karabas

Day 62/120 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) Sleep before 12am: 0 (longest streak: 17) No phone in washroom 9/120 Umra resolutions: 0/90 Work Hours: 31:55 this week (so ~1:30 behind) Still struggling with a couple of things. First of all: sleep. It's the never-ending vicious cycle: I get crap sleep -> I have less willpower & focus -> I'm not productive -> I stay up late to be more productive -> I get crap sleep. This is not good, especially since it's winter time and morning prayer is so late, I need to be in bed by midnight and I can still get a full 8 hours of sleep. Sigh. The second problem is that my willpower is eroding my habits. I've watched a couple of vids (it was a bit in a gray area of "I need to/I want to"). I also spend too much time on FB and the like. I'm gonna put my phones away in a different room starting from today: they've been my biggest distraction. My spiritual routine's wrecked. I'm doing maybe a quarter of what I was doing before. Thankfully, I still go to the mosque once a day, which I feel good about. Hopefully I can maintain at least that and build back the rest of the habits.

Day 58/120 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) Sleep before 12am: 0 (longest streak: 17) No phone in washroom 5/120 Umra resolutions: 0/90 Work Hours: 6:20 (12:40 this week) Vacation wrecked havoc on my habits. I even relapsed on using my phone in the washroom, which is seriously retarded. I wasn't able to keep up with my spiritual routines even when reducing them by half, but I think by the time I realized it was too hard while on vacation, I already burnt out. Lesson for the future. My sleep is also way off, but I'm hoping I can restore it in the coming days. Same for the my spiritual routines... I'm doing most of them, just not all. So I'm hoping to get back into the swing of things over the next few days. Work is going OK. I also registered my business, opened bank accounts, got a domain name. I'm trying to do the bare minimum for launch & then work my way through the rest once things are going. I have a few emails to finish up before I can launch + a couple of landing pages to make. Let's see. The biggest constraint is time right now. A lot of work piled up while I was on vacation, so I'm mostly busy with client stuff. Not much time for working on the business. Obviously, the biggest win is that I'm still not watching vids. I'm almost 2 months into it now, which is huge. The only issue has been my partial return to facebook usage, but it's been fairly mild so far. I'll try to wind it back again.

From my experience, it's best to just embrace these periods. Yes, you're not being "productive", but family is family and you only have these periods in your life a few times a year. It's worth it to just let go of the idea of being productive in this time (as long as you're not gaming/relapsing/etc) and be present with your folks. It's a good way to relax after all the hard work, so why stress yourself out unnecessarily? You're going to get plenty of stress in a few days when you get back to studying ?

Hey Ahmad, Nice to have you here! Don't worry: being a person you want to be is a process, not an overnight change. Best wishes to you and do update here as regularly as you can. It might seem weird talking about your detox, but it's a super helpful process in the long term.

Day 43/120 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) Sleep before 12am: 0 (longest streak: 17) No phone in washroom 46/120 Umra resolutions: 0/90 Work Hours: not counting (vacation) It's been a bit hard following my umra resolutions since I've been on vacation with family. My sleep is a bit off - not terrible, mind you, but here going to bed at 12 means waking up at 6:30 for prayer and then going back to sleep... which means I'm always tired. And it also means when I get up, it's late and I need to go spend time with family, which leaves little time for my spiritual routines. I've decided to decrease my goals while I'm traveling - halve everything, so it should take me 15 minutes in the morning and in the evening. Should be doable. I'm not on my computer much since I'm not working - so videos aren't really a problem. I'm over 1/3 of the way to my goal, which is exciting. Hope everyone had good, non-relapsing holidays ? Hey, thanks! I appreciate it ?

Day 37/120 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) Sleep before 12am: 1 (longest streak: 17) No phone in washroom 39/120 Umra resolutions: 24/90 Work Hours: not counting (vacation) The trip was long and tiring. But so far, so good. Nothing to update except that I'm still staying off of games and videos ?

Hey Deku, Been meaning to post this a little bit earlier, but: As far as I remember from my med school friends is that the MCAT is basically a summary of all the science you've learned in your undergrad. So the big problem people have is they study, say, Organic Chem in their first year of uni and then have to basically re-learn it for the MCATs. I'd strongly encourage you to check out spaced-repetition flash card methods (there's plenty online about them). You can get a free app like Anki, which does the spaced repetition bit automatically. Basically, every time you get a card right, it increases the amount of time it waits to show it to you again. If you get it wrong, you see it again the next day. But as you keep going, you only need to review a card once every few months to remember it. If you do this at this point in your studies, you should be able to maintain a lot of your knowledge into the MCATs, which will save you time. Actually, it'll also just save you time in terms of studying for your finals. If you're constantly reviewing your flash cards, you won't need to study extra for the final, because you'll still remember everything. And with phone apps, you can now do this kind of studying while commuting, walking, eating, or anything else. It's something I wish I knew about when in university and it's definitely helped me a lot with studying now.

Oh, but, as a side note: while I also agree with the natural disinterest bit, be careful: it's not enough to protect you from relapsing (I know through experience). Better to stay away from games if you can.

Awesome man, so glad you're doing better. That sounds like a useful book. I might check it out. Thanks ?

Day 33-4/120 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) Sleep before 12am: fail (longest streak: 17) No phone in washroom 36/120 Umra resolutions: 21/90 Work Hours: 1:20 Thursday, 3:10 Friday (15:50 this week) Thursday was a bit of a disaster. We're traveling on Sunday and we couldn't find my wife's passport. So we spent half a day panicking and looking for it all over the house (thank God, it turned up eventually). We also had class and had to prepare for it, etc. So basically I didn't get a lot of work in. Friday was better. Took some time off to visit a friend's family in the countryside, which was wonderful. My ears always feel very strange because there's no background noise at all. Clean air and fresh olive oil on top of that... what else can you ask for? I came back home and got some work in. Still headed to bed late, but a bit earlier than the past couple of days. I'm holding out for Saturday. I'm hoping we can check in to the hotel early-ish and be asleep before midnight. This should help get me back on track. I think my plan for when I'm spending time with my family is to stick to the 12am deadline. The prayer times are shifted there and I'd be better off sleeping at 11pm to get my 8 hours of sleep, but I just don't think that's feasible given that all my relatives have a predilection for staying up super late. Even 12 is going to be a challenge. Overall I'm looking forward to taking a bit of time off work and just spending time with my family. I think I can be more present with them now that my detox is finally having an effect.

Jumping in here because I saw your last post in the feed. Stop reading the news or your FB feed. Seriously. The world isn't that bad, but you're not going to see anything good while you're consuming this stuff (because they focus on the negative). News consumption and social media have now been linked to depression in studies, so I'm not pulling this out of my butt. It only appears that it's not having a change. Trust me, it's having an effect. If you like reading, check out the book "Mastery". It talks about how anyone practicing a skill encounters a "plateau" where practice doesn't seem to have an effect on their skill and this is where most people quit. Whereas in reality, you're improving, and if you keep going you'll notice the effects later. I think if you ask the folks on this forum who've been going for a while, they'll tell you the same thing. My first 90 day detox didn't really do much for me. I just switched to wasting time on Netflix and YouTube. I relapsed on games right after the 90 days were over and spent a couple of weeks glued to the screen, avoiding my real-life responsibilities completely. However, eventually I was able to completely leave games (it's been 131 days and I barely have any cravings). For a while, I still didn't feel progress because I was stuck consuming videos, but what I didn't realize was that now that I weaned myself off of games, I could focus all my efforts on weaning myself off of videos. It took 3 months, but I'm finally making progress in my video detox (30+ days). And it's only that I've gotten rid of both of these things that I'm finally seeing the effects: more productivity, better relationship with my wife, more time for my spiritual goals, etc. I've been on this forum for nearly a year now (and trying to deal with my gaming addiction for the 10 years before that), but I'm seeing results only now. But now looking back, I can clearly see progress, even in moments when I relapsed or failed to get anywhere with my detox. I was practicing and failing, but practice eventually yields fruit. I'm sure you'll hear similar feedback from other folks who've been doing this for a while. You've gone longer than you ever have without games - that's a win. You failed, that's OK. One thing I've seen to be true 100%: people who don't learn how to fail and pick themselves back up give up. People who fail, get up, fail again, get up again, and just keep going eventually see results. So, brush it off and keep going. You've got it and you've got an awesome community supporting you ? P.S. This is a personal recommendation because I've found it crucial to my progress: sort yourself out spiritually. "Why am I here?" is the most crucial question, because it determines how you live the rest of your life. It's worth spending time contemplating.

Day 31-2/120 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) Sleep before 12am: fail (longest streak: 17) No phone in washroom 34/120 Umra resolutions: 19/90 Work Hours: 4 hours on Tuesday, 2:05 on Wednesday (11:20 this week) It's been a bit nuts. I did a trip on Tuesday to see a tax person about our tax situation. She gave me some awesome ideas and it looks things will be OK. I had some time to work on the train and I kept up my Umra resolutions, which I'm feeling pretty good about (except praying at the mosque during the travel day... I wasn't really free during any of the prayer times. I'll try to make it up on Friday.) However, I came home very late, went to bed even later, woke up late on Wednesday, had a lot of stuff on my mind and barely did any work. I ended up staying up late without any reasonable excuse (i was just researching this tax stuff) and thus broke my awesomest early-to-bed streak ever. Today has been a crazy day as well, but I'll update about it tomorrow. Overall these last few days before the trip are turning out to be insanely packed and stressful. Looking forward to time with family and putting all of this on the backburner (except my business, which I'm psyched to start).

Day 30/120 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) Sleep before 12am: 17 (longest previous streak: 4) No phone in washroom 32/120 Umra resolutions: 17/90 Work Hours: 5:15 Packed day. Had to go out for a meeting, then prepare for & attend class, so work hours are somewhat reduced...

Day 29/120 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) Sleep before 12am: 16 (longest previous streak: 4) No phone in washroom 31/120 Umra resolutions: 16/90 Work Hours: 5:45 (29:15 this week) An OK day. I had some travel-related stuff come up that caused me to fall short on my hours. It looks like every day this week is likely to have delays via other responsibilities. I'm doing a short trip to another city tomorrow to speak with an accountant about our tax situation here. I'll have ~6 hours on the train though, so if all goes well I should be able to put in some decent work hours (especially if I can charge my laptop in between trips). Then I still have class on Thursday + a possible trip to the local immigration office concerning changing our status here. If all goes well with accountant, I have some other calls to make and some more trips to plan... then either Friday or Saturday we're heading out ahead of our flight (out of a different city) on Sunday to go see my folks. So... basically this entire week is looking like a reduced-hours week. Overall, that's OK. My overall productivity in the past several months has really helped me financially, so I'm riding on that for the next little while.

Day 28/120 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) Sleep before 12am: 15 (longest previous streak: 4) No phone in washroom 30/120 Umra resolutions: 15/90 Work Hours: 3:35 (23:30 this week) So yesterday turned into a sleep fest after I went to bed late the night before. Got up basically around 3pm... by the time I showered and did my "morning" routine, it was past 5pm. Add to that "breakfast" and dinner and I ended up barely working at all. I did go to bed at midnight, but because I woke up so late, it took me over an hour to fall asleep. So I'm tired today and you know what happens when you're tired... *sigh* Anyway, life has ups and downs. If this is a down, I can't complain because I remember how this used to be an "up" for me when I was gaming and managed to squeeze this much work in.

How'd you find out about this supercell game? What led you to relapse? You should analyze the events leading up to it so that you can make behavior changes to avoid them next time.

Day 27/120 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) Sleep before 12am: NO!! (longest previous streak: 4) No phone in washroom 29/120 Umra resolutions: 14/90 Work Hours: 0:40 (19:55 this week) It was my day off and it went pretty well. Got through most of the goals I set for the day. In particular, I'm excited about this meditation technique that I learnt about. There are a number of spiritual "paths" or "orders" or whatever you want to call them: basically they all have the same goal of entering a person into a state of continual "presence" with the Divine, where you're going through your day in constant awareness of Him. In the words of the Prophet (peace be upon him), to "worship God as if you see Him". The goal is one but the approaches are many (all going back centuries if not a whole millenium) There's a particular teacher of this discipline that I like (and even went to meet this year) and I've already been using the morning/evening spiritual routine that they do. However, their main practice is a form of meditation where you empty your thoughts and then imagine your heart calling on God. It was something I knew about for a long time, but it seems like now I'm at a stage in my life where I'm actually willing to put in the time to do this - and I'm even looking forward to it. So I'm pretty excited to start that. I'll probably add it to my morning routine - it's usually a time when I don't have distractions or immediate obligations. I did mess up my sleep routine last night. Stayed up talking to the wife after we had a late dinner. I knew it was late but I didn't push myself super hard to go to bed and ended up sleeping at 1am, sleeping through the morning prayer, and just having an all-around sleep fest. However, I did assume when I started that it'll be impossible to sleep early every single night. Stuff comes up. So my idea was I get to keep my streak if I return back to it the next night (or the next possible night if something specific is keeping me up like travel). So I absolutely have to hit the sack before 12am today, otherwise I'm restarting my record-breaking 12-day streak. Still no videos or games. I noticed myself falling into checking FB too often, so I signed myself out and didn't go back yesterday.

You're such a typical straight-A student, stressing over how you're gonna get really bad grades and then getting really good ones ? Been there done that myself, although definitely not to the point of a 4.0! Good work man!

Yeah man! Last time I managed to have a streak that long was like 6 months ago, but I wasn't tracking it back the. I still waste some time on reading stuff on twitter & news and the like, so it's not all productivity. But yeah, my wife and I are big talkers so we end up spending probably ~2 hours total a day over meals. My spiritual routine in the morning and evening + 5 daily prayers + going to the mosque for one of them is probably another 2.5-3 hrs. So add stuff like posting on the forums here, taking small breaks between work, the additional study I do, shower/brushing teeth, talking to friends on whatsapp and checking the news, and you've got a full day ?

Day 25-26/120 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) Sleep before 12am: 14 (longest previous streak: 4) No phone in washroom 28/120 Umra resolutions: 13/90 Work Hours: 4:05 on Wednesday, 4:20 on Thursday (19:15 this week) The last couple of days have been tough. I've discovered that we may or may not be in hot water tax-wise in this country and spent a lot of time figuring out next steps and just stressing out. Ended up going with my wife for an unscheduled date to de-stress. Hence the productivity drop on Wed. Thursday was better, but I had class that I spent the morning preparing for and then 2 hours during the day attending. Overall this tax thing put the possibility of having to leave this country soon at the forefront (it looks like we should be OK and won't need to leave), and that made me realize that were we to leave today, I'd really kick myself for not spending more time studying and taking advantage of the fact that there are Islamic teachers here. I'm considering setting a new goal for 30 hours of work + 15 hours of study a week (I already do about 5 hours of study). Most likely no point in setting these goals right before the trip, but maybe I'll set that goal for when I return. Will pray on this. Work hours this week are definitely not going to hit 40. I'd need to work 10 hours Sat & Sun both to make that happen. And yeah, that's not happening. But I'm OK with that considering the turbulence of the past couple of days. Plus, I'm still not watching videos or playing games. I'm now past my previous record of video detox and I'm past 120 days of no gaming. Pretty awesome stuff!

I actually write my journal entries about the day before. I found that, like you, I was leaving it until late and then it actually became a reason for going to bed late. So now I actually update in the morning. Might work for you as well.

Welcome to the forums, @Rude ? This is my personal definition of an addiction: if gaming (or any other kind of activity, really) is preventing you from doing things you'd rather do, it's an addiction. One of the things that we generally recommend is to start your own daily journal. Some folks will read it and may follow up with you if you disappear (as has happened to me a few times). It's also a great long-term method for getting to the bottom of your addiction, what triggers it, and how to avoid it. And feel free to read other people's journals - you may find someone who's a good match.

Day 24/120 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) Sleep before 12am: 12 (longest previous streak: 4) No phone in washroom 26/120 Umra resolutions: 11/90 Work Hours: 6:10 (10:50 this week) Yeah, so that sleep I was talking about? Totally happened yesterday right after I posted. I was so sleepy and I went and crashed for 3+ hours. I'm still not feeling 100%, but I think I can wait it out until Friday to get some extra rest. Clearly, my sleep schedule is not providing me sufficient rest (even though I'm sleeping close to 8 hours a night). I need to make changes. I think after Friday, I'll aim to sleep before 11:30pm. I have a feeling that extra 30 minutes is all I need, but let's see. The big challenge is going to be our upcoming trip to see my family. My family (especially my Mom) go to bed super late. But since I see them once/twice a year only, I really want to spend time with them, so I stay up too, but it totally destroys my sleep schedule. Over there, dawn is around 7:10am, so I have to be up ~6:45am at the latest. To get 8 hours of sleep, I need to be in bed by 10:45pm. That sounds highly unlikely, given my family lol.

Awesome! Free time is definitely a dangerous thing if you've got a tech addiction!

1 - I'd be very careful about setting deadlines like "this month". Addiction's a long, tough fight. I've been trying to quit for 10+ years. To be fair, I've actually started to make progress when I came to this forum and started a journal. Writing about it daily forced me to think about why I was addicted, what behaviors triggered my addiction, etc. But there's no fast & easy solution. But repeat failure is definitely part of the process. Plenty of guys on here have failed a ton of times, but if you look at how they're doing now compared to 6 months ago, it's night and day. In terms of YT and gaming, I don't have all the answers. My personal experience has been to quit gaming first and deal with the video addiction second, even though I did exactly what you said: resort to videos if games were not possible. I've seen some guys who are doing a gaming + gaming videos detox - they're allowed to watch videos, as long as they're not about games. I think that's a good first step because gaming videos are a common relapse trigger. @JustTom can weigh in on this more. 2 - Nothing foolproof that I'm aware of. My solution to wasting time on the phone has been to keep it in a different room (bedroom when I'm awake, office when I'm asleep). And I have a separate detox counter for not using the phone in the bathroom, which is what I used to do a lot. 3 - You have your whole life to fix this. I've found that the people who are successful in getting rid of this are people who learn how to fail. I've seen guys who fail a couple of times and just give up. Others have failed so many times (including myself), but just pick themselves up and try again every single time. The key is to learn something from each failure, set up the new detox in a way to deal with it. Over time you'll start noticing the changes. Overall I strongly encourage you to run a daily journal. Write about how you're doing, how you're feeling, the challenges you're facing, and what you're going to try to deal with them. It sounds lame, but it's incredible how useful it is in the long run.