Hi Everyone,
I get asked about how I deal with cravings a lot. Below is how I typically deal with them.
Cravings are something that many recovery and focus programs revolve around. You can basically only focus from periods of 30 to 60 minutes without having a lapse. In recovery, you might sway from one end to the other because of random willpower levels.
Cravings are best described as the acronym HALTED. Hungry, angry, lonely, tired, environment, and dehydration.
Next time you have a craving, take a few moments, like 10 to 30 seconds and close your eyes and scan yourself like you'd scan a homework problem. If any of those emotions are prevalent then deal with them. Those emotions are causing you to crave a solution to cure them and because our brains are wired to gaming, you'll naturally crave gaming. This is how you train yourself.
The toughest one to decipher is environment. That's 3 parts: social environment, mental environment, and physical environment. You might hate the room you're in, then people you're with, or the way you're feeling from something you're doing. Changing your environment is key to solving all of this.
You could be bored with a group and crave a multi-player game for example. Or you could be making no progress on homework and want some fast progress from a game etc.
Learn about yourself and you'll learn about these cravings. My current biggest craving is tired. At my old job, it was environment.