ace_dee

good luck!

good luck on your journey, it is important to have something else to fill the time, at the start anything will do including watching tv and movies

It isn't really a game like the others because there is that physical component that your progression depends upon. Obviously people can gps cheat or stupidly play from their cars. But under normal circumstances I would consider pokemon go to be a "positive" activity compared to others.

I think its important to recognize that time gates, energy systems, blind bags, and gatcha aren't a gameplay mechanic but a habituation mechanic. The comparison is that single player games like legend of zelda are a glass of wine with dinner while multiplayer pvp pay-to-win blind bag gatcha games like clash of clans is like shooting heroin behind a dumpster. Thinking about how some publisher executive is laughing because he is getting rich by sucking away your time and mental energy and turning you into a chewtoy for the paypig whales should make you disgusted enough that you don't want to play those anymore. IMO as long as games don't specifically have those intentionally addictive components they can be cautiously enjoyed.

Day 10 Its been easier than I thought it would be. I had the "quitters flu" for a couple of days around day 5 where I didn't want to do anything but sleep but I hunkered down and powered through it, at least going through the motions of my daily activities. I'm not going entirely cold turkey, I'll check my pokemon go and exchange gifts with a couple of friends to keep up my ball supply 🙂 but I'm not on it more than maybe 10 minutes every other day. Still no hearthstone or twitch streams and no single player games which was my goal. Like I said in my intro post I never really thought gaming was that much of a problem. Even though I did recognize that my gaming was a substitute for other, more meaningful activities. Takeaway so far.... first get back to the basics. Before I decided to make big changes I started with small ones. The first step was to arrange my sleep schedule so that I woke up and went to sleep at regular times. And I attempted to keep my sleep schedule consistent regardless of the days activities including weekends and holidays. That consistency gave me the option to adjust my schedule based on the activities I wanted to include in my day. In my case I shifted it from waking up at around 8 to barely get to work, to waking up at 6 to work out, have breakfast AND see my kids off to school. With that under control I went after my diet. At first, and still now, I don't worry about how much I eat but what I eat. I'm avoiding processed foods, anything with corn syrup, hydrogenated oil, and minimizing added sugar. Also I'm cutting out fast food from chains entirely, and if I need something fast I'll get a deli sandwich from a grocery store. Also I'm attempting add more fruits and vegetables and eat more of them per sitting when they are available. That change gave me more daily energy and generally I felt better. And the final "basic" step was to include consistent exercise. I hadn't had problems working out before and even if I don't really enjoy it sometimes its something I can make myself do. But unfortunately I have a bad habit of "binge" exercising and pushing myself, so I'll go a few months consistently, injure myself, take a few months off to heal, feel bad about it and repeat the cycle. Now I'm more "mature" and going slow and steady even if that means I have to be more cautious about listening to my body. Instead of always grinding through a specific routine despite pain I gave myself permission to push back, skip movements that don't feel good and use less weight or fewer reps if that lets me go through the motion. I'm not worrying about progression at all. At my age I recognize that I'm not building for anything, I'm slowing down my rate of decay, that that is fine by me. A good read for adjusting your strategy of self improvement is Scott Adams Systems Not Goals

RIGHT NOW you are probably right. There is nothing in your life except gaming. But you can change that. You have the power to put yourself out there and make the experiences you want in the world. There is a cost though, and that cost is you need to climb out of that comfortable pit that you dug for yourself. It will be awkward and difficult and embarrassing at first and sometimes you will slide back, but know there is light at the top, and the climb will be worth it.

greetings fellow traveler, good luck on your journey

good luck bro, are you also working out? If you aren't might as well become double awesome!

Thanks for the reply. Just waking up at 4am and forcing myself go to bed at 8pm removed a lot of the opportunity for gaming. That wasn't intentional but it helped push me toward my decision to minimize gaming. I didn't and still don't have a specific plan before I decided to minimize my gaming, but there are a number of other activities that I'm trying to do instead. I decided I wanted to start a business and I'm taking daily actions toward that goal. Then I'm learning Russian through duolingo but not forcing myself to do more than I want to daily to avoid burnout. At work I'm trying to just focus on work and use my "downtime" to reply to forums like this one, research business or watch educational videos. At home there is always some chore or home improvement that needs doing and I'm trying to be pro-active to the limits of my willpower and endurance. This summer and fall I'll be taking college courses as a parttime student toward finally finishing my degree and that will eat a decent amount of time as well. For "edutainment" I'm reading informative books like Jocko's and other non-fiction. And for pure entertainment I've started reading comic books again and watching movies or tv instead of gaming (one vice at a time). As for social interaction I've never really felt the need to interact with strangers daily. On twitch I was a regular on several streams and every couple of days showing up to say hello, having the streamer acknowledge my greeting, and a bit of banter about the game being played was enough. About once every week or two I feel the urge and I may sign up for a martial arts class and go a couple of times a week less to train and more for the social aspect.

Of I feel like my will power is not enough to completely abstain from single player gaming, tying gaming into an activity that has an inherent limit is a possible "safety valve" and would be one way to minimize backsliding.

The next step is to decide what you are going to do with those empty hours.

First I wanted to say that I believe that games can be enjoyed in moderation, I just happen to be bad at moderation, but I'm getting better. I discovered JockoPodcast in January and you could say I became a disciple in March. JockoPodcast has lots of stories from military people and book discussions focusing on discipline, leadership, and in a broad sense what it means to have a good life. I highly recommend it because it isn't focused on faddish "self-improvement", but on self-transformation through practical advice for attitude adjustment. After hearing all the war stories its hard to think of anything in my soft and pampered life as "difficult". Even before I decided to quit gaming waking up at 4am as Jocko recommended, and consequently going to bed at 8pm, naturally decreased my overall gaming time because there was no longer several hours of "dead" time between dinner and bed. After many hours of podcast I concluded that my life would be better without "most" gaming and I'm here because I'm acting on that belief, one small step at a time. Previously my go-to timewaster was hearthstone or some other card game to fill in the hours I had to sit at my desk for work, a single player game or watching streams between work and dinner, and streams or gaming after dinner until bed. This fundamentally made me a worse worker since I was doing my job between hearthstone games or sometimes while playing a game. And I wasn't paying enough attention to my family and household and didn't have any other goals to pursue. Playing games was my focus and the rest of life happened in between game sessions, sometimes frustrating me because reality took me away from a game I was particularly fond of. Current plan - 30 day timeline: stop single player games for "entertainment" or to fill time stop watching twitch streams (at this time streams and work are my only non-family social interaction so that is rough) Permitted gaming: pokemon go if I'm not at home and waiting for something to happen, like at the mall waiting for auto service desktop/console gaming with my children - the family plays mario kart together sometimes gameplay as long as I am streaming I'm not naturally social so talking for long periods of time drains my energy. Streaming is one way I can build endurance for real social encounters, even if nobody is watching I always continuously talk like they are. I honestly don't like streaming at all, I just started doing it because it was the "cool thing the kids are doing", thats why I feel like for me personally it won't hurt me to indulge in gaming while on stream.

Greetings everyone my alias is ace_dee and I'm on day 7 of my "almost" cold turkey attempt. When I was younger I retreated into games to avoid facing the normal difficulties that come with growing up. That created the habit of going back to gaming rather than learning the skills to take risks, cope with loss and failure, and building the resilience to try again until I succeeded. With everything except games I would stop trying or quit when things got difficult. But fortunately I was blessed with a level of self-awareness that prevented me from becoming a truly lost individual. But that was never enough to completely break my bad habits. Now I'm over 40, married and have children, have a well paying, secure job and have a good life by almost any standards. But I have also spent a large portion of that life playing games. And the seduction of game playing meant I missed out of many opportunities that I was presented. It was easier to "settle" and be "content" because I could always get the vicarious satisfaction of accomplishment without risk in the safety of a game. This is something which I now deeply regret. I can't change the past but hopefully I can change the path that I was on to have a better future. My goal is not necessarily to completely quit games entirely but to stop using games for procrastination or as a substitute for real life accomplishments.