Alkan

I'll check those out. I've already been in a process of self-improvement, so I do use a weekly planner in the form of the Calendar app on my mac. For eating healthy, I've been vegan now for nearly three years, but there's still plenty of junk. The trick is to be satiated. I actually feel overwhelmed by the amount of things that there are to read, and I actually rather enjoy the process when the book is worthwhile. 30 as a minimum on some days isn't even possible because of how busy I can become with school. As for books, I've been highly focused on social skills, and generally understanding psychology. So, I don't only read self-improvement books - I go for depth, and try to pick them apart. It's actually a bit of a addiction in and of itself, but it's a useful one. Knowing what's going on socially gives me a stronger feeling of confidence.

I'm Alex. I've had quite the damaging relationship with games and the internet. Both of them provide some sort of escape for me, as well as recovery from working too hard. I'm working to change these habits now. Since this will be my first entry, I want to start out by lining out goals: I'm quite interested in artificial intelligence. I would like to start a company some years, after developing the relevant skill-set (requiring hours of time not going to video games and pointless internet activities), or do fundamental research in that area. I also enjoy art and music. I am working on composing, drawing and performing. That's the long term vision. I enjoy games, art and music around a sort of central theme - exploring and creating worlds. I've used cycling to replace games with that, as well as looking at artwork, understanding art and making my own. I also create music for a similar effect - one of my favorite things about my brain is that certain types of music transport me to unusual places in my imagination, to quite an intense degree. Anyways, over the next week, I want to cut out all pointless activities involving the internet and basically cut usage down to the bare minimum for survival. I need to retrain my brain to not have constant stimulation. I've noticed that when I do this, if I do something like read a book, I can actually get goosebumps. If I'm overstimulated, that effect doesn't happen from reading. So, the list of goals is: -Train on the bike 4-6 times a week. -50 push ups every other day, +50 each successive week. Add an abdominal routine (planning on racing on the bike) -Eat healthily every day -Read something useful every day (30-120 minutes) -Follow a routine fairly strictly (no staying up late, wake up early, journal, make breakfast/coffee quickly, then go study/practice whatever I'm working on, literally every day, save special occasions) -Generally staying productive and in movement throughout the day, as well as strategically resting with replacement activities for games (and preferably something useful). -Not making a big deal out of missing goals so that I don't end up in a funk, or have an all-or-nothing mentality

I will do that. I'm Opus from the YouTube comments, btw.

Games, as well as internet addiction, particularly forums (ironic, isn't it?) have left a path of destruction in my life that, quite frankly, horrifies me. I can see so clearly the damage that has been done by my addiction. On and off, my greatest productivity has been in periods of least distraction. I've been on a path of self-improvement for about a year now. Yet, I've managed to delude myself about the elephant in my room - games and the internet. I've gradually come to understand the effect that these things have had on me, and the misery produced by getting stuck in them. Here I sit, exam tomorrow, not enough time to study, probably going to go poorly. It's my avoidance pattern - "I don't want to do this right now but I should. Well, this (insert game/youtube/etc.) won't take long..." and we all know how that inevitably ends. Every day, that has happened for the past few weeks. I got burned out and that caused the relapse. FFS, I had the first real migraine I've ever had in my life - all from poor sleep and staring at a screen for too long. I've gained back a lot of weight that I had lost. I'm just realizing, I should really list out the damage I've done, it's cathartic, like it's showing me how unworthy these menial things are of my time. I went cold turkey for two months early in the year. It was one of my most productive periods. I was able to get done in 6 hours what one would normally do in a couple of days. Think of the pomodoro technique (blocking time into 25 to 45 minute intervals). I was basically functioning like that for 6 hours straight with no breaks. It was glorious. I feel like my brain is still connected better from that session alone - and that was in February! Lol. My most productive period before that was a period where I took a very, very hard class (a math class with a ridiculous instructor). I mean, half of the class dropped out, and of the remaining 50%, half of them got a D or lower. I got a B. I wasn't playing games, I wasn't using the internet much. I wasn't perfectly optimized, I could have achieved an A otherwise. But, most of my grades are absolute garbage or mediocre. Games and internet are the things that correlate most strongly with screwing up. Shortly after this semester, I got complacent. "Oh, well, other classes are easy in comparison to this one because that teacher was ridiculous. I'm more clear headed now, I can probably handle World of Warcraft." That was nearly four years ago, and I'm still in school - that was sophomore year. Granted, my major is hard. But, if I can do that in a class like that, I could have cleaned up this degree a year ago. I'm here because I think that having a place to discuss this problem and get feedback from like-minded people is going to allow me to really quit for good. I want that two months to be my whole life - established routine, no worthless distractions, moving towards creating a legacy for myself, feeling confident, etc. I'm also here because it's incredibly relieving to be in a group of people who see it as a serious problem and take it seriously as something to avoid. Validation is an incredibly potent psychological mechanism - and that's why I think that this community will end up being an important factor in me making a much more lasting, permanent change.