NEW VIDEO: I Quit MMOs and THIS Happened
Max
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Posts posted by Max
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Day 15.
Wake up time: 5 AM
Studying: 7 hours 25 minutes
I never thought I would consider going to sleep as a reward.
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Day 14.
7 hours of studying today. I intended to do 8, but I was so tired last hour that I started to lose focus, thus studying more would be just unproductive. So I'll go to sleep earlier so I can wake up at 5 AM tomorrow and do more study sessions in the morning. Nothing more to report since studying is the only thing I do other than sleeping, eating and doing some minor physical exercises.
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Day 13.
Woke up around 6 AM. Studied for 7 hours 40 minutes. Holy fuck that's tough, I need some rest.
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Day 12.
I've studied for 6 hours 45 minutes today, which is not enough. I also watched youtube for a few hours. This is disappointing. Well, to stay positive almost 7 hours is still better than nothing.
I have exams in 40 days and I procrastinated for 2 years straight, so now I have to study like there is no tomorrow.
I wake up at 6-7 AM which is too late. I have to shift it to 4-5 AM in a week or so. My study goal from now on is going to be 12 hours a day, I think it'll take a week to get there. Such schedule will leave me 4 hours of free time (considering 8 hours of sleep). Most of it I'll use for breaks between pomodoro sessions.
All of this means that I won't have any time for anything else. Which is kinda okay since I don't have anything to do anyway, not having any friends or job turned out to be convenient.
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Day 11 of no games.
Yesterday I've quit YouTube and everything related to entertainment online. I woke up at 7 AM and studied for 7 hours during the day. I've never felt so productive before.
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On 5/15/2022 at 1:19 AM, Georg said:
This path is not a straight road to success but rather a series of victories AND failures. I suppose the best we can do is learn to accept both as equally important and in some way desired.
Yeah, I absolutely agree on this one.
On 5/15/2022 at 1:19 AM, Georg said:What I can recommend is learning how your motivation works, because as I recently learnt there’s no such thing as a lazy person, but rather wrong conditions for motivation to thrive.
After I’ve read Atomic Habits by James Clear I started questioning importance of motivation. I tend to believe that motivation is volatile and in order to achieve something a have to focus on my system (routines) rather than goals. Environment is also a very important factor: right after my last relapse I’ve moved to countryside for a while, away from my gaming PC. So I didn’t play since then just because 1) I can’t, so it’s not tempting 2) I don’t have PC around so it’s not triggering me into an action, I have no cues to bad habits here.
On 5/15/2022 at 1:19 AM, Georg said:I think there are different ways one can learn about what works for him best, personally for me what has been a great deal of help recently is MBTI system, I recommend you look it up!
Thank you for your suggestion, it was an interesting read. It turned out I’m ISTP-T. Good to know, I’ve learned quite a bit about my likely behavior.
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Привет! Рад видеть русскоязычных ребят на форуме, такое тут не очень часто, а за этот месяц ты уже второй. Желаю удачи)
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So I've relapsed 3 days ago, fuck. Yesterday I found my old textbook where I was writing about my Overwatch addiction in 2018. And that shit scares me, it's been 4 years since and nothing really changed. I'm still the same, pathetic. I have no clue what I'm really doing in my life. My social life is non existent and I think that shows.
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Советом помочь не могу, ибо советчик из меня крайне хуевый, но хочу пожелать удачи)
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Day 6.
I've played some Minecraft, but I don't consider this as relapse, because I can totally control all my gaming besides Overwatch. I have no plans or desire to play Minecraft today. But I studied for about 2 hours which is disappointing. I want to find balanced approach to studying.
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Day 5.
I had a walk in the morning right after I woke up and that felt very nice and refreshing. I've planned to do 6 study sessions 1 hour each today, but I've done only 3. Is it enough? No. I will try to do better tomorrow.
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Day 4.
I overslept and woke up at 1 PM. Done some math during the day, but still kinda lazy fuck. I want to setup a healthy routine. I think going for a small walk after waking up might help, I'll do that tomorrow.
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Day 3.
I wanted to study a bit in the morning but I overslept. After that I wasn’t home all day. Today was just a nice relaxing day outside. I’ll study tomorrow.
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Day 2.
I've finished one math block which is nice. I wanted to do a bit more, but I think it's okay for the start. I should manage my time better because I'm wasting a lot on procrastination, so starting from tomorrow I'll set my goals as study sessions with fixed time period. I'll be using pomodoro technique, I already know that it works for me. Also I want to read more in free time, haven't done it in a while and I feel braindead.
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Day 1.
Last week went horribly wrong, I’ve been gaming nonstop for days. Today I quit again. Just now I’ve received an email with my exam dates: I have math on June 27th and physics on June 30th. Given this much time I have to study like crazy. So I want to try something new and share my study progress in this new journal. Every day I’ll make a post with my goals for the day and reflect what I was able to accomplish. By this I’ll be able to keep track of things and keep myself accountable.
That’s it for now, I have to sleep well.
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On 1/13/2022 at 6:47 AM, BooksandTrees said:
It's not a lack of talent. Studying is tougher than video games and more exciting. I forced myself to study 300 hours for my exam last October and passed. I failed twice before it. You gotta put in the time to gain experience. I think you need to create a structure to be proficient at studying. You were good at overwatch because you understood the purpose of the game, the strengths and weaknesses of characters, and how to work as a team under a time constraint. If you can do the same thing with your study materials you'll pass. It's topics requiring problem solving under a time constraint.
Get creative.
Thank you, Matt. I think I’ll need to experiment for a while to develop a routine that would work for me. And I need time to make a habit out of studying. Now it feels hard and unrewarding, but I think I can figure it out.
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On 1/11/2022 at 10:42 PM, The_Creative_Quitter said:
Having something you truly dream of that takes years is a GOOD thing! Find that thing that makes you passionate enough to spend your life honing it. It's not about the end goal, it IS about what you do "daily."
I'm trying to make my habit routine pleasurable, I want to enjoy every moment of my life. Maybe it just takes time to adapt to lifestyle without gaming, I'm just something like 20 days in.
17 hours ago, BooksandTrees said:Don't relapse. Remember the pain you've felt from relapse. This takes a long time and although you feel terrible it's still an instantaneous situation in your life and if you can get past these few hours without gaming you'll be ok.
Change your mental environment and think about something else by being in an interactive and responsible situation.
Thank you, Matt, I'm feeling much better now. Not sure how to change my mental environment while sitting in my room at home. Maybe I have to instantly go outside when I feel urges to play, I'll try this next time.
17 hours ago, BooksandTrees said:You're trying to associate being bad at new things with shame and being pathetic and that means you're hiding from something in your past. There's a reason you're elite at overwatch. Research this.
When Overwatch was the only thing I was committed to, I got used to being excellent at what I do and I it felt good. Now I'm committed to studying and I'm absolutely horrible at it. Last few years of high school I didn't understand shit. Now I have to pick everything up from the beginning. Almost everyone, including people younger than me already know all this. I have 5 months until my exam. If I won't make it again, then everyone who knows me are going to be completely disappointed.. again.
The only reason I was good at Overwatch is that I played this game 8-12 hours a day for 5 years. That's it, I'm not talented in any way. Everyone on my place could've done this.
Maybe I just don't understand something due to lack of experience.
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On 1/10/2022 at 10:45 PM, Nico said:
I've been listening to a lot of podcasts and reading books about habits, dopamine and the likes and I'm fascinated about all these topics.
Have you read Atomic Habits by James Clear? If not, I can highly recommend. Currently I'm applying practices which are described in this book.
On 1/10/2022 at 10:45 PM, Nico said:What made you decide to stop social media and to quit watching youtube/twitch?
I feel like social media is just a big waste of time and especially I don't like how people tend to show themselves in a better way than they are in real life. It feels like instagram page and real person are 2 different characters. This constant pretending and lie disgusts me. I want something real, not an illusion.
When it comes to Twitch everything is very simple. I wrote about it in my diary so I'll just quote it here:
"I've almost done reading Atomic Habits, the most important thing I've read so far regarding eliminating bad habits is that you don't really need a lot of willpower and self-control to stay away form it. It all comes to reducing your exposure to cues that trigger the craving. For example, a lot of new people here ask whether it is okay to watch gaming related videos and streams after you quit or not. Of course watching such stuff is the biggest trigger you can imagine, so you start craving to play really hard and it would take a lot of effort to resist a temptation. If you would not watch such content, you wouldn't have the cues, thus nothing will trigger cravings. That's the reason why I relapsed a week ago: I was bored so I decided to watch some Overwatch on Twitch, which immediately resulted in very strong cravings, so after a couple of hours of resisting I gave up and played by making an excuse that I'm ill and can't go outside now, so it's not that bad.
That was a good lesson that I shouldn't engage in a behavior that is connected to Overwatch somehow, because it'll trigger a craving."
I still use YouTube mainly for educational purposes or something like cooking recipes. I've unsubscribed from everything related to entertainment because it's so easy to start a video and binge watch for the rest of the day. I think that YouTube when not used correctly can cause a big problems with procrastination and just remove focus from what is really important at the moment. I have countless days when I needed to study, but I started watching something on YouTube while eating breakfast and just couldn't stop till the evening.
When I quit gaming for the first few times, it was very hard to manage my time. Things were simple when I was gaming all day. Now I have a lot of free time and instead of doing something useful I stated binge watching Netflix, anime, movies, YouTube. That's just not what I want. I've quit because I wanted to put my time in something meaningful, not just waste it in another way.
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On 8/14/2018 at 5:13 AM, BooksandTrees said:
I miss competition. I miss doing things at a high level and winning. If I play a sport there's always someone who has played for like 20 years and it's just impossible to find my groove. I was such an expert gamer that I had that edge. Now I have to pick up from the beginning.
On 8/14/2018 at 5:13 AM, BooksandTrees said:I just want to compete and win something that means something to me. I guess I am being impatient because I don't want to spend the next 5 years learning something to go from novice to amateur when I was already an expert gamer.
Then there's the hate side of me that stands by my quitting gaming. I hate all gamers. I think most people in the gaming community are such assholes. They take their anger out on others, are incredibly toxic, don't fix their life problems, most of them are pathetic and can't do anything outside the gaming world, and they are just miserable.
Then there's the side of me who sees both of those people inside of me. I know I can be amazing in real life. I've proven it before, but I just want to unload on something like a boxing bag for like 30 minutes and scream at it. I'm so full of this physical and mental tension - it's pouring out of my mind! I want to get out of my house and just FEEL ALIVE!!! I DON'T FUCKING FEEL ALIVE AT ALL!!! I go to work, feel bored and like a DRONE and then just DO NOTHING AT HOME LIKE AN ASSHOLE!!
I feel absolutely the same way. I was playing on a highest rank, but after I quit I feel pathetic no matter what I do. I understand that gaming is bad for me, I second everything you wrote about gaming community, but it's the only thing that gave me joy. It made me feel important. I was able to do things that others can't.
Now I feel purposeless even though I have a dream and I know what to do to achieve it. But it is too hard. It takes years.
It's been 3 years since you wrote it, you gained a lot of experience since then. Could you give some advice? I'm honestly on the verge of relapsing again right now.
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Welcome back. You were an inspiration for me when I just started. You are on the right path, keep going.
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Welcome to the forums! My BattleNet account was deleted on December 28th, so we’re on the same boat.
If parental control isn’t enough for you, I suggest changing your environment. Something like selling your gaming rig or at least GPU if you’re not working with graphics; getting rid of gaming peripherals and buying office mouse and keyboard, or something more fancy like Logitech MX master or trackball mouse.
Wishing all the best, you got this!
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14 hours ago, BooksandTrees said:
I'm psyching myself out to the point of illness. Instead of sleeping I'm panicking over things I haven't studied yet. I'll never take this test again if I fail it. I've tortured myself for years over this. I am done.
I've spent the past 4 hours trying to sleep. I've gone through tons of practice problems skimming them. Retaining nothing because it's 4 am. It's like I'm trying to calm myself down because I'm afraid to even look at the problems.
I have less fear now. I just need to sleep and start tomorrow.
Been there, done that. This summer I failed my high school final exam so I couldn’t go to university. I had 2 years to prepare for that exam, but instead I was just constantly playing Overwatch. A single thought of studying was giving me fear and anxiety. I can’t even count how many times I wanted to kill myself because of it. But now I’m slowly getting better. Last May I found a guy on YouTube who is studying for 12 hours every day for over a year and he does it live on his stream. He uses 60 minutes studying and 10 minutes break technique. So I started studying with his stream on background all the time and it’s been very helpful. I think I wouldn’t be able to do anything without that first push.
I’m gonna retake my exam in June and I’m already preparing for it. Today I studied for 4 hours 40 minutes and I’m gradually increasing time. Just know that you’re not alone and many of us are going through the same shit.
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2 hours ago, dirac said:
@WhoCares ah I see. If its standardized can you get old tests with the solutions? I always found this to be by far the best way to prepare for an exam, to study with previous exams. Good luck !
Yeah I can, I’m sure I’ll figure it out.
I’ve downloaded the book that you’ve mentioned, gonna take a look. Thanks!
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7 minutes ago, dirac said:
Do you need to study for some kind of test or are you just preparing for university ?
Well, in Russia in order to go to university, you have to pass a test for required subjects. List of subjects depends on what you’re aiming for. I have to write algebra, Russian language and physics. The exam is made by the government and unified. As far as I know, you have to know a bit about every section of physics. I’ll take a look on the book you’ve mentioned. I guess all I have to do is to read some textbooks and I’ll get it. My problem is that I was only interested in electronics, thus learning only that. Well it’s time to fill the void in my knowledge.
My daily progress
in Daily Journals
Posted
Day 16.
Wake up time: 5 AM.
Studying: 5 hours 23 minutes + ~1.5 hours off counting.
Today I moved back to the city from countryside. Couldn’t study that much today because there was a little party at my place. Just got home, It’s 1 AM already, so I’ll wake up at 8 tomorrow.