WorkInProgress

05-04-2021 After a full Easter weekend I spent the evening booking time based on my calendar, taking around an hour of time per 2 weeks. I am writing this in a short break (2 weeks to go). I will book another week and then go to sleep because it is to fucking late. As always there is a lot to do. I could stick to my commitments to personal hygiene drawing and time logging this week. @Pochatok and @Jason70, thank you both for checking out my sketches. I will work on copying a picture of myself until it is good enough to be used as a profile picture. It's really hard to get the proportions right. The second face looks at least similar enough to my picture and me that my son (3,5years) could identify that I was trying to draw myself 😄

I am glad my recommendation helps you a bit😁

😁 Loving programming wir Scratch. Awesome Project!

Yeah, LOL is draining a lot of energy if you immerse yourself in it. I think it's just hard for our brain to take in all these sensorial data and warp it into a strategy while still reacting at the moment. It is a very immediate feedback game. You run a little to far in and your dead and have to work with the disadvantage. I think this also why it is so addicting. I will never ever play LOL again. I lost too much life in this one. And it was too hard to get away. But cool that you can use games in this way. I remember playing as I was sick or after teeth operations and the distraction helped me a lot with pain and weakness. So I think that is actually a valid strategy if your not addicted.

Hey @Zeno of Elea, actually, never heard of Zeno, but interesting figure! I used games not as a measure to stop change but to escape/don't have to deal with bad things in my life. I think it is often the case that gaming is a learned strategy (which works in the short run) to deal with emotions. Where we never learned how to deal with these emotions in a healthy way we just adopted the first thing which consistently worked. It seems like you avoiding sadness. I recently read that sadness actually is necessary for acceptance. If you are sad that something is gone you accept that you can't change it and that it is okay this way. Without going through this emotional states feeling it on some level you can never accept and never move on. For me, the bad emotion triggering gaming is guilt/shame. The feeling of being inadequate. Instead, I should take it as a warning that either my self expectations or other peoples expectations are twisted in some way. And exploring if I actually am wrong and changing it or if the other people judging me wrong. This would enable me to be sad and accepting it or to get angry and changing something. Escapism does neither. It only stops the bad feeling until it gets to much. Best of luck at your detox 🙂

Welcome @ILoveBirds, It is a great start to list down why you came to this decision. I would advise you to start a daily journal and do commit to the 90 days of not gaming (even if you write you want to stop completely). There you can reflect daily on your feelings/cravings/problems and other like-minded people will give you advice. It is important to set up a system which helps you to stay consistent with it. And to commit to such a system is way easier if you commit for 90days instead for eternity. After this detox you'll be able to see clearer and decide again against gaming if you still like. But to commit to do something which is hard (and it is hard to stop gaming for 90days if you are addicted) and going through with it is worth the experience even if you should decide to play later on again. Best of luck!

2021-04-01 I am still awake at almost 23:00 and doing some work because it took a freaking long time for me to find the discipline to spent time working in the evening. I had a short day today because I helped my wife with the kids as she was exhausted. But I did not spend enough time this evening on work to be able to book 8 hours. But I wrote a LinkedIn article about the digital detox I am doing. Because its LinkedIn I dialed the drama down and neither named porn nor gaming at work but just wrote that I want to block feed media and YouTube (which I do). Let's see if anyone is reading it. But I felt like a blogger for a moment there. Tomorrow I plan on working directly at 8am and have an appointment with a colleague at this time. I wasn't able today to book my times, because of a technical problem at first and then getting distracted by other tasks. I think I have to work at Easter to get the things done I said I get done. That's annoying, but I guess I had it coming. I hinted so much at my wife already, but I'll try to do the work in the evenings if she has to be with my younger son anyway (because he can't sleep alone and is breastfeeding every half hour in the evening), and the older one is already sleeping. I think I'll challenge myself to draw a profile picture of my face this month and add this to my LinkedIn Account. That would be a tangible challenge. But right now I am going to sleep. I hope you have a good 1.April!

Interesting Chart. You seem to reach your fitness goals. Food expenses as a measure are kind of a funny way to display it, though. Regardless of the reason I think quality food is an excellent thing to spent your money on 🙂

Hey Theresa, If your not overweight be careful about setting goals regarding loosing weight. Especially for women (which get so much societal pressure to be unhealthy thin) this can lead in a bad spiral. Maybe set fitness goals instead? Like running longer distances or at a faster time? Fitness is the goal, not a low body weight. Other goals in the same direction would be a certain number of push-ups or being able to do a pull-up. If you are interested in body weight training, I can recommend you https://www.reddit.com/r/bodyweightfitness/wiki/kb/recommended_routine. There is a lot of good information in this Subreddit. If you miss chatting on discord maybe set up a zoom/WhatsApp call with family/friends? This always makes me feel better and more socially connected.

Hope this reaction went down fast. It sucks if you can't eat things you like. Especially if you don't have anything other in the house at the moment.

2021-03-31 Yesterday I felt better with everything blocked. Cleared my browser history to not get reminded at all these YouTube videos about hearthstone content. I was semi-productive at work, taking long breaks to listen to a podcast I found @dirac Journal. Still better than gaming, I guess. And it reminded me about responsibility and how it frees me. It's a strong concept which took me a long time to understand. But lately, I didn't incorporate it into my life. Escaping the hard things instead of embracing them as they come. But that is what I should do embrace the things that are hard, take responsibility for people surrounding me (especially my family) and find meaning in taking care of myself and others. I know that to marry and have a family at a relatively young age (became father with 27) was the best decision exactly out of this reason. Beforehand I drifted through life. Since then, I quit gaming, found a lateral entry in the IT-Industry which I love and became way more responsible in general. This helped my self-confidence. Lately, I lost all of that confidence and felt burdened by all the things I need to take care of. Overwhelmed and didn't take care for me. That's why shaving every morning is on my habit list. I want to ingrain in myself that I am important too. That it is okay to do more than the necessary for my body and my mind. In that spirit I will start the day by faking my time bookings for the month in a way that I don't get fired. It is time to get over with this, to have a new start. Thanks for reading 🙂

@dirac I read his first book "Models" and his second one, "The Subtle Art of not giving a Fuck". I enjoyed both content wise. But I also like his style. He is a funny dude. I can highly recommend his blog "https://markmanson.net/best-articles". Maybe you could start there to get a sense if he is for you. The books are similar to his blog posts but obviously bigger in scope.

Hey@Code, It is that you feel like you controlling your life again and work towards the things you aspire. I wish you it stays the way and if not, you find other ways that work for you. Best of luck with your company 🙂

Thanks for the link. Mark Manson is one of my favorite bloggers and I like how Peterson approaches self development 😄 Interesting Cast. Looking forward to listen to them

RTS and MOBA were my main culprits. But everything on the Internet with a competitive factor can lure me in as it gives me a way to totally focus on the game instead of reality. This is the factor which decides it for me. I can also do this in a more limited way with Anime Binging.

It's hard to say. I had many gamer friends and still have some friends who game and no one of them seems to struggle with it as I do. They waste time on it sure. But not in such a harmful way then I do. But of course, that's only one data point. It depends on how the statistics are measured. I guess the statistics are created by asking people how they feel about their gaming habits. Everyone in denial of his problem won't show up there. If they do it by measuring the time spent on games its quite possible that they measured too much game addicts because it's quite possible to play a lot without harming yourself. In the end it doesn't matter. How many is not the right question. The right question is: Is gaming addiction a real thing? My opinion: Yes. It is a real problem for some people (me included). People with this problem should get access to help. This forum is one way to receive this help.

@Jason70 Congratulations on 6 game free weeks 🙂 It seems like you are in a very reflective period and are still doing stuff you need to do. That is how progress happens. Audiobooks are a nice alternative to YouTube for me. Maybe this would be an idea for low energy states? I listened to a lot of self-improvement, but lately I enjoy listening to fantasy books. Right now I am finishing a series I started reading as a teenager (wheel of time). It's quite enjoyable.

2021-03-30 I used Blocksite to block me off from YouTube and several porn sites, because they tend to trigger me. I also secured it with a random generated password and gave it to a friend of mine. Afterwards I deleted the password. If I delete the extension/App it sends a mail to him. This way he keeps me accountable. To be not too harsh to myself I unblocked hacker news. This is for me like a weak social media version. I want to use some work time to learn Linux/programming again and HN kept me interested in that. As an application admin and this counts as education on the job. That's way better than gaming. I also followed through shaving this morning and spent the evening working. It feels like I am coming back on track. But I am still anxious about time logging. Maybe I do it this tomorrow for the whole month in bulk. Oh and I need to start drawing this evening 🙂 Hope your doing well. Bye Bye.

@TheNewMe2.0 Thank you for the wishes and for Reading.

Almost everyone who played a lot before detoxing, experiences low Energy Level. That is most likely missing Dopamin (which motivates you to do stuff) after hyperstimulation. After a while this normalizes. A thing which helps a Bit Here is physical activity. A good measure I found is: If it makes me swet it counts😉. I also dreamed about gaming in Detail after quitting. I also awoke and felt shitty because I relapsed until I realized IT was a dream. This also went away After a few weeks. These Things pass. Maybe It helps a bit to know this. Best of Luck to you. Mario

@POGtrick No one here is judging you. I can still remember the days when I was at university and would play 9hours a day while my wife was at work, only to lie that I have studied. Most of us have a similar backstory (or otherwise they wouldn't search for a forum about game addiction). If you play that much and stop gaming there will be a void to be filled. This has its blessings (time for family, reduced time stress, easier to care for your self) and its downfalls (no "okay" way to escape bad feelings, boredom, identity loss). Don't stop if you are severely depressed (i.e. suicide thoughts). If that's the case the first step is to find a psychiatrist and then a therapist while keeping this band-aid of gaming until you are better. If that is not the case I would advise you to go for it and quit for the 90 detox days. They will seem long, but afterwards you can really reconsider if you were better off, as you still gamed. For me personally it made a world of difference (even if I had a relapse lately and restarted today my detox). Also try not to fall for the sunk cost fallacy. It doesn't matter how much time you spent in gaming. The decision against does not depend on how much you already gamed. It only matters if this is the right thing for you. Best wishes, Mario

2021-04-XX - Objective: Be my own Master Key Results Draw every week one picture with pencil and paper, photograph it with my phone and share it here on monday. 100% of my time logged must be truthful from now on. Shave my face Monday - Saturday and my head on Sundays