karabas

?This is not what I posted but it is very inspiring! Thanks for sharing! I think I posted that lol. Thanks, @JustTom ?

Day 22-23/120 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) Sleep before 12am: 11ish (longest previous streak: 4) No phone in washroom 25/120 Umra resolutions: 10/90 Work Hours: 7:40 (40:00 last week), 4:40 Monday Last few days have been a tad strained. I'm working, but with less focus. I'm not going to bed late, but I'm really pushing my own boundaries here. Yesterday I went to bed at 12:30. I'm still counting it, but I need to go to sleep actually before 12 to keep my streak. I think the sleep is getting to me overall. I usually need a lot and I'm sleeping slightly under 8 hours every day and it's been accumulating. It's enough to stay up after morning prayer, but I feel a 3-hour crash fest coming up like last week. Problem is, I can't really afford it productivity-wise, but it might need to happen. Tomorrow, maybe? I don't think I'll hold out until Friday. Yesterday I got only 4:40 of work in, but with good reason: we started our Islamic classes with a teacher again. So I had a 2-hour class and I spent time preparing for it (probably another 2 hours or so). So not too bad, but I do need to make that time up. And I have another class on Thursday. Oh boy. Anyway, things are not so bad, but I'm feeling a dip in motivation coming up. My prayer has been a lot more distracted as of late as well and I'm not liking it. I'm hoping it's just a matter of rest.

Duuuuude exactly. Please let this year end already lmao.  Lol. I hated university (I love learning... just not in school) and everybody kept telling me, "just wait till you get a job, you'll hate working and wish you went back to uni!" Nope. Never happened. Every time somebody mentions their uni studies, I feel thankful for not having to go through that again ?

Day 21/120 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) Sleep before 12am: 9 (longest previous streak: 4) No phone in washroom 23/120 Umra resolutions: 8/90 Work Hours: 6:50 (32:20 this week) Considering I was so tired that I slept until 12 and had some long conversations with the wife and still got all my umra resolutions done while going over the target 6:40 of work, I call this an awesome win. Now I have to do 7:40 today, but I'm up and it's early and I'm motivated, so LET'S DO IT.

Yep. I'm working on a basic email sequence + landing pages. Almost done, I think. After that I need to get some essential content recorded. I think the idea of doing that scares me, because it makes the whole thing real. And doing this whole thing is a risk. A risk of spending time, money, effort, on something that may or may not pan out. So I think I'm putting it off because of that. But I'm running out of excuses to do it, plus I really think it can unlock a lot of other goals I have in life, so I think that motivation is starting to outweigh the fear. It's mostly no videos. I watch stuff I have to for work and the like, obviously. Or a video a friend/relative sends me. And I watch SpaceX launch webcasts ? (because I"m a nerd and Elon Musk is a role model). Other than that, nothing. The easy workaround bug on BlockSite got fixed, so it's fairly annoying for me to watch something on this computer. But since the pilgrimage I haven't really wanted to watch anything. I don't know if this is permanent or not, but I'm using it while it lasts to get myself off of this nonsense.

Hey! Welcome to the anti-gaming grind ? A couple of tips: - You might want to separate YouTube out of your gaming detox. Yes, YouTube is a problem and it's also an inspiration for relapsing into gaming, but from personal experience (and those of other journals I follow), it's actually a lot harder to quit than games. I'm at nearly 120 days of no gaming, but I haven't been able to go off videos for more than 25 days. I would focus on not gaming (and maybe not watching gaming content on YouTube) first, then battle your video content problem once that's more or less under control. - There are some apps & extensions that can help with YouTube usage. Chrome has an extension called Block Site. You can come up with some random password and send it to a friend or a person on this forum. Yes, there are ways around it, but it's generally enough to keep me from just browsing to YT. There's also an extension that hides recommendations in YouTube, and can also remove comments so that all you see is the video you looked for and nothing else. THat's very helpful. And I definitely recommend getting rid of your channel subscriptions, YT history, and search history, and setting them to off so that your YT is always in "brand new" form. Do this even if you do decide to leave the YouTube detox for later. - Don't feel bad about failing. It might feel like you're not getting anywhere, but as long as you learn something about yourself every time, you're actually progressing. It might take a lot of learning before it enables you to actually detox. For example, if these friends are a bad influence, you should seriously consider distancing yourself from them.

By the way, my previous video detox streak was 25 days. I'm feeling fairly confident about going past that milestone this time, God willing.

Day 19-20/120 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) Sleep before 12am: 8 (longest previous streak: 4) No phone in washroom 22/120 Umra resolutions: 7/90 Work Hours: 4:20 (Thursday), 1:00 (Friday) (25:30 this week) Thursday ended up being slightly less "productive" because I went to a study group. The group itself was 2 hours, but the friend picking me up was picking up a bunch of other people, so it ended up taking closer to 4 hours. So I think it's pretty good I managed to squeeze in 4+ hours as it was. I decided to take Friday off and overall it worked out well. I managed to accomplish almost all tasks I set out for the day. However, I ended up not resting as much as I was hoping to and some stuff kept me up past midnight (even though I was ready for bed at that time), so today I ended up sleeping 3+ hours after morning prayer AND I'm still groggy and lazy. I need to try to sleep a bit earlier today - even 11:30 instead of 12:00 should make a difference. Anyway, it's salvageable: I've got less than 15 hours to go, so need to put in 7 hours or so today/tomorrow and I'll cap off yet another 40-hour week. Also, I've put in a good amount of time into developing my business. I have a lot of the marketing collateral done, so I might even have time to work on generating some content. That way I'll be able to do some sales right away in the new year. Let's see.

Day 18/120 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) Sleep before 12am: 6 (longest previous streak: 4) No phone in washroom 20/120 Umra resolutions: 5/90 Work Hours: 7:05 (20:10 this week) Good day, got stuff done, so can't complain. Pretty much on target in terms of work hours. I'm thinking of taking Friday as my day off. I have Friday prayers anyway and that takes up at least 1-2 hours of my day as it is. No cravings.

Hey Nathan, Welcome to the forums! Good on you for recognizing this at 17. Wish I did! While I concur with @S1.M0NK above (if you're addicted, it's pretty much impossible to be moderate in your use of games), at the same time I think we all have to discover that for ourselves. I thought that I could game moderately for a long time, until I finally had to concede that I couldn't. But that was my deciding this for myself, which is different from someone else telling me that. We do recommend that you start with a 90-day no gaming detox and that you keep a journal. The journal is super important as it helps you track your progress and pay closer attention to your emotions, triggers, negative influences, etc.

Good to hear! And if you've hit 90 days before, why not try setting a slightly higher bar: maybe 120 days?

Day 17/120 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) Sleep before 12am: 5 (longest previous streak: 4) No phone in washroom 19/120 Umra resolutions: 4/90 Work Hours: 5:35 (13:05 this week) Went to bed exactly at midnight and so rescued my early sleep streak. Sleep's been good so far - time for morning prayer ends late, past 8am (it's winter), so I get 7.5-8 hours of uninterrupted sleep in if I'm in bed by midnight and it's great. I haven't napped during the day and have been alert and motivated. Less hours worked for the day, but it's not a problem since I was taking care of my wife who isn't feeling well and spent 90 minutes on the phone with my parents. Considering I talk to them like once a month (they're all so busy), I'm fine with losing some work hours over it. Also, my goal for each day is 6:40 minutes, because that gets me to 40hrs in 6 days and gives me a free day to hang out and catch up on sleep. So thanks to my Monday's productivity, I'm only 15 minutes short of target so far. Keep in mind, I'm also spending time with my wife AND I'm spending nearly two hours a day on prayers, going to the mosque, reading Qur'an, etc, which has helped me re-focus my life a good bit (at least so far). So I think I'm doing pretty well productivity-wise. Let's hope I can maintain this at least for the next 3 weeks. Have to have a plan for what to do during my vacation time with family come Christmas...

Sorry, I saw the word "bitter" in your post, maybe that's why. I also saw other people's feelings on the matter. This is probably semantics, but I don't think victimhood = lack of responsibility. Obviously we're all here because we're taking responsibility for our actions and are working towards improvement. But at the same time, it's fair to recognize that there are literally trillions of dollars being spent on keeping people like us glued to screens (whether for games, videos, facebook, or whatever other form of entertainment), not out of some nefarious conspiracy theory, but because it makes money. So when the trillions win over human psychology, I think it's fair to recognize that I or some other person is a victim, but for me it almost becomes a battle cry to never succumb to this crap again. Anyhoo... glad you don't have ill feelings towards your gaming friends. Disappointment... yeah, I hear you.

I think you should look at it differently. It might help with getting over the resentment and other ill feelings towards them: At the end of the day, these guys are also victims. They're victims to the technology that's keeping them sucked into this crap day after day, hour after hour. You were there before, you know what it's like. You've had the realization that this is a waste of your life recently - maybe these guys will have the same realization tomorrow, or in a week/month/year/decade. But right now they're sucked into their virtual worlds, just like you were not too long ago. You also probably know well enough how gaming can destroy your relationships with the closest people to you in your life - your parents, siblings, significant other, friends, etc. It certainly made me a crappy husband, son, and brother. Did you care about those people when you were gaming? Probably yes. Probably a lot. But you cared about gaming more because it took over your life. So that's what these gamer friends are doing now - it's not that they don't care, it's more that they're completely sucked into their virtual worlds and forget what's going on on the outside. When you're in the world with them together, they see you and interact with you. Otherwise, they don't interact. I'm saying this because I did a similar thing to many of my friends. I was involved with a religious leader who was psychologically abusive. I was convinced to move to his community and live there for 2 years, always running around and doing this thing or that thing for him or for the community. I barely slept and had no life except as part of the community. I ended up very abruptly disappearing on many of my friends. I regretted it even while I was doing it, but I was so sucked into this whole thing that I just didn't have a minute to spare on anyone else. When I finally got out, I tried re-establishing contact with a lot of these people. Most of them didn't want to talk anymore. Some of them ignored me completely. I'm pretty sure I hurt a lot of them. But the thing is, I never stopped carrying about them - it's just that I was completely overwhelmed by an external factor. So my point in saying all of this, is that it's easier to look at your gaming friends with compassion. Understand what they're going through, let go of the hurt, but also distance yourself from them since they're not a good influence in your life. And if at some point some of them have the realization you had, decide to quit gaming, and reach out - be there for them. Aside from being the "higher road", this is also just easier to deal with long-term than resentment built up towards a whole bunch of people.

Nice! You're making me miss bio. Stem cell differentiation and immunofluorescence was my jam at my last research job. Glad to hear you're back in the saddle! Are you off of games again?

Day 16/120 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) Sleep before 12am: 4ish (longest streak: 4) No phone in washroom 18/120 Umra resolutions: 3/90 Work Hours: 7.5 I'm cheating a bit with the sleep before 12am thing because technically I went to bed slightly after 12. But it was a bit out of my hands and I wasn't staying up and procrastinating, which is what I'm trying to avoid. Either way, no cheats today or I lose the streak (otherwise I'll be at 5 days, which would mean beating my previous streak!). Did a lot of work today, including spending 90 minutes on working on my business idea. I'm finding more and more that I can't stay motivated if I don't do something about it. If I maintain this level of work on it, I think I should have enough stuff ready to hit the ground running in January (I'm not setting up a company until then to avoid doing extra taxes for this year, so I need to leave my expenses until then as well). Cravings were pretty minimal, aside from when I had to watch a youtube video for work: I nearly forgot about my detox and watched an unrelated video, but I held myself back. I need to restart my pomodorros at some point, but I'm not feeling it at the moment... Yeah, that's probably all it is.

Day 15/120 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) Sleep before 12am: 3 (longest streak: 4) No phone in washroom 17/120 Umra resolutions: 2/90 Work Hours: 6 First proper work day. I struggled a bit. Maybe it's the nearly two weeks of not doing any work. Or the fact that I'm still sick (caught something as we were departing Saudi). Either way, couldn't focus very well or get myself to really dedicate effort to work. Also, my Umra resolutions take about 2 hours or even more every day, so that's an added filler to the day. Which I don't mind - I should be able to squeeze in that much time into my days. Feeling good so far. Not much in terms of cravings for videos or games. Yeah, it was definitely a worthwhile retreat. I'm curious to see how motivated I am too! Some of the effects are already wearing off (unfortunately), but some are going strong, so let's see. The thing is, this detox and these journals are somewhat spiritual in and of themselves. It's quite startling how much they resemble medieval Sufi writings that discuss things like leaving sins or rectifying your character (controlling anger, jealousy, etc): almost all Muslim schools of spirituality (who source their ideas from the scriptures & the practice of the Prophet peace be upon him) recommend taking account of your day every day, setting "detox" goals for the action you want to leave or inculcate (usually 40 days), consulting with more experienced practitioners, leaving friends who prevent you from progressing, replacing bad actions with neutral ones, etc. And they talk about the fact that being on the path is what's important, the results come from God. So if you fail, you pick yourself up, restart, and keep going. I've literally heard all of this on these forums before. So I think a lot of it just infusing the detox with a spiritual outlook. But I think that comes down to your overall beliefs: what you believe will happen when you die affects how you live and that affects your spiritual outlook. So worth the time investment ?

As long as the detox is intact, the day's a win in my book ?

Day 14/120 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) Sleep before 12am: 12 (longest streak: 4) No phone in washroom 16/120 Umra resolutions: 1/90 Not much to update: just getting back into the swing of things after the trip.

Agreed with @JustTom: I'm 111 days of no gaming now, but video content has been a far greater challenge. Keeping your phone away from yourself is a good idea. The less I'm around my phone, the less I waste time. It is known.

Day 13/120 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) Sleep before 12am: 1 (longest streak: 4) No phone in washroom 15/120 Umra resolutions: 0/90 I'm back from the umra pilgrimage to Mecca/Medina. The experience has been extraordinary, and completely different from last time. The Sufis talk about the "spiritual high" that's found in acts of worship and I got to experience a taste of it. Prayer often feels like a burden for me normally - I'm so engrossed in this world and doing things I need to earn, study, etc, that I approach prayer like a distraction from all of that. But I dropped everything when I came to the holy cities. No work. No business. No studying. Just 5 prayers at the mosque, reading Qur'an, and paying visits to the Prophet's tomb (peace be upon him). It was a tranquil, zen-like experience. And some of those prayers, I wished they never ended. Obviously, I couldn't even think of games or videos. Even checking out a twitter feed of a person I follow seemed "dirty" at that time. There was a particularly amazing event this time around. There's an area of the mosque in Medina that's called Riyad al Jannah, or "Garden of Paradise". It's based on the saying of the Prophet (peace be upon him), that what's between his house and his pulpit is a garden from the gardens of paradise. Whether that's literal or figurative is not known, but it's understood to be a spiritually special place. That area is very small. And everyone wants to pray there. And there are hundreds of thousands of people who come every day (the mosque can hold 1 million people and people spill over onto the plaza outside for Friday prayers, so go figure). The government has set up a whole "flow control" system where they let in a group of ~100 people at a time, give them 5 minutes, then kick them out and bring in the next 100 people. There's a specific pillar in that place that's known to be an especially blessed part, particularly because the Prophet (peace be upon him) would lead prayer from there until he expanded the mosque. I haven't been able to pray behind it because every time someone takes the spot. It's very hard to get it, given the crowds. I kept asking friends if they know any tricks to doing so, but nobody gave me anything concrete. So on my last day in Medina, I decided to go one last time. I got delayed many times to the point that I was afraid I'll miss praying there at all. But when I finally got there, the crowd literally carried me in front of the pillar. And at that point, we were an hour away from one of the 5 daily prayers. So instead of 5 minutes, I was able to stay until the prayer, and then a bit after it - an hour and a half in total. No tricks necessary. I got more than I wished for - and a lot more, without any work of my own. And this is really the spiritual lesson that Islam teaches: your job is to stay sincere and put in the effort. Results come from God. It's a great analogy for the detox I'm doing here: I put in the effort and I do it because I want to improve my life both from a worldly and religious aspect. Whether I succeed or not is not up to me, but I have to keep trying if I want to get results at some point. Long story short, this whole trip put some things into perspective. I've realized how disconnected I've been from my own religion, despite following the letter of the law to the best of my ability. And I've realized how much there is for one who remembers the spirit of the law as well as the letter. I've made a new counter for some resolutions I've made upon coming back: - I want to pray at least one prayer a day in the mosque. Doesn't matter which one, just get it done. It's less than a 5 minute walk away, so there isn't an excuse. - I can't delay the prayer in general: do it as soon as the prayer time comes in, or as soon as I can after that - I need to do my morning and evening spiritual routine no matter what (prayers for forgiveness, blessings on the Prophet peace be upon him, and reading Qur'an) Obviously, my non-spiritual goals in terms of going to bed on time, staying off of videos, and working on my new business, are still there as well. So I'm back in it with fresh resolve. Not taking my phone to the washroom has been very helpful as well. I'm traveling again in ~3 weeks to visit my parents - that time should be easier in terms of staying off of technology, but it'll be more difficult in terms of keeping up my spiritual routines. I hope and pray my resolve lasts that long.

I relapsed right after hitting 90 days too. That's OK. Learn from it, see what you're doing wrong, and pick yourself back up. I struggled for a bit after my post-90-day relapse, but once I restarted my detox, gaming hasn't been an issue. I'm at a 110 days now and aside from an occasional craving there hasn't been a big problem. Videos and the like still are, but at least I've gotten gaming out of the picture. One of the key things I've learned from failing is to not feel too crap about it and just move on. Failures will happen and it's how we grow. Here's to another 90 days of butt-kickery ?

Day 0/120 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) Sleep before midnight x0 (longest streak: 4) No phone in washroom 1/120 Spiritual Routine: 0/7 I'm pausing both the pomodorro ticker (because I'm not at home and am not using pomodorros right now) and the sleep ticker (because we're about to travel and God knows I'm not sleeping early in the Holy Cities). The phone in washroom thing I definitely aim to maintain (I already feel better after a day and a half of not doing it). Looks like the video detox and spiritual routine will wait for a revamp once I travel. Here's to trying one more time! Yeah, I hear you. Thanks for the encouragement. My long-term aim in life is to reach a point where I can actually have my laptop locked up most of the day if not even most of the week. And switch to a dumb phone. I don't really have a good strategy for achieving that at the moment. So far it seems like my best bet is to get wealthy enough to hire an assistant who could do most of my tech usage (like replying to emails & the like). I'm not sure if I'd be able to reach that ever, but here's to hoping. Overall, I've come to see technology as the equivalent of morphine. Yeah, it has its benefits (morphine is used during surgery sometimes), but it's also highly dangerous and to be avoided as much as possible. But yeah... one step at a time. I think that compared to a year ago, I'm in a significantly better place, even if I haven't managed to detox from video content. If I were to total up the hours I waste, I think they're a lot less. They're still a lot, and I hate myself for wasting so much when there are so many things I'd rather do, but it's progress and I've gotta be thankful for it.

Day 0/120 |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Pomodorro Lvl 2 (56/100) Sleep before midnight x0 (longest streak: 4) No phone in washroom 0/120 Spiritual Routine: 0/7 Ok, so it looks bad, but it's not as bad as it looks. I'm being fairly productive - at least with work. My biggest problem is spending too much time in the washroom because I take my phone with me and then waste time on it (I don't waste time on my phone otherwise). That's stupid and I"m starting a detox from that specifically. It's a bad habit that I have to drop. My spiritual routine has taken a hit and that needs fixing, but I am going on pilgrimage in just a few days. I'm still watching videos, but good news is that the bug in the chrome extension that @JustTom recommended has been fixed and I think that should help me control this a bit more. Also: I've past 90 days without games! And I barely even thought about it! (My Steam account has been long deleted now, so getting myself back into gaming would be annoyingly hard and expensive). It might seem doom and gloom, but clearly I've progressed to some extent.

It's a temporary thing. Just ride it out and don't relapse. You probably need to get some rest - you've been going hard for a long time with these exams. You're in the Bay Area, no? Why not plan some nature excursion for the weekend or something? There are so many awesome natural parks a few hours' drive away and planning for them might engage your mind a bit.