karabas

No worries man. I know it's been a rough time, but it's hard to detox under stress. Just try to adjust your strategy and keep going. I love that you're trying new things each time!

Lol, no, it's not about sleeping during the daytime. But the month moves around the year (lunar calendar is 10 days shorter than solar) and right now it's in summertime (long days and short nights). That means you're praying the night prayer at 9pm at the earliest and you have to get up at 2am to make food because the fasting starts around 3:20am. And I personally never go to bed as soon as I can, so the likelihood is I'd get around 4 hours of sleep before having to wake up. So it's break up your sleep into halves or sleep after you start fasting. I chose the latter because I'm currently in a Muslim country and that's generally how people do it here. If I was in the US then I'd probably sleep at night and catch a nap after starting the fast. It should get easier in a few years once Ramadan is in winter-time and the nights are longer. Yesterday's thing was because I had to get up early, so it's a one-time issue. Overall I feel pretty good being able to sleep continuous 8+ hours. But yeah, after Ramadan I'm going to back to sleeping at night. But sleep has always been a problem for me. I find it very hard to maintain a habit of going to bed early and it just screws me up. And Ramadan is a perfect example: I've been super consistent with my sleep times over the past 2 weeks. I couldn't consistently sleep before midnight at all before this habit. So I can keep a habit of sleep at 4-5am no problem, but I can't do a habit of before midnight. I'm not sure why that is, but I think I need to focus on it hardcore after fasting's done. It really feels like proper sleep is key to both the success of this detox and of my productivity. Good sleep is also good for losing weight, which is my next big target.

Day 49/90 | Productive hours: 5:10 | Work hours: 2:25 (67%) Sleep: 4:30am - 9:15 am, 1pm-5pm Ugh, it's kinda like I predicted. Poor sleep = bad productivity. I'm pretty confident now that it's an iron-clad rule for me. And this means that I need to make every possible effort to get good sleep every day. I think overall this has been happening as last couple of days I would actually take ~20 minutes to fall asleep. That's actually a sign of not being sleep-deprived and I've rarely been in this situation. So that's good, I guess? Productivity: Tired = wasted a lot of time doing things like reading news articles and the like. I need to have a better wasting time outlet like reading books or something. Cravings: Mild, since I was tired and wanted to do something that wasn't strenuous on my brain. Feeling: Want to get good sleep tonight and bounce back tomorrow. Minor habits: Morning/evening spiritual routine: check Religious study (jurisprudence): 13 days Religious study (purification of the heart): 13 days Extra Qur'an & Study: 13 days Personal to-do list: 10 days Career-related study routine (on hold) 15 minutes of working on my business idea (on hold) Major Habit: on hold for Ramadan

Nice! I actually struggle with doing stuff like that when I have strong urges. I just sit there and let it overwhelm me. Glad you were able to work it out. How's it going so far?

Day 48/90 | Productive hours: 6:00 | Work hours: 3:15 (78%) Sleep: 6:00am - 3:40pm Started off the day very late because I ended up sleeping later than planned (just talking to the wife). Also, forgot I had some time-consuming plans for the day, so didn't include that in my projection. So it's just an estimation issue, not really a productivity issue. Productivity: Got as much as I could done, given the commitments. No complains here and work is still progressing well. Cravings: None today - no time, really. Feeling: Pretty good. Apprehensive about tomorrow: getting up really early (9am) considering my bedtime. Usually I'm fine the day of, but I'm afraid of it derailing me in the days after. Heading to bed ASAP after this. Minor habits: Morning/evening spiritual routine: check Religious study (jurisprudence): 12 days Religious study (purification of the heart): 12 days Extra Qur'an & Study: 12 days Personal to-do list: 9 days Career-related study routine (on hold) 15 minutes of working on my business idea (on hold) Major Habit: on hold for Ramadan

Welcome! Head on over the journal forum and start your detox journal :)

Day 47/90 | Productive hours: 8:05 | Work hours: 5:20 (105%) Sleep: 6:00am - 2:30pm YES! Today has been an awesome day. I actually did more work than predicted (to be fair, I think it's going to cost me by making me go to bed later than I'd like). But more importantly, I had stuff come up that I didn't expect and it didn't derail my day! The key was waking up a tad earlier (alarm clock) and assigning enough time to the different things that take up my day + giving myself some cushion. I overestimated some things and underestimated others, but overall I ended up being just 10 minutes off in my schedule, which is great. I think it's just been a learning process of figuring out where my time goes and giving myself enough time on all those things accordingly. Also, I didn't do the night prayers that are typically done in Ramadan. These take 45 minutes, so they added that much time to my productive hours. I think it's the right decision. I finally caught up on a lot of work that I needed to do. Productivity: 100% Cravings: None! Too busy crushing it. Feeling: Happy about today, want to repeat it tomorrow to make sure it's not a one-time success. Minor habits: Morning/evening spiritual routine: check Religious study (jurisprudence): 11 days Religious study (purification of the heart): 11 days Extra Qur'an & Study: 11 days Personal to-do list: 8 days (I did a lot of this stuff yesterday.. I think i'm going to skip the next day of this habit) Career-related study routine (on hold) 15 minutes of working on my business idea (on hold) Major Habit: on hold for Ramadan

Day 46/90 | Productive hours: 4:10 | Work hours: 1:25 (?%) Sleep: 6:00am - 3:30pm Waking up late had a bad effect on me today. And then a friend called about something important. It was a long conversation and then I went to discuss it with my wife and by then several hours were gone and I got even more lazy about getting things done. This is the problem with my productivity plan overall. Any "special" occurrence throws off my whole day. A couple of resolutions: - I need to get back to planning out my day when I start it. It was overall very helpful - I think I need to start setting an alarm. I can't be sleeping 9+ hours a day anymore (but I was happy to do it for the past week+) - I've been prioritizing religious stuff since it's Ramadan, but my work has taken a knock as a result. It's not good. I have stuff I need to do for my clients and that's also part of my religious responsibility. I'm going to reduce some of the stuff I'm doing to give myself more time for work. Let's see how that goes for the next week and I'll re-adjust again if necessary. Productivity: Picked up around midnight, but it was too late. Hopefully better tomorrow. Cravings: None. Feeling: Want to get tomorrow right (again) Minor habits: Morning/evening spiritual routine: check Religious study (jurisprudence): 10 days Religious study (purification of the heart): 10 days Extra Qur'an & Study: 10 days Personal to-do list: 7 days (I did a lot of this stuff today.. I think i'm going to skip the next 2 days of this habit) Career-related study routine (on hold) 15 minutes of working on my business idea (on hold) Major Habit: on hold for Ramadan Yeah, but on the minus side, it's not putting enough pressure on me to do better. But this is a pretty long detox streak for me, so I guess it's better than putting myself down. Also, I pretty much write out my day hour-by-hour, so I'm not overall too concerned when things don't go exactly the way I wanted them to.

Day 43/90 | Productive hours: 5:35 | Work hours: 2:50 (57%) Day 44/90 | Productive hours: 3:10 | Work hours: 2:40 (?%) Day 45/90 | Productive hours: 3:50 | Work hours: 1:05 (?%) Sleep: 4:00am - 12:00pm, 1:30-4:30pm I had a 24 hour trip, but it really messed me up. I had to travel to an embassy and had a morning appointment. And my sleep schedule in Ramadan has been a very late night one. It started out great, I had a super productive train ride, and even a good few productive hours at the hotel. Then it just went downhill. I didn't game, but I wasted a hell of a lot of time. I was supposed to nap to compensate for the morning appointment, but that didn't happen. And then when I finally got to bed (~5am), I found that the bed was insanely uncomfortable. The pillow was hurting my neck, the mattress was hurting my back, and the sheets were making me itchy. I couldn't fall asleep until past 7am and I had to wake up at 9:30. The result was that Thursday I was so tired, I barely got anything done. I couldn't do most of my habits because I couldn't keep my eyes open. And today (Friday), I ended up sleeping in and just overall being a lazy bum. I feel like I've finally caught up though, so I'm hoping tomorrow will be a solid, productive day. Oh, but I made it to 45 days! I'm officially half-way done! Productivity: :( Cravings: None! Been too tired, to busy catching up on what I need to do to think about them. Feeling: Want to get tomorrow right. Minor habits: Morning/evening spiritual routine: check Religious study (jurisprudence): 9 days Religious study (purification of the heart): 9 days Extra Qur'an & Study: 9 days Personal to-do list: 6 days Career-related study routine (on hold) 15 minutes of working on my business idea (on hold) Major Habit: on hold for Ramadan

Nice man! Although if you're staying up late to study, coffee might be tricky thing :) If you're not off from school, then I say you need to figure out what the most essential stuff you need to learn is and focus on that first. Prioritize the knowledge, like A is must-know, B is should know, and C is going to get me the best grade. Start with A, then B, then C. I don't know if it's possible in your field, but if it is, do it. I may be completely off-target here. But the reason I'm bringing stuff like this up is because part of helping you with gaming is managing your workload. If you're always overwhelmed, tired, and stressed out, there's small chance you're also going to be able to add "game-free" to that. You need to figure out how to handle and reduce your study load. I know some programs are just like that: very difficult. But having gone through university and some tough programs, I know that in retrospect I could've made things a lot easier on myself if I just knew some better studying techniques. There's a lot of stuff out there you can find out. Some if it works. Spaced repetition is the #1 thing, but there are other techniques also. The key is to work smart, not hard. Or smart and less hard... whichever you can ;) Also, don't be discouraged by failing a lot. You might see other people on these forums getting through the 90 day detox, or being able to go weeks before relapsing, etc. A lot of is practice. I've been trying to quit gaming for at least 10 years now. I've failed and tried many different things (last semester of uni, I left my laptop at my parents' and only used the school library for computer work). So you are seeing people succeed, but it may be after a decade of failing. It's important to just keep assessing what happened when you relapsed, try out strategies to combat the source of the problem. Some strategies won't work. That means you'll relapse. That's fine. Try another one, and another one, and another one, until you finally find what works for you. Once you find what works, maybe you'll be able to go 2 weeks without relapsing instead of 1. You'll hit another road block. Repeat the process: identify the problem, propose a solution, test the solution. Etc. Eventually you'll know yourself really well and will be able to easier avoid triggers and the like. It's a long process. It takes time. Also, I know that while in uni it's hard to get your head out of the sand (so to speak), but if failure is a serious concern, think of a plan B, just in case. If you come up with a plan B you're happy with, then failure becomes less scary and the stress gets reduced, and this might actually help you succeed. And if you really end up failing, how bad would some time off be? You could really work on this gaming addiction, study ahead, and get ready to come back full-steam ahead. I'm not saying plan to fail. But I've found that in my life, it's always been helpful to have a hierarchy of plans (if not A, then B, if not B then C, etc), because it just protects me from worrying. Thinking through the worst-case scenario could actually help you make the best-case scenario happen :)

I just had this sudden realization that I'm crushing it. Like yeah, I have productivity mishaps. And yeah, I could do things better. There's definitely room for improvement. But there are some habits I've been doing fairly consistently for months now (some even before this detox). Aside from a week-long relapse before I started the detox, I've been limiting or off of games for nearly 3 months now. 3 months in, there's a lot of progress in some areas. Some others not as much (work), but it's getting there. So overall, things are looking up!

Do try to post even while relapsing. Check out @JustTom's journal - he had a recent relapse, but I really think his continued journaling through the relapse was key (even if it was sometimes a sentence or two). You might need a few days to let it run its course, that's fine. Take your time and get on track slowly. Keep thinking of the problem and how you can prevent it from occurring again.

Day 42/90 | Productive hours: 5:05 | Work hours: 2:20 (67%) Sleep: 5:30am - 3:00pm Personal stuff still going on, but I think is close to resolution. But I'm traveling tomorrow, so that's going to take away from my productive time. Also, as previous logs have shown, I've been sleeping a TON. I'm not trying to fight it (I basically don't set an alarm clock). This is the first time in a while that I'm getting to sleep 7+ hours without a break in between, even if it's at an odd time of day. So I'm letting my body determine when to wake up. So far it's been telling me to sleep around 9 hours. That's fine, I think it needs the extra rest. I think I might need to start cutting it off at 8 hours to get an extra hour or two in the day, but for now I'm OK with it. Productivity: Still meh. Hoping this will be resolved in the next few days. Cravings: Fallout cravings have subsided, but still there. I'm traveling tomorrow and will be alone for 24 hours (not common for me). Hoping that's not going to be an issue. Feeling: Just looking forward to doing it better tomorrow... Minor habits: Morning/evening spiritual routine: check Religious study (jurisprudence): 7 days Religious study (purification of the heart): 7 days Extra Qur'an & Study: 7days Personal to-do list: 4 days (I skipped it yesterday, but made up today) Career-related study routine (on hold) 15 minutes of working on my business idea (on hold) Major Habit: on hold for Ramadan

Man, that sucks. Little sleep is a recipe for disaster. At least for me, it's clearly the #1 risk for relapse. Try to study as much as you can outside of exam time. People slack off and then start cramming ahead of the exams... it's not healthy, especially for people like us who end up relapsing under those conditions. Use spaced repetition as you learn to get that information in your head and retain it. That way studying for exams won't be this huge crunch time. I know that's advice for the future and not for now, but that's basically what you have to do when you relapse. Learn from the experience, make plans for dealing with the problem, and keep going. Summer's coming up, do you have a break? Or is school continuing on?

Day 41/90 | Productive hours: 4:10 | Work hours: 1:55 (37%) Sleep: 5:30am - 3:00pm Some personal stuff going on that really put me out of the mood of being productive. Productivity: I kept up most of my non-work habits, but work itself barely got done. I have a pretty bad backlog. Cravings: Just saw an ad for a Fallout 4 mod that's centered in Western Cali (home of the original FO1 and FO2 games) and is designed by a bunch of fans from the original games trying to recreate their feel. Looks like a solid project and got me really tempted to get back into FO. So far I'm holding off, including watching any more videos. Feeling: So close to half-way through the detox, but it's getting tough. Also just want a proper productive work day... Minor habits: Morning/evening spiritual routine: check Religious study (jurisprudence): 6 days Religious study (purification of the heart): 6 days Extra Qur'an & Study: 6 days Personal to-do list: broken, will try to make up Career-related study routine (on hold) 15 minutes of working on my business idea (on hold) Major Habit: on hold for Ramadan

Having thought about it for a while, I think that overall having these cravings is good. This is really the chance for the detox to work and wean myself off of this stuff. If I can get through this without gaming or watching videos, then I think my brain will eventually give up and leave me alone lol. That's the point of the detox. I'm just dreading heading into this territory because it's been smooth sailing up until now.

Day 40/90 | Productive hours: 5:15 | Work hours: 3:00 (67%) Sleep: 6am - 2:30pm For a bunch of reasons ended up staying up later than I'd like and also not being available to work on the stuff that I needed to work on today. That's OK. Overall I'm at almost 30 hours of work for the week, which is pretty good given that it's Ramadan. But I'd like to do better tomorrow. Also, it's day 40! I'm almost at the 50% mark, which is quite incredible! Productivity: Not that good. Cravings: Fallout 1 craving is still there. Wanted to go watch some Lets Plays instead of gaming, but held off. Man, I hope these cravings go away... Feeling: Tired, want to get tomorrow right Minor habits: Morning/evening spiritual routine: check Religious study (jurisprudence): 5 days Religious study (purification of the heart): 5 days Extra Qur'an & Study: 5 days Personal to-do list: 2 days Career-related study routine (on hold) 15 minutes of working on my business idea (on hold) Major Habit: on hold for Ramadan

Hey man, it's been a few days now. You alright? If you relapsed, just come back here and say that you did :) It's better than keeping it to yourself!

Day 39/90 | Productive hours: 6:40 | Work hours: 3:55 (78%) Sleep: 5am - 2:00pm I really like @JustTom's system of putting key metrics up top and I finally realized what I want to track. So: Work hours are simple: it's how much I spend working on looking for clients. The percentage reflects the difference between how much work I did and how much I planned to during that day. What I've been doing over the past few days is starting my day by estimating how much time I'll spend on non-work tasks, how many hours are left in the day, and therefore how many hours I should be able to dedicate to work. So the percentage is basically a score of how well I can estimate my time obligations (I chronically underestimate how long things take, so this is a good exercise) and how much time I waste. The productive hours is a combination of my work hours and other tasks I do that are purposeful and designed to fulfill some kind of goal of mine (things like the habits I list at the bottom). It's obviously not all of my productive time, because going shopping or eating are things that I need to, so they are not a waste of time. My goal is to get the productive hours thing closer to 10 hours a day. I don't think that'll happen in Ramadan, but it's something to aim for. Productivity: I had a few tasks which reduced how much work I could do today. I did 4 of my projected 5 hours, but the bulk of the discrepancy is spending more time on things like food and prayer, so I just need to adjust my estimation of those tasks. Cravings: I had a strong craving for playing Fallout 1 (one of the first computer games I really got into and still probably one of my all-time favorites). I even looked up how to do it on a Mac. It's not simple to do, so hopefully that'll hold me off. Feeling: Nothing specific Minor habits: Morning/evening spiritual routine: check Religious study (jurisprudence): 4 days Religious study (purification of the heart): 4 days Extra Qur'an & Study: 4 days Personal to-do list: 1 day (doing it earlier when I get groggy from the fasting worked) Career-related study routine (on hold) 15 minutes of working on my business idea (on hold) Major Habit: on hold for Ramadan

lol, that's the funny thing with us. we always try to find something to replace the old distraction. If I don't game, I watch videos. If I don't watch videos, I browse Facebook. If I don't browse Facebook, I read the news. If I get off of technology altogether, I read books. So it's kinda expected you'd find something to replace your previous distractions with :) Overall it's good that you're aware of it and that you've decided to limit yourself. But wasting time here is a lot better than wasting it on your addiction. So if you have the willpower to limit your forum usage, go for it. But if you feel like you start slipping, better let yourself waste time here than with more harmful stuff. I'm not saying don't do it, just saying keep an eye out for how you're feeling and remember than 90% is better than 0%, even if it's not 100%. I don't know if that makes sense :D

Day 38/90 Sleep: 4:30am-11:30am Today was about the same as yesterday. I did a bit better, pretty much on target with my predicted work hours. End of fast and end of the night are both tough parts of the day for me. I really slow down. I need to resort to something that's easy to do in those moments. It also should get better in a day or two once my body's used to the new schedule and the fast. I'm pretty sleepy also, despite a decent amount of sleep. I think I'm going to sleep with no alarm clock tonight (except an emergency one if I end up sleeping way longer than I anticipate). Productivity: I had a bunch of stuff to do until 5pm. I calculated 4 hours of work and did 3:50, so pretty much on target! Cravings: Too much stuff going on during the day to even think about this stuff. Feeling: Looking forward to getting some rest and an even more productive day tomorrow! Minor habits: Morning/evening spiritual routine: check Religious study (jurisprudence): 3 days Religious study (purification of the heart): 3 days Extra Qur'an & Study: 3 days Personal to-do list: Still didn't do this. I think this needs to happen earlier in the day. Career-related study routine (on hold) 15 minutes of working on my business idea (on hold) Major Habit: on hold for Ramadan

Day 37/90 Sleep: 4:30am-12:30pm Ok day. Not sure what happened after waking up, I ended up starting proper work past 3pm. Otherwise day went by fairly smoothly. Working closer to the end of the fast got difficult (it's a 16 hour fast, so it's a while to go without food and water), I was losing focus and determination. But from experience this goes away once your body adjusts after a few days. Productivity: After somehow wasting several hours after waking up, I calculated that I had 6 hours of available time for work. I ended up doing about 5. So not too bad. I didn't track my time, so I don't have a good grasp of where I lost time. Gotta do a better job of that tomorrow. Cravings: None that I can think of. Crazy for day 37! Feeling: Good day, looking forward to better and more productive days in Ramadan! I'm actually liking this sleep schedule, I get 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep, which I almost never do otherwise because of my late sleep habit and having to get up for the pre-dawn prayer. Minor habits: Morning/evening spiritual routine: check Religious study (jurisprudence): 2 day Religious study (purification of the heart): 2 day Extra Qur'an & Study: 2 day Personal to-do list: didn't get to do this, but I forgot to even calculate it into my day. will leave a note for tomorrow Career-related study routine (on hold) 15 minutes of working on my business idea (on hold) Major Habit: on hold for Ramadan Use Pomodorro timer to help manage distractions + spaced repetition cards (there are apps for that) to help learn material faster. Break sessions up into smaller chunks and set rewards for yourself if you accomplish a certain target goal. Should help. Good luck!

Good going, man! Almost at a week. And habit seems to be paying off since you did reasonably well at the practicum. Good job!

Day 36/90 Sleep: 2am - 5am, 5:30 am - 11:30am Didn't end up sleeping early at all. First was talking to the wife, then when I finally got to bed I couldn't sleep because it was windy and something metal was clanging really loudly in the street. Took me an hour+ to go to bed. But despite a late start, the day was productive. Writing out the tasks and then figuring out how much time I had for work was very helpful. I listed out my tasks and saw that I had 4 hours left for work if I did everything perfectly. So I wasn't feeling all rushed to do as much work as I could because I knew that at best, I could just get 4. Positive urgency instead of negative. It worked! The new moon was sighted today, so Ramadan started! I realized it's completely silly to try to go to bed early in Ramadan. We have to get up at 2:30am to make food for the pre-dawn meal and if I do everything perfectly, I can be in bed by 9:30pm at the latest. It's just not worth it. Easier to just sleep after the fast starts at ~3:30am. Basically 4am-12pm is my target for now and that seems a bit more straightforward. I also realized that I need to re-orient myself for the month in terms of habits/tasks. I'm going to replace my career-related study and my 15 minutes of work on my business habits with more religious study and Qur'an review. I'm also adding another 45 minutes of studying purification of the heart (how to get rid of bad character traits, essentially), which is something I need to study and haven't gotten the chance to yet. So basically, re-orienting myself in this month and focusing on what I'm supposed to focus on: spirituality. Obviously, I still have to work, but it's just a matter of adjusting focus. Productivity: Pretty solid. Because of the late night I got more work done in one day than I have in a while. It's great. Cravings: No time. Hoping this part will stay easy during Ramadan. I'd REALLY hate to break this detox in this month. Feeling: Excited Ramadan's here and happy about my productivity. Looking forward to a good month ahead! Minor habits: Morning/evening spiritual routine: check Religious study (jurisprudence): 1 day Religious study (purification of the heart): 1 day Extra Qur'an & Study: 1 day Personal to-do list: didn't get to this, but I didn't really have anything important to do Career-related study routine (on hold) 15 minutes of working on my business idea (on hold) Major Habit: on hold for Ramadan Yeah, that can be overwhelming. Write the stuff you need to do out, then prioritize. Then just go down the list. If you need to, break bigger tasks into smaller tasks. This helps makes it lest overwhelming because you see a bunch of smaller tasks that are achievable. Good luck!

Day 34-35/90 Sleep: all over the place These past two days have been crap in terms of productivity. It all started with me with going to a Qur'an memorization lesson early in the morning. We've put those on hold for a while and tried to restart. But I went to bed late that night, so I was super tired. And when I'm tired I don't focus and I laze around and am not productive. I ended up going to bed late again and then sleeping until the afternoon. So today ended up being a bunch of the same stuff. I also lost a bunch of my habits. But the issue that I'm realizing is: they're not really habits because they're not anchored around a particular activity or time. That's something I need to rethink. Also, I think my evening habits are too late in the day. I do them after evening prayer, but that's past 7pm now and I need to be in bed by 11 (10 in Ramadan), so it's just not enough time. I think I'll move them back to the afternoon prayer (~4pm), that should give me enough time. I also went over my finances today and realizing our spending has been like 150% of our target for the past 3 months and we don't really know why. That's a problem because our next year and a half are all about saving up. I'm going to start a morning routine of assessing finances and got a tracker app. We really need to be on top of this. And finally, since I came back from my trip, I stopped tracking the number of hours I work. This is a problem, because it kept me more accountable. I've been slacking off recently, so I think going back to tracking it would help. I also want to start a morning routine of checking my tasks and goals for the day and listing them out. And tracking how much time I spend on what, like I started out doing. That's a bunch of stuff to do, but I'm really tired of having every day turn out to be a flop even after quitting games and videos. Productivity: Had maybe 8 hours of being productive over the past two days. Cravings: Not much. Feeling: Really annoyed with myself for lack of productivity. Minor habits: Morning/evening spiritual routine: check Religious study routine: have to restart this one :( Career-related study routine: 7 days Personal to-do list: 6 days 15 minutes of working on my business idea: have to restart this one too Major Habit - Sleep by 11pm (we had our daylight savings adjusted back for Ramadan... makes no sense): kinda. It's just past 11pm now and I'm getting ready for bed.