WorkInProgress

Hey Mike welcome to the forums, great job on stepping out of the sunk cost fallacy. It is hard to say goodbye to something you invested energy and money into. You become attached to it. But that doesn't mean it is still a good iea to keep it around. I remember when I came to a similar decision as I failed over and over again to play Lol in moderation. Other people can do it, I can't. So I gave my account away to the little brother of a friend and let him change the password. Because I have no direct contact to him this worked well. And I never regretted it (but I made the same errors on other games later). We are both in very different spot of our life: a retired 63 year old grandfather and a 28 year old young father just out of college trying to make sense of his life. But I am sure that stoping uncontrolled behaviour and escapism is beneficial for everyone who dares to quit his old ways and start new positive habits. My life became incredible busy lately with starting to work fulltime and taking care of my new family but I find this way to life harder and way more rewarding then my previous lifestyle(waiting for my wife to leave to work / pretending to study and actually bingeplaying 50-100% of the time she was away). I think beeing busy with fullfilling activities like family and improving yourself (in what area you like) is a great way to life your life. In my experience if you stop gaming your problems doesn't end but you trade up the sort of problems you have. From: how to supress my bad self-esteem because of my non-existing achievements and self deceit to How am I able to work efficiently enough that I can justify going home earlier to see my son and play with him. I think with your action to delete this characters and staying game-free for almost two weeks you did a great step in the right direction. Just remember that it takes time to build new habits and change your own behaviour. It is definitely possible to change substantially but it happens over time when you put the effort in and not in one quantum leap. If you have any questions or need some input of any sort just ask (feel free to send me a pm or ask here in the journal) and we will be happy to help you, because everyone here can emphatize with your struggles and want to see you succeed. Best of luck!

Hey great job getting your shit together.

16.03.2018 I fall out of habit in journalling because I am pretty busy and didn't wanted to make time for it. Even right now I am lending the time from a project so I keep it short. With my son in my life I am challenged to be very efficient with my time which is a great thing and I am actually doing surprising well. Maybe I was never lazy but jsut not challenged enough in the right way. In my second Month on my first stop I started slacking off and this annoyed me. So I started last week a new routine: I list every activity, start and and time on a DIN A5 ring binder at my office and let it lay open. So far noone seemed interested but it helps me to really be honest baout myself. I will also add time for my gq-time and toilet/coffee breaks. But even with this not so productive work month I am convinced that noone at work even recognized it and I am doing really well at my highest priorty right now. My family. I was able to taike care of my son right after work and finishing early almost every day because I started so early (around 6am). I also take care to take time every morning to be thankful about my luck to have such an amazing wife and son and spend some 1on1 time with my whole focus at my wife if my son has his first long phase of sleeping. I take one hour every day 4:30am-5:30-am to learn cs fundamentals and take right now the harvard course Introduction to programming CS50. And enjoy the linear and structured way of learning. I even gotten ebtter not to delay going to work because I wanted to solve a little program. I lsiten to audiobooks while commuting to work and alter between classical fiction/self development/work related stuff. So basically my typical workday is pretty structured and effective. One hour of studying, 1 hour of audiobooks while commuting, 9 hours at work, and around 5 hours at home spent with my family or at chores which needs to be done. I fit in some reading on my kindle-app or quora if I have some spare time. I am doing fine but in the future I want to reduce the amount of work to have more time to learn new things and spent with ym family. That's why I am workigna t curshing it at work so I can confidently ask for raises in the enxt 2 years or find a bette rjob to realize the 35h week for more money. I will update this journal from time to time but won't commit to anything ;) I hope you are all doing well. If not be assured that it is possible and it jsut takes time and effort. If you stick at gamequitting and improving yourself it will pay off. I experienced it and saw it in other cases where people seemed much more hopeless then myself. Keep doing good things and good things will happen to you!

16.03.2018 -> stopped this recording here because it wasn't my priority. I think it won't change in the enar future, because I have a good planning routne right now and it is offline. I don'T want spent too mcuh time creating more or less arbitrary weekly goals and isntead focus on family, work and important habits in this order. Just in case someone was worried. I am doing fine and thank you for your thoughts.

Hey that insurance thing sucks. I wish you the best and hope things get better soon.

Great to see your thriving. Especially on the social site you seem to harvest your deserved crops. Keep going you are awesome but I am sure you can be even more awesome ;)

Consider me in the indifferent section :D. Good job on improving so much and facing your life head-on. - Sober for almost 15 months now - Keto for 1 month & been paleo with intermittent fasting for several months before - Lost over 10 kg - I hate working out, so I don't, but I enjoy long likes, so I do that. -> awesome! Im proud of you!

Hey there. You are doing a lot right now. Working exercising studying. That is great but as you allready recognized can be dangerous. I am not saying stop moving but I merley suggest to go a little bit slower in the right direction. You wrote in the last 5 posts that you feel tired. Maybe it si time to search out some activities where you don't push yourself but instead jsut do them and try to enjoy yourself as much as possible. Meet with friends and family, phone, take walks for enjoyment. All these things have the double benefit of having positive impacts to your life (social, movement) without beeing goal focussed and requiring you to improve at them. I think it can be very tiring to be so hard on your self. The key is to do things that are good for yourself. this can but doesn't ahve to be hard work. I found the question "Is this good for me?" a great way to evalue things. Is occasional gaming good for me? I tried and realised it triggered a lot fo bad habbits and made me feel worse overall, without significant positive effects. so the answer is no. Is junkfood good for me? Again no Is working a lot good for me? It depends. do I work for higher goals and is the work in line with my priorities (family > health < progress in life). then yes. You get the jist. The thing I think especially valuable at this question is the flexibility it provides. The answers will change for every person and every phase of life. And it still will aid you in your decisions. My personal experience is that if you are able to do mostly things which you deem good for you will feel content with your life. If not you feel like something is off. If this is the case right now you should take some time to revesit your activities and ask yourself this question. Is this good for me?

Week 8: 19. February 2018 - 25. February 2018 Results Exercise every day for 5min or more (check) do my work all my work tasks as fast as possible and only use half of the remaining time for programming estimate time on every task and plan it in my pomodoro calendar. (failed, because not a proper metric) Wear shirt, nice shoes and tie every day to work. ( Measurable goals for this week Exercise every day for 5min or more Wear a shirt and shave every day to work and buy new fitting basics. Leave a voice mail in telegram/whatsapp at 3 persons that are important to me daily. Reasons for goals I don't have the best wardrobe yet (so for example my tie doesn't look good with my more casual shirts). That is why I tried to buy some clothes on amazon but sadly they didn't fit well. So I'll need to buy some clothes in person in a shop. I spend a lot of time at work and at home with my wife and son. While these are great investments of time and in line with my priorities, I want to also let the other people outside my inner circle know that they are important to me.

Cool stuff. Using your scripting powers for good.

Thats awesome man! Let's continue this way up :)

You can't you ahve ask an admin for assistance. But I am sure Hitaru, Cam or Stablish will help you out if you specify what posts you want to have deleted.

Week 7: 13. January 2017 - 17. February 2018 Results cold showers [abandoned, 2/3 Weeks] exercise [3/3 Weeks] workout log [forgot 0/0 -> not priority] pomodori 50 [abandoned -> 0/3 Weeks -> to harsh] New measurable goals for this week Exercise every day for 5min or more do my work all my work tasks as fast as possible and only use half of the remaining time for programming estimate time on every task and plan it in my pomodoro calendar. Wear shirt, nice shoes and tie every day to work. Reasons for goals This minimum of exercise is needed to keep my muscles healthy at my desk job. I need to be a better employee to feel good about myself again. Not working and programming all the time under the hood of "learning" isn't authentic and makes me feel bad about myself. If I manage to supersede the expectations in me then I can use the existing free time to improve my self on faintly work related tasks. But only then. My time management needs to be extraordinary to be reliable and still be able to reach my personal goals. I listened to an audio book which implied that styling yourself more professional than needed influences people implicitly in thinking you are taking your job serious and are professional. It also helps you to feel more professional. This is what I am aiming for with this goal. I also enjoy being well-dressed so this is a win-win-situation even if I get some flack for it at work.

Hey there I read you last entry and think you could benefit by J. Petersons lectures. He is a Professor at a canadian unversity and talks about Psychology, Sociology, Myths and Relgigion and connects them to the subjct of how you should live your live. I think he has some high level thougts about it and I think that he could really speak to you. Here is an example video. I can also recommend his book in the audioversion (12 Rules of Life: An antidote for chaos.)

29.01-2018 - 04.02.2018 (Part 2) I am doing shitty things lately so I want to write it down here instead of hiding from it. I have officially set aside 50% of my time to learn the programs and earn some certifications my company needs. This week I used this time to learn to program. The whole monday and 3 hours at Tuesday and Wednesday. This also meant that I wouldn't plan my tasks or keep myself accountable for anything else because: a job in software development seems still shiny and interesting and needs practice. Better I neglect my job then my family. Right! Right??? My original plan was to work an hour a day on the programming project. In all fairness it will help my jobskills because the mentioned programs are written in java (the language I am learning right now) and it is quite feasable that this Java kowledge will come to good use in the long term if I develop a plug-in for example. My awesome program whcih utilises a cool grammarlike structur to evaluate calculations in the command line won't do that to much though. The main thing is that I get my stuff ordered again. I think it somehow influences me in bad way that I never reach my work goals. So I kind of given up on my pomodori count. That is stupid. I think I adjust it to a period I can actually manage and then increase it. Like 6 pomodori a day. I can do this befor lunch and be done with it. And if something distracting come sin or meetings get in the way I am still able to do it consistently. I also need to study the things I should study, when I say I study them. I need to fulfill the promises I make to myself or otherwise I won't be so different then the person I was 2 years ago. No ambition no self-esteem nowhere to go then to the next binge. I need to be able to trust myself. Maybe I learned know that I still really like to get into software development and should make this a valid longterm goal (instead of managing and earning a lot of money). I also learned that my working routine is fragile and needs enforcement before I can rely on it. I will write a really basic day plan which i will follow every day. For this to work it needs to be simple and somewhat flexible

Week 5: 29. January 2017 - 04. February 2018 Results cold showers (failed) every two days times upper body (2*12 PU / 3*5 R) (check) every two days core and Legs (60 sec planks / 60 sec hipraise / 20 lunges (each leg)) (check) pomodori 50 or more (failed) Next week cold showers excercise (upper boddy, core and legs) workout log pomodori 50

29.01-2018 - 04.02.2018 I changed the Format because I eat sweets again from time to time. This journal is meant to be open end now too. This will most likely damage my motivation to write in it a bit but make it more standarized which I feel like it is a good deal (I will reread teh stuff I wirte her periodically and am fairly motivated without a counter because I actually like journalling). Last week I did one warm shower. It felt great but my skin reacted pretty fast. I think I stick to cold showers for now. I also ate a lot of sugary things outside of home. It is really suprising how much sweets are thrown after you if you watch it closely. If I wanted I could easily eat some sugary crap everytime at office without paying for it. I will in future only eat sweets if someone baked/cooked it, otherwise I can jsut go back to binge-eat tons of choc. My workout routine seems to work out great. I sometimes didn'T do it at the weekend because My daily routine works only at work hours where I am awake at 4:30 and in total control of my time. I've made a nice daily plan and am able to somewhat do things repetedly in a routine way. I am not entirely sure but I think I gained some musclemass. in the chest. Maybe it is jsut fat after more sweets last week Atleast my stance is improving for sure which lets my chest muslce look bigger I guess. My working goals wasn't met again. It is actuallyquite hard to hit 10P/day if you have to do spontaneous tasks every day. These will cut into your pomodoros. Still my overall productivity is high and I slowly get a vision of my next few years working. I will prioiritize getting technical skills and then aim at a managerial role. I like to work with people and even sell stuff, but I want to feel the nerd in me first and be actually able to create some cool programms. I want to feel the power to let that damn computer do my bidding. This is why I will focus on getting my programming skills in the Java-Environment. The software I will consult other firms about is written in Java and I am aiming to writing plug-ins for it. It will also allow my to focus more on my OOD which is a weak point in my knowledge. It is pretty cool that I can choose to some degree what I am working on because I can justify learning java at my working hours if I keep the time investment reasonable and still get stuff done. I also try to fulfill my prioriites (Family first!) with beeing as invested as possible if I am home. My mobile phone should be loading and my thoughts and my focus is laying entirely on my son or my wife. This is something which needs effort because starting in the working live I got ambitious. But family is still my priority. So I need to act like it. I do so far but I need to watching me closely there.

It is great that you experience life more intensely after youw ent away from gaming. I experienced the same thing. It happens if oyu use it long enough to escape bad feelings and stay stuck in the dopamine loop. You get insensitive for real life and everything seems to suck. Getting in touch with your emotions let you see what you really want (or not want). And just that is almost enough to come to a better place in life.

https://markmanson.net/fear-of-missing-out

My favorite game is life. Rabbit hole refugee. Addicted on live. Im in the middle of the ultimate game. (Back: It feels so real!) In reality their is no bonus-life

You seems to struggle with a few things I struggled to in the past. A great book on the topic which helped me immensely to clarify my thoughts is "Models" from Mark Manson. You can check his website to see if you like his style and if he makes sense for you. Take this example article (https://markmanson.net/the-secret).

Congratulations on deleting the Accound. I gave mine away to a friends little brother even before gamequitters. Still quitting lol was the turning point in my life. Away from gaming from 6am until my wife got back from work and telling her I studied. Away from this version of myself.

Two things. Social dinking can eb a problem. Especially if your not used to it. The problem is that your decision making is getting worse the more your drink and it easy to losse control (that is the fun part also). I would advice you to stay with low percentage alcohols (like beer and wind) and drink plenty of water on the side. This way it easier to se the point where you should stop but still feel drunken. Towards the nofap thing I am not so sure abeut the benefit of it. I think it can be helpful to know that masturbation is a want and ot a need. You'll don't need to do it. It is just a habit. But to ban masturbation for eternety seems a bit rush. In my opionion it is important to ban porn out fo your life because it gives you this fast dopamine rush. Masturbation itself if it is done in the context of taking care of yourself and actually feeling what is going on with your body can actually be helpful to your own sexuality. I think even if you doing a nofap counter for some time I would advice you to limit it to a set period and then find a healthy way to do it without porn. Atleast that is my experience with it and I was missusing porn all the time in the past. Also good job on beeing more social. This is important. you social system aorund oyu keeps you healthy and happy.

Feel free to share your podcasts if you want some feedback. Good job on producing an episode even if you feel unproductive.

Hey good job on sticking to your comittments and reaching out to find other people. You say you don't want to have only casual conversations and that you need some time to feel comfortable around new people. It seems like it is hard for you to open up and to let your emotions through. But you have the desire to change that and you did take action to change it by reaching out to all these sites and searching for connection.Whilst it is good that you search for opportunities to meet new people I would ask you to try to be more open with the people around you. BE more social with them and try to share your feelings in a way that they understand what is going on with you. Don't get me wrong: in my opinion this is quite a challenge. If I could give you any advice from my distant point of view, I would say focus on the way you behave in social situations. Try to aim for friendly, open and optimistic. Try to be interested in what's going on in their life. Try to find the hidden treasures in the experiences of the people around you. If you can do this it will be easy to find interesting beautiful people everywhere. If you then move away or find a group of like minded people it will be easy to get to know these new people because you learned that everyone has interesting storys to share.