that I will try and post here in future updates.
  4. Sounds very familiar. I am on day 70 of the detox, but I still feel like I am drugging myself with other similar activities often with the sole purpose to escape reality or fill the time. I tried nofap in the past, but gave it up again. Maybe after seeing how surprisingly easy it was to quit gaming, and the strategies I learned from gamequitters, I can build on this success and apply it to more areas.
  5. Thanks for the tip. I browsed a bit through the content... even though theres nothing special that you couldn't find also on youtube, I could think of a really good use for it: Lots of people are struggling with youtube addiction, but aren't willing to block the site entirely, because they still want to look up the (rare) useful stuff. If they pay the ridiculous 0.99$ for this skillshare site they could finally block youtube and still have tons of videos to fill their free time. Maybe I'll try it for a while myself.
  6. I have a bit mixed feelings about these bibles like the DSM-5 or this ICD... it seems like some self-proclaimed experts and the pharmaceutical industry just come up with an arbitrary list of what is pathological and what isn't, trying to "invent" as many new mental disorders as possible. And I think thats how this news is perceived by the majority of people (just look at the comment section of the news sites). Even though I now agree through personal experience about this new "gaming disorder", most people reading the headlines will just shake their heads about it. I remember when I read about weird additions to the DSM, e.g. when you're grieving for more than 2 weeks about the death of a close person, it's a mental disorder. Who comes up with such arbitrary cut-offs? It has nothing to do with science. If I imagine myself back in the days of being a gaming addict (not so hard, since it was not long ago ) , I couldn't care less what some international organization of elitist academics that are out of touch with reality define as healthy or unhealthy. "Some overpaid authority figure wants to ruin my hobby? Awesome, thats exactly what I want to hear." Actually, now that I put it into words, I still think like this. What is important, and what perhaps hopefully comes out of this as a positive side-effect, is that we perform more research in this area. We need to know why and how exactly games are messing up peoples brains. I think the results, the hard cold data will speak for themselves. If you look at recent scientific literature, its shocking http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763416302925 what is revealed about brain changes.
  7. Thank you guys, and sorry for the long silence. Now finally an update. First of all, the good news: Detox day 58. I am still on track, with no intention to go back anytime soon. I've been keeping myself busy with work, which is not hard, there is always plenty of stuff to do and learn in my field. Then of course I want to study Korean, so I already have plenty of challenging, mentally engaging projects, and I never really felt bored during the whole 58 days. I also discovered that reading is a really enjoyable and relaxing activity for me. I especially like non-fiction, philosophical or popular psychology books (currently the six pillars of self-esteem, recommended on the gamequitters podcast). I am so glad that I received my fancy new e-ink tablet for reading and writing (nothing else, no web browser etc.) almost in the same week where I decided to quit gaming. I had pre-ordered over a year ago on kickstarter and actually wanted to cancel it during my gaming period, because back then I thought I have no time for reading anyways... "luckily" I was so preoccupied with gaming that I forgot to cancel it. I probably wouldn't have bought it for the retail price now which is twice as much as it was for preorders. This all may sound a bit too positive. I have to admit that a good portion of my former gaming time went into more youtube and web browsing in general. It's not all completely mindless stuff, but a lot of it is just to fill some void... which brings me to the next point: I am still struggling with the third component needed to replace gaming addiction: Social activities. I was always very introverted, and I was almost exclusively playing multiplayer games, which gave me the illusion to be among people. It was obviously a bit foolish of me to believe that throwing myself into the cold water by moving to a new country with a completely different language would be a good strategy to make me more social... Not that I regret coming to Korea, I am starting to like it here more and more, discovering new food, getting along quite well with coworkers, etc. It's just that I have no friends anymore, and weekends can feel somewhat lonely (I almost felt a bit relieved that we didn't have Christmas holidays here, except for one day off). And my social anxiety makes it not very easy for me to just go out by myself to explore the neighborhood etc... I registered on meetup.com, but the site doesn't seem popular here, there's nothing in my area except for some english/Korean language exchange meetups (for which I felt not enough prepared yet, and too shy). I did try a dating app and met someone (although only with help of lots of alcohol), but it quickly died off afterwards. And I am currently just not in the mood to start some romantic relationship. So far I've been studying Korean only by myself with videos/websites, but this week I will finally go to some classes that another work colleague recommended... meeting some other foreigners there may be helpful. Don't get me wrong, tough, I am really quite happy. I like my work, which to a large part is also my hobby, and the work environment is excellent, the boss, and the people are all really great. That's the most important thing for me. Overall I am quite optimistic for 2018, basically every aspect in my life is only improving. Let's see if this is also the case for my motivation to write journal entries...
  8. I already gave a bit of info about the start of my 90 day detox and the history of gaming habit in the introduction , so I'll spare the history lesson here. I has been over one week now, and except for very special occasions like travelling or being sick, there haven't been many longer time periods in my life since being a kid, without playing at least some sort of video game. Nevertheless, it has been surprisingly easy so far... I had no desire, no cravings whatsoever (except for occasional boredom) to go back to gaming. (However, I had similar experiences when I tried the nofap challenge some time ago, and it got unbearable after around 1-2 weeks, so lets see whats coming...) I think it all comes down to the mindset witch which you are approaching this. You can start the detox and think "Now I'm going to torture myself for 90 days, every day is gonna be horrible, but maybe at least I will learn something about myself..." , or to quote someone from the gamequitters podcast, you can just think "This chapter of my life is simply over now." It doesn't mean I necessarily regret every moment I spent gaming. There were certainly good times with friends (especially in the pre-internet era, split-screens games and LAN-parties). I am thankful that I was gifted with a high self-control and could enjoy gaming as teenager without messing up my education, although I wish had used more of that time to practice my social skills. But now I am looking forward to a new chapter in my life, and in this chapter there is simply no mention of gaming whatsoever. There are millions of other fascinating things to do, some of which may bear the risk of turning into a new addiction. But that's fine, with this exercise I am practicing my skill for self monitoring and trying to find the most meaningful hobbies and activities. The main thing I noticed already in this first week, is that I am much more motivated to got to work and to stay at work. Before, I literally considered every minute I stayed late in the evening as wasted precious game time. Now, since this escape is no longer available, I am trying to make my work as exciting as possible, by giving my best, learning new stuff, and improving my relationships with my colleagues (still a long way to go). A side effect is though, that I often get home a bit later and I am more exhausted, therefore not really motivated to study languages or doing much productive for that matter... Still have to figure out alternatives to relax and better time management.
  9. Hello everyone, I'm new here . I basically decided to quit gaming during the interview with Molyneux. I am still a bit embarrassed to admit this addiction (I would have claimed it doesn't exist until recently). So to keep my anonymity, let's just say I come from somewhere in Europe and I am over 30. I've been a rather heavy gamer ever since my brother and I got our first Super Nintendo in elementary school. Even though I always had a decent gaming PC and the latest games, it didn't seem to affect my school performance very much. I was just a smart kid and as long as I brought good grades home, my parents supported my hobby and paid for new PC hardware and games ("better he stays in his room than drinking alcohol and smoking..."). The problem was just that I had absolutely no social life, except for one or two best friends (with whom I just played games all the time). Getting older, my gaming habit became more and more problematic and my social deficits due to lack of experience more and more noticeable. At the university, I felt totally out of touch with the people my age. So, gradually, gaming turned into an escape from reality. Even though it wasn't even as much fun anymore as it used to be, I found myself incapable of doing anything else with my free time. Anyways, skipping forward a couple of years, I got this great opportunity to move to Korea and work here. It had been a dream of mine for a long time, and I never thought it would become true. I was aware that it will be a challenge, in addition to starting a new work, which is always hard, I also have to learn the language, different customs, organizing everything without any help from parents or friends, who are all far away. But I was motivated to tackle this challenge. But what did I do instead? Every evening, I immediately opened my laptop and started some stupid game, and didn't stop until late at night. No time for studying the language, no time to make new friends, to cook something etc... I even started to notice some severe sleep deficits. Gaming had been my way to cope with stress for a long time, and this new situation was more stressful than anything before, so the gaming got totally out of hand. When I then even started skipping workdays (I always had some reasonable excuses, e.g. I had to wait for the delivery of furniture or important documents at home, pretended to "work" from home, ...) and started spending whole weekends nonstop gaming instead of exploring my new surroundings, while ignoring any calls and messages from friends and family, I realized something is now out of control. That's when I begrudgingly decided to listen into this Molyneux-Cam Interview, which - as a regular molyneux listener - I had seen on the podcast playlist for days, but ignored... maybe out of fear that it might challenge me. Well, it did. And the challenge turned out to be easier than I expected! I didn't hesitate to uninstall steam, and didn't have any desire to go back since. Maybe cravings will come during the 90 days of detox, but for the moment I am absolutely motivated to finish it. I feel like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders and I finally have time to focus on the things that are really important.
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