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karabas

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Everything posted by karabas

  1. Props on starting the journal up again. I think the anger at oneself is necessary to get motivation to quit. It's definitely been an important factor for me, but it does wear off after some time. But this is the thing about gaming: it distracts one from one's responsibilities, as well from other things we could be doing. I ask myself: how much more money could I have earned, how many more languages could I be speaking, how much better of a person I could've been, if I didn't game but instead spent that time productively? And the answer is super scary. I'd suggest a couple of things: 1) As you go through the detox, pay attention to your feelings. Once cravings kick in, try to analyze why they happen & why do you feel the urge to game? It's different for different people: distraction for some, achievement for others, competitiveness for yet another group... etc 2) Picture the improved you: where would you like to be in a year, 5 years, 10 years, etc? If you can't get there while gaming, it'll help a lot. All the best!
  2. I kinda abandoned my last journal, mostly because I went to see my family back home & obviously relapsed hard on shows and other stupid nonsense. Then I was basically traveling for nearly 2 months straight and didn't have the time or energy to keep up anything. But things have been overall not bad. I still haven't played any computer games, so it's now been over a year since I last touched one of those. That's a huge win, and I think the biggest factor was letting go of my ~$500 Steam account. I rarely get cravings anymore even. I have been here and there with mobile games & that's something I need to work on. There's been a major update in my life: my wife got into a graduate program at a uni, so we once again did a trans-continental move. Finance-wise things will be a lot tighter in the new place and we're living in a studio-ish apartment (it's got a tiny 2nd room that fits a desk and not much else). But it's actually good for several reasons: I'm now surrounded by pretty committed students all around me and it's making me more committed to doing something with my life myself. Also, my desk is now out in the open. I can't secretly do crap aside from when my wife is in class, so I'm a lot less tempted to do stupid things. Movies, TV, and YouTube have not been an issue for the last two months. I'm not really sure why. I think it's probably because I've been so busy with the move that I've always had something better to do. I'm really happy for them not to be an issue, since games & shows have been my primary addiction fuel. I'm not very confident that I'll be able to maintain this, because at some point life will settle down a bit and I'll probably have more opportunity to waste time. Which is why I'm starting this journal up again. So here's what I want to accomplish with this journal: - Maintain my game & vid-free streak. I'll allow myself an occasional video to watch, but no more than 1 and nothing actually harmful (like gaming vids, news, and other stuff that sucks you in). No getting stuck on YT for hours. - No more phone in the washroom. This has been tripping me up a lot lately and wasting more time than it should. - No mobile games. I have some "positive" habits that I want to work on as well, but I'll keep things easy for now and will focus on what I should NOT do. I feel like right now, none of the above requires a LOT of willpower (although there's a particular mobile game that's been eating up a lot of my time as of late). I think that's it. I've come a long way already, and if I can do the above goals for 120 days, I think my life will be in a very good place overall. But success is only with and through God.
  3. Day 14/120 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| No phone in washroom 0/120 20 mins of Qur'an 9/120 Gah, I relapsed on my phone in the washroom thing because I'm really into this book that I'm reading on my phone. Oh well. Not the worst situation. Videos and such are under control for now. Qur'an has been better, but still shaky. Not a habit yet, but I think part of that is that I don't have a daily schedule. Still transitioning after Ramadan - and honestly, I'm traveling soon, so that'll tweak my schedule again.
  4. Day 9/120 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| No phone in washroom 9/120 20 mins of Qur'an 4/120 Smooth sailing so far, thank God. But Ramadan is coming to an end - I have a feeling things will get trickier afterwards. It's always easier to focus on the good in Ramadan. The big plus so far has been that I have extra time right now (I've finished up work with a number of clients & I'm not immediately bringing on more) and I dove straight into working on my business. Now that I have email subscribers going through sequences, I'm under more pressure (and motivation) to get everything set up as soon as possible. It's all very engaging - there's tons to do and I'm happy to do it (for now) and that's keeping me away from wasting my time on vids and things like that. If I do want to relax a bit, I read or talk to my wife. I have a trip coming up in a couple of weeks, which I'm looking forward to, but also dreading. On one hand, it's great to see family. On the other hand, seeing family always wrecks my good habits AND I really need to have some content ready for my business before I head out. Let's see how much I can get done!
  5. Day 6/120 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| No phone in washroom 6/120 20 mins of Qur'an 1/120 Dang, did I not update for 4 days? I thought it was 2 ? Overall detox has been pretty good so far. No forgetful lapses since the last post. I'm struggling more with Qur'an first thing in the day, had to restart my counter. So far I'm feeling fine. Part of it is that I'm actively working on my business and it's fun. No significant results as of yet, but reaching any milestone is like... well, a game. So if I have a spare minute, I'd rather do business-related stuff than watch videos. That's likely to wear off at some point. But I'll ride the wave while it's there. Hopefully it's the jumpstart I need.
  6. Day 2/120 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| No phone in washroom 2/120 20 mins of Qur'an 2/120 Better than Day 1. Forgetfully watched a few videos (I think via Twitter) but otherwise no problem. Remembered to read Qur'an after I woke up. Also, I did close to 48 hours of work last week. Must be some kind of personal record!
  7. Day 1/120 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| No phone in washroom 1/120 20 mins of Qur'an 1/120 My first day was full of forgetfulness. I forgetfully watched some videos on a news website and forgot to read Qur'an until later in the day. I'm still counting this as a day, because overall I didn't intentionally waste time on vids and habits take time to form. Feeling good so far. Not a lot of desire to watch anything. Thanks man!
  8. New topic: https://forum.gamequitters.com/index.php?/topic/7333-karabass-journal-part-3-youtube-shows/
  9. Day 0/120 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| No phone in washroom 0/120 20 mins of Qur'an 0/120 Well, here we go! I got delayed a bit with posting this because I thought I was on a high and was going to go vid-free, but the very next day I started watching travel vlogs about a country I'm visiting in a few months and am super excited about. That's enough of that. I'm going to try to keep things very basic this time around: a few simple rules and that's it. I'm not adding or subtracting anything in terms of habits for the 120-day period. I picked 120 days, because that covers me for my upcoming "busy period": I have 2 lengthy trips coming up + a family member staying with us for a month. All of this should make it more difficult for me to watch videos as it is (at least in theory) and I'm hoping it'll be easy to keep this habit. However, 90 days would end close to the end of my last trip, and that would mean that I'm risking returning home and relapsing right away. 120 days gives 3 weeks to re-adjust to home while (hopefully) maintaining my detox. Detox rules are: No YouTube (or Vimeo or whatever other video channel) unless necessary for work or study No TV shows, movies, and other entertainment No X-rated stuff No phone in washroom is straightforward. 20 mins of Qur'an I must do first thing after I wake up. Night-time habits don't work because I put them off and then go to bed late or end up skipping them. That's all. Let's see how this goes!
  10. Well, I'm back folks. Not gonna do a long one right now. The basic gist is that over the last few months, I've not gamed, but have completely relapsed watching videos. However, thanks in part to my wife, I've been able to keep it from derailing my life entirely. I've been fairly productive and things are going well - even if not as well as they would if I wasn't watching vids. I'm nearing a year of not playing games - unless I count a day or two of semi-relapsing on playing phone games and old DOS games via online emulators earlier this year. However, now that game of thrones is over (and on such a bad note... i've lost all interest in the show by the last episode), I feel like I have an opportunity to restart my detox. I've got travel & family stuff for the next 3 months. It makes sense to do a 90-day detox and see how that goes. I think I also feel a bit refreshed in terms of detoxing. Haven't done it in some time, I think I can give it another whirl. Not sure what I'll do differently, but let's see. Will probably start a new topic tomorrow. Stay tuned!
  11. Agreed with Tom. Even if you relapsed, just look back at your past months that you've spent posting on these forums and count the number of days you've been productive and moving towards your goals vs the number of the days you've spent gaming. Pretty clearly a win. You've got this!
  12. Day 1/30 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) Sleep before 12am: 0 (longest streak: 17) No phone in washroom 1/30 Umra resolutions (50%): 2/30 30-minute study: 3/30 Better, thank God. Video cravings still there, but under control so far.
  13. Yeah, maybe. I googled it, there are two places (that I could easily find) that offer ~$90/month (less if you pay monthly), although taxis will cost me another $80/month or so. That's quite pricey by local standards, but overall not bad. And yeah, I could count it as a business expense. Let's see. I might try it out. Taxi-ing every day is a bit annoying - that's really what's the biggest barrier for me, I think.
  14. Guilty as charged. I should put an asterisk on the word "like", though. I like the books. The show was good until it passed the books. Now I just want to know how it all ends since it's going to be another 10 years or more until GRRM finishes everything up. ? There must be a space somewhere in this city (although the major co-working space in the country isn't available), but I see two problems with it: 1) It'll probably be a daily commute, which is time & money consuming. 2) I'm still sort of "alone" in a coworking space. If I start gaming on watching vids, nobody's going to look at me weird there. Whereas at home, I prefer not to do it in front of my wife... so the social pressure is greater at home. So I dunno if it's actually better in my case...
  15. Day 0/30 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) Sleep before 12am: 0 (longest streak: 17) No phone in washroom 0/30 Umra resolutions (50%): 1/30 30-minute study: 2/30 Ok, clearly 120 days is a bit beyond me right now. I need a smaller, more realistic target. I can try going for 30 days, that seems more doable. A show I really like is coming out in that time period. If it gets really bad, I'll try to content myself with reading episode summaries. That has helped me in the past. At least gaming cravings seem to have died down significantly. I just need to deal with my video watching. Spent most of the day doing that today. I think partially it's the fact that I'm in my office alone most of the day, but it's not all of it. Cravings to watch something or to game can be so strong sometimes, it's overwhelming. I try to push through and end up caving, because I'm so worried about productivity. I think I need to bite the bullet and get out of the house in those circumstances. Long-term gain, hopefully? I need to think about this more and pay attention. I've gotten lazy with journaling here...
  16. Meh. Back to crap again. Yesterday had ridiculous cravings for games and spent half the day watching gaming vids. Literally the only thing stopping me so far has been the price tag of the game. Tried playing a few old DOS games online, but dosbox doesn't work very well on a Mac. Yet another reason to have a mac if you're a gaming addict! Today has been "better" in that I binge-watched 3 seasons of a show (ok, to be fair, I skipped around a lot). Went from 8am to 4pm straight and then wasted the rest of the day pretty much. But no gaming cravings and I actually feel like being productive tomorrow (I think), which would be a change. So I guess let's see? I've asked my wife to help with going to bed early and I'm hoping that'll help me in the long term. Sigh. This is probably the crappiest I've been since August...
  17. Sleep before 12am: 1 (longest streak: 17) No phone in washroom 1/120 Umra resolutions (50%): 1/30 30-minute study: 1/90 Work Hours: 9:10 so far I've really made an effort (with the help of the wife) to sleep earlier. Stayed up after morning prayer yesterday and today and have had overall productive days. Trying to get back into my spiritual habits & study, as well as not using the phone in a washroom (a huge time suck for me!). Overall, I'm feeling pretty good. But my video consumption is still pretty bad. I've been watching let's play videos of my favorite game and the only thing that's stopping me is the $200+ cost of the game with all its DLCs (and I wouldn't be able to enjoy it without the DLCs). I did even play 5 minutes of an old 1990s game, but it quickly felt stupid and I quit. I'm hoping I can build up enough energy & motivation to finally stop consuming these videos and get away from my looming gaming relapse. I think the biggest factor for me has been my sleep routine and level of fatigue. If I feel rested, I do just fine. It's when I'm constantly sleeping late that this nonsense starts. So I need to take better care of my sleep and hopefully recover from all of this, God willing.
  18. i'm struggling. binge-watched 2 seasons of show a few days back, lost a whole day's worth of work. i've started watching gaming vids and the desire to game is pretty strong. the thing that's stopping me at the moment is that I'd need to fork over $200+ for the game that I want to play and all the DLCs that go with it. And to top all that, I'm not really feeling like doing any work on myself, re-starting the detox, etc. I don't even feel like working or launching my business (SO close). Sigh...
  19. pretty much a fail all around so far. i have a new fad: podcasts. I started listening to them as I was helping my wife around the house, making meals, etc. I found some really interesting ones and now I'm listening to them in the bathroom and staying up late because I want to finish an episode. sleep has been a major problem for me. going to try to focus on once again getting off the tit of the phone, whether visual or aural, and getting to bed on time. these are key for me right now if i want to get back to being productive.
  20. Thanks for checking in man. I'm actually overall OK productivity-wise. I've been struggling with the video detox somewhat. I keep off for a few days, then come back to it. But I don't relapse in the sense of non-stop binge-watching, so it's not SUPER damaging. But it still manages to waste an hour or two a day and I need those hours! I can finally talk about this (didn't want to before), but the biggest thing that happened recently is that my wife got pregnant. We were super excited (we've been married for a long time and are in a good place to have a kid overall), but unfortunately it turned into a miscarriage. We just got back from the hospital yesterday after the procedure to remove the embryo. Productivity-wise, it was a tough period. She really wasn't feeling well, so I had to take over pretty much everything in the household + take care of her. I was happy to do it, but obviously it ate into my work hours & sleep. I slept like 16 hours last night to make up for it. I don't think I've slept this long since college. Emotionally, it was a roller coaster. You look at life completely differently when you realize you might be a father. There were certain things about myself that I felt like were absolutely necessary to fix before the kid is born. My tech addiction is one thing. Being overweight is another (I gained weight in the last year of college and haven't gotten rid of it ever since). I started working out and have been pretty consistent with it for over 2 weeks now. Another thing is being established financially: it's something that I've been working on primarily over the past year or so, but I guess it gave me an even stronger impetus to do so. Once we found out the baby wasn't going to come, it was difficult. But at the same time, we both realize that all of this is from God anyway. We prayed a lot when in Mecca & Medina for children when the time is right and only if they'd grow up (and we'd be able to fulfill their rights). So we're happy to not have children if these things wouldn't align. Overall, I'm just exhausted physically and emotionally. Unfortunately, most of my routines went out the window last several weeks. I'm going to try to get back into them, but we're traveling in a month, so it looks like I'm in for a disruption again. *sigh* Will do my best to start updating more regularly from now on.
  21. Day 12/120 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) Sleep before 12am: 0 (longest streak: 17) No phone in washroom 44/120 Umra resolutions (50%): 15/30 30-minute study: 0/90 Work Hours: 41:35 over the last week! Pretty much the same. Very happy about having being able to put the work hours in, although it's still eating into my other activities.
  22. That's an important reflection. Do you still watch gaming vids? If so, that may be something you need to limit. I've found a lot of benefit in clearing all my youtube history (including search), unsubscribing from all channels that have a negative impact on my gaming, and installing a chrome app that blocks youtube suggestions & the like. This way when i do have to go on YouTube, it 1) doesn't remind me about games I like and 2) doesn't pull me into the endless watching abyss. From my own experience and that of some of the folks on here, gaming vids are a common trigger, so you need to ensure you avoid it & set up methods to do so.
  23. lol yeah. i realize my journal is now a bit outside of the main gamequitters territory ? i'm hoping gaming is no longer a thing for me (although I've had the urge to game recently, which is a concern), but i also don't see a lot of difference between being hooked on games and being hooked on videos. the process for getting rid of both is definitely the same and I enjoy the community. it'd be kinda lame to have to go look for a "videoquitters" community, if that even exists lol.
  24. Day 10/120 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) Sleep before 12am: 0 (longest streak: 17) No phone in washroom 42/120 Umra resolutions (50%): 13/30 30-minute study: 0/90 Work Hours: 27:45 this week (I'm ahead!) I have something going in my life right now that's taking a LOT of time out of my schedule. Don't really want to share at the moment - will do later, God willing. So the fact that after spending most of Friday working, I'm actually ahead of schedule in terms of work hours is huge! To be fair, I had to decrease my spiritual resolutions by 50% and the study thing has not been happening (also had no class this week, and that's a good 8 hours or so out of my week), but at least the work is happening. I'm super behind on a lot of client work, but it looks like I'm slowly digging myself out of the hole. It's also not a bad hole to be in: I have a LOT of work. The only downside is that my business is once again on semi-hold. But I'm within shooting range now, I need maybe another 5 hours to start SOME stuff going.
  25. Yep. Your flaws are not you, because flaws can come and go. They're not essential to you & you shouldn't identify with them. If you accept that, then it becomes very easy to get very "tactical" about it: focus on how to eliminate one at a time. Never heard that before, but that's awesome!
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