NEW VIDEO: I Quit MMOs and THIS Happened
karabas
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Posts posted by karabas
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2 hours ago, Deku said:
Glad to be of help man ? I saw the notification pop up in my email and felt like this was one of those posts that shouldn't wait on a response. Hope you're feeling better!
I love these forums man. Yes, the journal is more for yourself than for others to read, but at the same time I feel like the human component is what makes it that more effective.
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2 hours ago, JustTom said:
Did you really ask her to marry you after a few conversations? That's pretty extreme compared to western standards huh
Lol I like that this is what you guys got out of that post ?
I didn't exactly propose after a few conversations. It was more that I said that I wanted to get to know her for the purpose of determining whether we'd want to get married.
The idea behind marriage without dating is that you get the key variables out of the way first. Like people nowadays ignore the big questions and get married, but it bites them in the butt later.
Like say, you want to have kids. And the girl you like doesn't want to have kids. People say "that's a bridge we'll cross later", but the reality is that there are only 3 possible outcomes once you come to the bridge: you have kids and she's miserable for the rest of her life, you don't have kids and you're miserable for the rest of your life, or you get divorced. All 3 options suck (unless one of you changes their mind, but it's a bad idea to base your entire marriage on a hope that someone will change later).
So the idea is you don't even consider marriage if the "non-negotiables" don't match. And THEN you're introduced, get a feel for the chemistry, personality, common interests, aspirations, etc.
I did kinda "cheat" in that my wife and I talked and felt a chemistry beforehand. So when I called her it was more to discuss the "big stuff" and get a better feel for personality, common interests, etc. So we did talk a lot before making the commitment. I came up to meet her family and she came down to meet mine. And we did interview each other's friends lol.
But yeah, we didn't really "date" in the western sense until after the wedding. But it's a lot more stress-free once the commitment's been made.
Been happily married for 7 years now, so I'm happy with the results ?
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Don't sweat it man.
First of all, you studied ahead of time because you were expecting a negative response.
Second of all - and more importantly - your worth as a human being isn't related to how well you can initiate spontaneous engaging conversation with women.
It's natural for a guy to be shy and awkward around the opposite gender they're interested in. Modern culture worships the personality that can be charismatic, anxiety-free, and "pick up girls" without a problem.
You know what kind of people normally have all those characteristics naturally?
Sociopaths.
Yeah, go read about it.
So instead of trying to change your personality, my personal advice would be to relax about it. Most long-term relationships don't start out with an "asking out" or a pick up at a bar. They evolve from non-romantic relationships in class or at work, etc. You'll find the girl who'll like YOUR personality, not some sociopath's.
Disclaimer: I'm a Muslim and I married without "dating", although we did meet at a volunteer event and struck up a natural conversation over a shared interest. But after a few conversations I basically called her up and asked if she was interested in getting married. So I'm looking at this dating process as an outsider.
But OK, let's say you do want to be that confident guy who can strike up conversations with other people, be funny, etc. Don't look at it as if you just can't get there. You're working on it. You're on the way there. You dared to do something you wouldn't have dared to in the past. That's progress. You're not at the finish line, but what matters is that you're on the path. Results will come with time.
But in the meantime: you're killing it at school, you're more social than you've been in the past, you've been working out... and most importantly you haven't gamed.
You're literally fighting against your brain's wiring and years-long addiction... by yourself. And you're winning. This is a super win for anyone who knows how hard this is to do.
So from an outsider's point of view, you're winning at life man. Don't let this small setback discourage you from an amazing amount of progress you've managed to achieve over such a short period of time.
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Day 13/120
Pomodorro Lvl 1 (33/100)
Sleep before midnight x0 (longest streak: 3)
Spiritual Routine: 0/7Sleep: 1:00am -> 6:30am
I stayed up and got some work done but then stuff came up later in the day that prevented me from finishing the day on a strong note.
This is the problem: I'm very bad at saying no when someone suggests we do something that I enjoy. It usually means I take unplanned time off of work and it derails my productivity. It looks like this is my next step in self-improvement: being more serious about work.
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Amazing! It's crazy how quickly the results come once you leave gaming. Hopefully it's good inspiration to stay off games ?
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Day 12/120
Pomodorro Lvl 1 (28/100)
Sleep before midnight x4
Spiritual Routine: 0/7Sleep: 12:30am -> 6:30am, 6:45am -> 12:30pm
I did procrastinate with my bedtime a bit yesterday. As this is a difficult habit for me, I'm letting it slide this one time.
No pomodorros today, although I did work a bit. But it just got out of hand: I woke up late, then I went for Friday prayer. After Friday prayer, we went over to my wife's friend's house for food and came back in late afternoon. And I was really tired and basically got very little done for the rest of the day. Lame.
I have to make it up this weekend, because this week has been crap in terms of productivity. On the plus side, no games and no media!
And yeah, I lost my Qur'an routine. Restarting tomorrow.
19 hours ago, Deku said:s there a reason you stay up from 6:30 am to 7:00 am every day? The body doesn't do great with discontinuous sleep, so that could be a reason why you feel the need to sleep so much. If you really have something to do at 6:30 then just try to acclimate yourself to sleeping 7.5 continuous hours from 11:00 pm to 6:30 am. That equates to about 5 continuous sleep cycles, which is about what the average person with a healthy sleep schedule needs.
I'm Muslim and I get up to pray. Right now I have to get up sometime between 5:30 and 6:45, so I push it towards the end. Optimally, I'd be going to bed by 10:30 and waking up at 6:30 and that would be it, but I'm HORRIBLE with early bedtime. In fact, I think I've had an easier time quitting games than going to bed on time lol. So for now I'm trying to get ~7 hours of sleep in and then do a 1.5 hour siesta later in the day, but it hasn't worked out so far because I feel too tired and go back to sleep after. I don't think my sleep cycle is 90 minutes though. I've tried figuring it out, but haven't been successful yet.
The other thing is that it's super hot here and heat definitely makes you physically tired. And I had a VERY bad sleep schedule for a whole month prior to this. So those are contributing factors, I'm sure. But I have to start staying up after prayers as my productivity has been crap because of this.
6 hours ago, JustTom said:I would just leave it as it is. Just forget about it. There will always be ways to play games, there's free to play stuff, there's easy piracy etc. For me, going back to exchange e-mails with the support staff to delete steam would actually be considered procrastination at this point.
I remember during my 90-day detox, I almost relapsed sometime around half-way and what kept from it was the technical challenge. I wanted a specific game and it was windows only and I have a Mac. I did figure out how to play it on a mac, but it was just so much effort and by the time I got it working, something happened that just turned me off of games again.
Steam is very easy. Installing it takes a couple of minutes, downloading a game takes a few minutes. And I'm very "loyal" to games: I only play a couple, but I play them a LOT. So I'm basically just a few minutes away from playing my favorite games. Versus, if I delete my account, I'd have to register for steam, fork over a ton of money for a game, etc. Yes, I can play some online game or whatever (I don't really pirate games), but I find that those aren't the ones that have that obsessive hold over me. So yeah, I might relapse and play them, but I won't disappear for two months and lose all my productivity because I'm playing mario bros or something lol.
Plus, I feel like deleting Steam is a statement. I'm losing hundreds of dollars of investment (some of the games I've barely played even). And I'm closing the door on a big chapter of my life. It's symbolic in a sense.
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Hey Sean,
I hear you man. I don't think I'm depressed, but I come closest to it when I game or consume tech in other ways (youtube, netflix, etc). I feel guilt & shame over having wasted my time when I have so many other things I'd rather accomplish (i.e. real life).
I started gaming around the same time as you and barely ever played multiplayer also. I also only play good guys, although I never reflected on the fact that I might be replacing my social life with NPCs in a computer game. Interesting insight.
I did also manage a long streak (I think a couple of years) of no games, but eventually got sucked back in.
These forums are a definitely a HUGE help. I highly recommend you start the 90-day detox and a journal in the daily journals section. Keeping a journal helped me slowly analyze myself, discover new things about my addiction, and gave me more mental ammunition for fighting the addiction. I think it'll help you as well.
Do post the link here if you start a journal - I'll def be following!
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5 minutes ago, Mohammad said:
BTW, should I start 90-day detox from scratch for playing just one game?
Your detox, your rules. You're close to the 90 day mark anyway. Were you planning to go back to games after?
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Day 11/120
Pomodorro Lvl 1 (28/100)
Sleep before midnight x3
Spiritual Routine: 0/7Sleep: 1:15am -> 6:30am, 7:00am -> 10:45am
Ok, so I technically went to bed late. But I was all ready to go to bed early, but something came up that was outside my capacity. So I'm writing this down as an early bedtime day, because I was on time with stopping working and heading to bed.
It's getting late now, so I didn't get to do my Qur'an in the evening. I'll try to make it up tomorrow, otherwise I'm keeping this counter reset.
Not a lot of pomodorros, but I was a lot more productive than they indicate. Did a bunch of stuff without them. But also started late. Tomorrow I'm going over to a friend's place... that'll probably take some time. So I'm in for another day of semi-productivity.
Need to make this weekend happen, man.
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11 hours ago, Deku said:
I know it's nothing personal, as he just wants to do well in the class, and frankly his toxicity is nothing compared to the 12 year olds I've played with in League of Legends
Lol I love the positivity there! Don't worry man, we all go through times in our lives when we don't know anything (or not enough)... that's what learning is for.
Also a lesson for the future to not be so toxic to the folks that know less than you. I think you can be watchful without being a douche.
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Day 10/120
Pomodorro Lvl 1 (23/100)
Sleep before midnight x2
Spiritual Routine: 2/7Sleep: 11:45pm -> 6:30am, 7:00am -> 12:00pm
Dunno what happened there. I keep sleeping like that's all I was born to do. Another day or two of this and I'm going to need to start reigning it in. Not a lot of pomodorros today since I went out for breakfast/lunch with the wife after waking up. Didn't get started on work until basically 5pm.
Not doing so well with the pomodorros so far... 3 days and I'm at 23, so just shy of 8/day and not all of those are going to work. I need to step this up in the next day or two.
But things are still going well. No cravings. I'm in double digits in terms of detox days. Now's the time to crush it!
Oh, and I'm going to sleep early... what on earth is happening? Fingers crossed I can keep this up for more than a few weeks.
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Day 9/120
Pomodorro Lvl 1 (15/100)
Sleep before midnight x1
Spiritual Routine: 1/7Sleep: 11:30pm -> 6:30am, 7:00am -> 10:30am
Slept a lot again. Original plan was to stay up after morning prayer and maybe have a siesta in the early afternoon. But I was way too tired. That's OK, I think I'm still sleeping off my travels.
Better in terms of productivity today. Especially given that I only sat down to work for real by ~3pm and manged to squeeze out 5 hours of productivity.
I'm really enjoying the pomodorros. Since I don't want to use screens during break time, I stand up and walk around, do random stuff. This is good health-wise since I don't sit for prolonged periods and also for my eyes, since it reduces eye strain from screens. I'm actually enjoying having these rest periods and I don't want to make my work periods that much longer. I might just increase the work amount slightly and decrease break time slightly but not go crazy like first intended.
Things are going well so far. No cravings. It obviously starts to worry me because God knows that this kind of motivation doesn't last. But if I can get my mind off of the dopamine for 120 days, I think I'll be in a much better place. And I really do think I have more ammunition than I did last time around. It's progress.
Oh, I never got around to deleting my steam account. Gotta do that before cravings come back. I think I have another game download account on another website too. Have to make sure to remove that one as well.
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Day 8/120
Pomodorro Lvl 1 (5/100)Slept a ton. I think I have a lot of sleep to catch up on, so I'll allow myself to sleep in over the next couple of days.
Easing back into work. 5 pomodorros ain't a lot, but I started late...
Overall, I'm not watching videos (and not even craving for it) and haven't thought of games in a while, so I'm feeling good. Here's to another 112 successful days!
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Damn, 3.3miles in 25 minutes? That's pretty solid! I could've done that maybe 10 years ago, but not now by a long shot lol.
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Days 6-7/120
Finished my trip with minimal usage of the laptop or phone in general. I'm enjoying the simply "being" in the moment. I'm not super zen about it or anything, but not staring into a screen at all times feels good.
I'm getting back to work and I'm going to steal @JustTom's pomodorro level idea, except I'll adapt it to the way I think would work better with me. The "level" system is going to be based on the amount of work minutes vs rest minutes. I'll slowly increase the focus minutes and slowly decrease rest minutes as I "level up". Overall I'm hoping for at least 16 pomodorros a day (8 hours of productive time), so a week's worth should put me at just over 100 pomodorros. I think that's a good target. It'll be easier now, but as I increase the focus minutes, each pomodorro will mean more time and so the 100 pomodorros/level goal will get harder.
I'm also going to re-introduce my Qur'an habit: 15 minutes in morning and 15 minutes in evening. I'm tempted to turn this into a level system too, but I feel like that's a bit too obsessive.
That's it for now. Let's keep it simple. Here's to a kick-ass week #2!
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I'd say go further: just get rid of the computer (and all gaming devices, including smartphone). Put passwords on all your devices. Try to restrict your use too so he doesn't see it as hypocritical.
And try best as you can to explain why you're doing it. He might not be happy despite the explanation, but he may be more grateful years later.
I definitely wish my parents did this for me when I was younger. I'm 30 now and it's a hell of a lot harder to rewire the brain at this age.
Just be aware: if he's on the autism spectrum, then this will be a lot harder. Autistic people/aspies are more predisposed to these kinds of behaviors. I'd read about aspie parenting first before taking the computer away.
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Days 3-5/120
I've been on the road with the wife and it's been nice. I told my clients I'm not available and my phone use has been almost entirely limited to the GPS. I've used the laptop for maybe 20 minutes total in the past 3 days, tops. It feels good.
I did lapse early on. I was super tired and I just forgot about my detox and watched a few videos on YT. But I stopped watching quickly and only then realized about the detox. So I figure I'd let that one go.
Otherwise I feel great and I'm gathering crucial momentum, like @JustTom said. I'll be coming home with a week under my belt and hopefully that's enough progress to feel bad about relapsing.
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Day 2/120
I was traveling, so not much time for any kind of time wastage. But I'm all for freebies ?
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Day 1/120
I feel like I finally have the resolve to do this detox. That realization last night is making me hate any use of technology that distracts me from life (aside from stuff I need to do, like work). I'm trying to stoke the fire by telling myself how much I hate it.
I'm hoping this is a shift in thinking for me. The reason I relapsed after my gaming detox last time was because I felt like games were good, even if they were overall bad for me. Same with videos, tv shows, etc.
Being in a place where I really hate these things for what they do to me is giving me a whole new level of resolve to not engage in these activities.
So today was a clean day and I didn't really struggle with either vids or games, despite being severely underslept.
I guess it remains to be seen if this state of mind is something that persists or a temporary feeling. I hope it's permanent. ?
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Welcome, Audley! The most important step is realizing you have a problem, and the second most important step is deciding you need to do something about it.
Do start a journal in the journals forum and follow some folks' journals on there as well. It helps to keep you accountable and motivated.
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I had a pretty chilling revelation just now. I realized that my technology, content, etc addiction is at the root of something I've been very worried about for some time now.
What I've been worried about is this: my emotions are shallow. I love, but not passionately. I worry, but not too much. I feel happy, but not overly so. I feel down, but rarely truly sad. I basically don't have strong emotions, good or bad.
And so I just realized that my gaming or watching shows or binging on YouTube or playing a game while in the bathroom or whatever else is essentially keeping me catatonic. I feel like I'm barely human.
I think it happens because instead of allowing myself to feel life, I'm drowning it out with whatever I can get my hands on. And yeah, I've removed gaming from my life for the past 2 weeks or so but it hardly made a difference. I've simply binged on Netflix, YouTube, and other mindless crap.
I need to start living life, not ignoring it while staring at a screen.
I'm going to be on the road starting Tuesday again. Not really a time to start habits or whatnot. But it IS an opportunity to restart my detox, because I'll have less time to do so. Here it goes, one more time!
On 8/22/2018 at 1:36 PM, JustTom said:Oh okay fair enough. In end, you've already completed the gaming detox before.
I just read this article: https://betterhumans.coach.me/how-to-stop-binge-watching-from-ruining-your-life-cd0e92f51750 , very powerful especially the ending part. Nice, thanks! I enjoyed that.
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Days 0/120
I totally relapsed on the videos again today. Watched a whole Netflix movie to top it off.
On 8/20/2018 at 7:50 AM, JustTom said:How about separate counters? Even if you 'relapse' on videos, you should still feel proud of not gaming!
I dunno. On one hand, I get your point. I'd be like 10 days into my detox by now if I was counting just gaming. But I really feel like my fight is now with the vids.
After my last relapse, I started to strongly feel like I hate games and what they do to me. I might still have cravings in the future, God knows, but right now I'm really not feeling anything close to a craving for gaming. And it's a shift from the past where I was doing the detox but I was missing games, the fun I had with them, etc. I wasn't ready to let them go. I feel like I am ready now. I can say, like Cam does, that it was a good time, but now I'm doing something else.
But I'm not there with videos/movies. And I really do think that they maintain my dopamine addiction while I'm off of gaming.
I'm really feeling like video stuff is what's keeping me in my current state and that if I learn to get rid of vids, that'll be the key to my recovery overall. Because to be fair, it HAS been the harder addiction. I can't completely quit because I need to watch video material sometimes. And I've always fallen back into videos before falling back into games. And videos are often a trigger that gets me reminiscing about gaming and wanting to go back.
So... yeah. Right now I feel like I'm past one hurdle with games (for now, at least), but I need to pass this next hurdle if I'm to actually move forward.
Maybe I'm wrong about this... idk. Lets see.
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Days 4/120
Totally relapsed on the videos and still have been playing games on my phone. But I'm doing a lot better than a week ago and I kinda need to keep my counter up so that I don't give up lol.
I'm fasting for the next two days and that's yet another incentive not to indulge in these behaviors. That'll get me to 6 days and hopefully to a week from there so I don't have to keep cheating to keep up my detox ?
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Days 1-3/120
Well it hasn't been perfect. I played some games on my phone while in the bathroom (ugh) and I watched a video or two but they were semi-intentional.
On the plus side, no games since I deleted steam... so must've been about a week by now.
Either way, I'm going to try to keep the counter and just straighten out and get rid of these little "cheats" that I'm indulging in.
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Karabas's Journal: Part 2
in Daily Journals
Posted
Day 16/120 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pomodorro Lvl 1 (41/100)
Sleep before midnight x0 (longest streak: 3)
Spiritual Routine: 0/7
Sleep: 12:45am->6:30am, 6:45am->9:40am
Had to make another trip to the capital city for some paperwork, so was on the road for a while again. Didn't have much time to be productive and definitely didn't run much in terms of pomodorros even when I was working.
Sleep was actually pretty good, just went to bed late last night because we ordered food and it was an hour late, so it pushed me over past midnight. The other nights I slept early and got a lot of rest.
It looks like I'll need to repeat the trip against next week or so. This nonstop moving around is really throwing me off. I haven't been stably in one place since end of July. I really need to be in one place and get work done. I'm a freelancer, so little work for me means little pay and it's really starting to hit my wallet bad.
Anyway, that's that. Looking forward to (hopefully) being productive for the rest of the week. I have to set specific work hours. Overall, 8 hours a day is more than enough. I'm going to aim for: 8am-12pm & 4-8pm. I need some evening hours because that's when most of my clients are at work because of time difference.
Yeah that's kinda where I'm at. I almost never accelerate to top speed. But I do agree that overall I gotta be a lot stricter, at least for the time being. First of all, I have to set different expectations with friends & family. Gotta get them used to hearing that I'm busy so can't pick up the phone or go somewhere or attend some party. Second of all, social time doesn't affect me much if it's on occasion. But when most days of the week there's something that I have to do that's beyond my normal schedule, it becomes a problem.
Well I get default social time by virtue of being married. My wife and I hang out and talk a lot. So my needs elsewhere are not so great. But the other problem is that I have some kind of "exceptional activity" that's not part of my default daily schedule almost every day. I do agree that on occasion giving up some productive time is perfectly fine. But when I can't get into work day after day because there's something or other happening, I gotta start being stricter with my time...