[Rasa's diary]

02/11/2021

Had an exam today that had been stressing me out for a while. Still played games today but it didn't take over the entire day. Went for a run which was great and also did some study.

0/90 day detox.

[Rasa's diary]

01/11/2021

Checking in. It's been ages.

I tried to start my detox yesterday but the next day (today) I immediately fell back into old habits of gaming. Final exams are coming up and I think that is the trigger. The least I can do is be accountable for it so my short term goal is to start the detox again and to report in daily.

0/90 days

 

[Rasa's diary]

Day 0/90 detox

27/07/21 Tuesday

Once again, I fell off the path. Uni has started so my short term goal is posting every day regardless of if I managed to keep my detox streak or not, as well as studying daily.

Starting the detox again.

[Rasa's diary]

Day 0/90 detox

23/06/21 Wednesday

It's been a while since I have posted. I fell back into old habits of playing games. It may have been because of the increased stress of my finals coming up.

Starting the detox again.

[Rasa's diary]

Day 85/90 detox

10/04/21 Saturday

Just checking in. Life is going good and ended up dropping the list above but always being mindful of regularly exercising and studying daily. Really busy recently with exams coming up along with work.

[Rasa's diary]

Day 56/90 detox

12/03/21 Friday

Play games / watch game related videos? No

Workout? No

Study? No

I'm thinking about cutting down my list to only the essentials as above. Taking a bit of what @BooksandTrees's said to make it feel less like living is 'work'.

[Rasa's diary]

Day 34/90 detox
18/02/2021 Thursday
Play games / watch game related videos? No
Workout? Yes (pushups and pullups - ‘break’)
Study? No
Duolingo? Yes
Reading/podcast? Yes
Meditate? Yes
Sleep before 11:30pm? No, 1:40am

Had work, didn’t manage to do all dailies and sleep is still an issue.

Day 35/90 detox
19/02/2021 Friday
Play games / watch game related videos? No
Workout? No (break)
Study? No
Duolingo? No
Reading/podcast? No
Meditate? No
Sleep before 11:30pm? No, 7:10am

Day 36/90 detox
20/02/2021 Saturday
Play games / watch game related videos? No
Workout? No
Study? No
Duolingo? No
Reading/podcast? No
Meditate? No
Sleep before 11:30pm? No, 3:20am
 

Not doing well in terms of habits.

[Rasa's diary]

Day 33/90 detox
17/02/2021 Wednesday
Play games / watch game related videos? No
Workout? Yes (pushups and situps)
Study? No
Duolingo? Yes
Reading/podcast? Yes
Meditate? Yes
Sleep before 11:30pm? No, 1:20am

This diary entry is for yesterday. I’m back after a long hiatus of not recording diary entries. Since my last entry, I have not played games (pretty much didn’t even think about it) and have been working. The finance related activity that I have been doing occupied a lot of my daily time and had been eating into my sleep to the point where I can’t really afford to continue like this (extremely tired during the day). I also have my studies starting soon so I have deprioritised the finance activity for now.

@BooksandTrees I have this list mainly because I read a book called ‘The Slight Edge’ and it’s about how consistently doing habits daily will result in the benefits gradually building up over time to the point where it becomes noticeably obvious versus someone who doesn’t do them. E.g. exercise, taking care of your body/mental health, learning, etc. These habits are always in the back of my mind now so whenever I don't do them for a period of time, I start actually craving to do them or 'get back on track'. I think the streak system I made might be pushing it too much though so I have removed that!

It sounds like you do something similar to meditation where you don’t do anything for certain periods of the day. I personally find it very hard to do nothing unless I am meditating and will instead use my time procrastinating and watching random videos so I feel like I am required to be doing something if not resting/sleeping.
 

[Rasa's diary]

Day 3/90 detox 

18/1/2020 Monday 

Dailies streak (excl sleep) - 0 

Play games / watch game related videos? No 

Workout? Yes (pushups and pullups - ‘break’) 

Study? No 

Duolingo? Yes 

Reading/podcast? Yes 

Meditate? No 

Sleep before 11:30pm? No, 2:00am 

 

This diary entry is for yesterday. Had work, didn’t manage to do all dailies and sleep is still an issue.

[Rasa's diary]

Day 2/90 detox
17/1/2020 Sunday
Dailies streak (excl sleep) - 1
Play games / watch game related videos? No
Workout? Yes (pushups and pullups - ‘break’)
Study? Yes (break)
Duolingo? Yes
Reading/podcast? Yes
Meditate? Yes
Sleep before 11:30pm? No, 1:30am

This diary entry is for yesterday. Managed to do all dailies and also attend a Toastmasters session. It really does wonders for self confidence and is a great socialising space. Sleep is still an issue.

[Rasa's diary]

Day 11/90 detox
13/1/2020 Wednesday
Dailies streak (excl sleep) - 0
Play games / watch game related videos? No
Workout? No
Study? Yes
Duolingo? Yes
Reading/podcast? Yes
Meditate? No
Sleep before 11:30pm? No, 3:27am

This diary entry is for Wednesday. Had work and didn’t manage to do all my dailies. Don’t really remember why I stayed up so late.

Day 12/90 detox
14/1/2020 Thursday
Dailies streak (excl sleep) - 1
Play games / watch game related videos? No
Workout? Yes (yoga)
Study? Yes
Duolingo? Yes
Reading/podcast? Yes
Meditate? Yes
Sleep before 11:30pm? No, 1:31 am

This diary entry is for Thursday. Had work and managed to do all my dailies with the exception of sleep. Wasn’t disciplined enough to sleep before midnight and was procrastinating.

Day 0/90 detox
15/1/2020 Friday
Dailies streak (excl sleep) - 0
Play games / watch game related videos? Yes
Workout? Yes (running)
Study? No
Duolingo? No
Reading/podcast? No
Meditate? No
Sleep before 11:30pm? No, 5:41am

This diary entry is for Friday. I didn’t have work today and ended up playing an online Blackjack game. I can identify what the trigger was and it was to do with researching for board games to buy so that I can play with my family. Everyone is on their devices all the time so I thought it would be a good opportunity to ‘bring the family together’. However, one thing led to another, where I was researching which board game to buy, then my mum suggested one, then I decided to play the online version, then I ended up playing a different game I had never played before.

This has led me to believe that I don’t think I can play board games without triggering a want to play games and thus I am scrapping that plan altogether and I’m not going to even give board games as presents in the future so that I can avoid having to look at this topic. It’s just a red zone for me now. This still leaves the question of parties and how it’s almost unavoidable playing board games. I think how I will approach parties is that I will only spectate and not play the board games, but only play casual games like ‘Cards against Humanity’, rather than the competitive games (where competitive seems to be the trigger).

I slept very late because of that and I deleted the game account after, however, I do think I am understanding more about where to draw the lines in terms of how to avoid my triggers. Back on track we go!

Day 1/90 detox
16/1/2020 Saturday
Dailies streak (excl sleep) - 0
Play games / watch game related videos? No
Workout? No (break)
Study? No
Duolingo? No
Reading/podcast? No
Meditate? No
Sleep before 11:30pm? No, 4:30am

This diary entry is for yesterday. I woke up very late due to my sleep time of the previous day. I was quite occupied today due to my ongoing finance related task. Due to changing circumstances, the plan that I developed to prevent the need for me to stay up late isn’t working too well, however, I have a revised plan that I will be testing. No dailies were done today.
 

[Rasa's diary]

Day 8/90 detox

10/1/2020 Sunday

Play games / watch game related videos? No

Workout? Yes (pull)

Study? Yes

Duolingo? Yes

Reading/podcast? Yes

Meditate? Yes

Sleep before 11:30pm? No, 2:50am

This diary entry is for Sunday. Managed to do all dailies except for sleep. Might even add a streak if I do all dailies where sleep isn’t counted – 2.

 

Day 9/90 detox

11/1/2020 Monday

Dailies streak (excl sleep) - 3

Play games / watch game related videos? No

Workout? Yes (yoga)

Study? Yes

Duolingo? Yes

Reading/podcast? Yes

Meditate? Yes (break)

Sleep before 11:30pm? No, 1:30am

This diary entry is for yesterday. Today was a work day. Started too late on my dailies. Bumping my alarm which reminds me to start prepping for sleep to 9pm now.

 

Day 10/90 detox

12/1/2020 Tuesday

Dailies streak (excl sleep) - 4

Play games / watch game related videos? No

Workout? Yes (pushups and pullups - ‘break’)

Study? Yes

Duolingo? Yes

Reading/podcast? Yes

Meditate? Yes

Sleep before 11:30pm? No, 12:35am

This diary entry is for yesterday. Today was a work day. Started earlier on my dailies and winded by sleep time back 1 hr. Rest of dailies were done. Getting there!

[Rasa's diary]

Day 7/90 detox
9/1/2020 Saturday
Play games / watch game related videos? No
Workout? Yes (pushups and pullups - ‘break’)
Study? Yes (‘break’)
Duolingo? Yes
Reading/podcast? Yes
Meditate? Yes
Sleep before 11:30pm? No, 2:30am

This diary entry is for yesterday. While I was listening to a Ted podcast, I came across a statement that was a little mind blowing for me: “Our ability to follow through on our best intentions, to get into a new habit, or to change our behaviour in any way, doesn’t depend on the reasons we might do it, or the depth of our convictions that we should do so. It doesn’t depend on our understanding of the benefits of a particular behaviour or even on the strength of our willpower. It depends on our willingness to be bad at our desired behaviour.” The speaker went on to explain how she got back into running after a long hiatus, not by creating a detailed, well defined, extravagant plan, but by simply setting a goal of running for 1 minute every day. Here is the source of the podcast and is very well worth the listen:

https://www.ted.com/talks/christine_carter_the_1_minute_secret_to_forming_a_new_habit

The above got me thinking the significance of ‘something’ over nothing especially with respect to daily habits. Therefore, I have begun to implement the same logic, by doing each task at least 1 minute every day and denoting this as a (‘break’) next to it if that was the case, but by doing this, will help with developing a routine in my subconscious of doing these tasks daily, regardless for how long.

I slept late since I procrastinated through the day and didn’t do my tasks until late at night and essentially did all of them after I heard that podcast!

 

@codepants - I'm trying the 1 minute strat for my workouts!
 

[Rasa's diary]

Day 6/90 detox
8/1/2020 Friday
Play games / watch game related videos? No
Workout? Yes (running)
Study? No
Duolingo? Yes
Reading/podcast? Yes
Meditate? Yes
Sleep before 11:30pm? No, 11:59pm

This diary entry is for yesterday. Resetting my daily schedule is now on track. Most dailies were completed including sleeping before midnight and ideally pushing that to even earlier later. I went over my study materials but only briefly so I wouldn’t count that as actually studying.

[Rasa's diary]

It has been a long hiatus from diaries but I'm back!

Day 1/90 detox
31/12/2020 Thursday
Play games / watch game related videos? No
Workout? Yes (yoga)
Study? Yes
Duolingo? Yes
Reading/podcast? No
Meditate? No
Sleep before 11:30pm? No (1:45am)

This diary entry is for last Thursday. Slept fairly late since I was up watching live new years celebrations shows.

Managed to study for a bit and sort of self discovered a technique which seems pretty obvious but was a moment of realisation for me as someone who has the traits of a perfectionist - rather than spending an exorbitant amount of time on a question or concept that is particularly difficult, it’s okay to skip it and come back to it later. This ensures that I don’t tunnel vision on one thing, where the time could better be spent studying other concepts and with additional knowledge, may assist with the problematic concept/question. This can be applied to any task really, to try and set a reasonable amount of time for each task and if it’s taking too long, to complete other tasks first and in that time, new perspectives could be gained.

Not doing well for habits in the mental health department, like meditation and reading, however. Workouts have been quite consistent though.

Day 2/90 detox
1/1/2020 Friday
Play games / watch game related videos? No
Workout? Yes (bushwalking)
Study? No
Duolingo? No
Reading/podcast? No
Meditate? No
Sleep before 11:30pm? No (6:20am)

This diary entry is for last Friday. I went out with friends to go bushwalking. What a great start to the year! I’ve really been meaning to go do some activities outdoors and this was the perfect opportunity to. I didn’t do any other dailies today however and I slept very, very late as there was some time sensitive finance related tasks I was looking into. They couldn’t really wait till the next morning.

Day 0/90 detox
2/1/2020 Saturday
Play games / watch game related videos? Yes
Workout? No
Study? No
Duolingo? No
Reading/podcast? No
Meditate? No
Sleep before 11:30pm? No (3:45am)

This diary entry is for Saturday. I went to a friend’s place for a party and we played board games for the majority of the time. I’m pretty proud of myself for excusing myself near the end of the night after they decided they wanted to play Jackbox/console games next. However, this was a sort of a trigger for me since I wanted to understand more about how to play Katan (board game), since that was the first time I had played it. I watched a few hours of videos of gameplay online and so I’m once again resetting my days in the detox to 0.

Day 1/90 detox
3/1/2020 Sunday
Play games / watch game related videos? No
Workout? Yes (push)
Study? No
Duolingo? No
Reading/podcast? No
Meditate? No
Sleep before 11:30pm? No (8:05am)

Refer to 7/1/2020 entry

Day 2/90 detox
4/1/2020 Monday
Play games / watch game related videos? No
Workout? No
Study? No
Duolingo? No
Reading/podcast? No
Meditate? No
Sleep before 11:30pm? No (8:20am)

Refer to 7/1/2020 entry

Day 3/90 detox
5/1/2020 Tuesday
Play games / watch game related videos? No
Workout? No
Study? No
Duolingo? No
Reading/podcast? No
Meditate? No
Sleep before 11:30pm? No (5:40am)

Refer to 7/1/2020 entry

Day 4/90 detox
6/1/2020 Wednesday
Play games / watch game related videos? No
Workout? No
Study? No
Duolingo? Yes
Reading/podcast? No
Meditate? No
Sleep before 11:30pm? No (5:07am)

Refer to 7/1/2020 entry

Day 5/90 detox
7/1/2020 Thursday
Play games / watch game related videos? No
Workout? No
Study? No
Duolingo? No
Reading/podcast? No
Meditate? No
Sleep before 11:30pm? No (6:52am)

This diary entry is for yesterday. Essentially, I have a finance related task that is fairly time sensitive and is ongoing in my life. It consumes a lot of my time and I lose track of and deprioritise my daily tasks for it. This diary entry along with the following few are pretty similar. I have since developed a plan to prevent the need for me to stay up late.

[Rasa's diary]

Day 0/90 detox
29/12/2020 Tuesday
Play games / watch game related videos? Yes
Workout? No (rest day)
Study? No
Duolingo? Yes
Reading/podcast? No
Meditate? No
Sleep before 11:30pm? No (6:20am)

This diary entry is for Tuesday. Writing this entry definitely hurts but it’s part of the process I guess. Today I watched game related videos for the first time in a long time. I can identify what caused this though.

I was invited to a friend’s birthday party and in anticipation of this, I was shopping online for potential gifts that I could give. One thing lead to another and I settled on board/card games and was doing research on them. As a result of this, I wanted to understand more of how the board/card games played out and searched for gameplay videos about these online and began watching videos of people playing these physical board/card games. Does this count as me failing the detox? For me personally, I think so.

The mentality behind this was that if I’m going to a party, there’s almost no chance that we won’t play something along the lines of Cards against Humanity / Exploding Kittens / Monopoly deal, etc. However I have also played games like Jackbox which is effectively a computer game. As the lesser of 2 evils and to at the very least be social, I am prepared to play physical games only during these social events and refuse to partake in any computer games. So yes, I will restart my 90 day detox target since I think that this is something that I shouldn't shrug off and it should be something that I need to be aware of before it escalates further.

Day 0/90 detox
30/12/2020 Wednesday
Play games / watch game related videos? Yes
Workout? No
Study? No
Duolingo? No
Reading/podcast? No
Meditate? No
Sleep before 11:30pm? No (7:00am)

This diary entry is for yesterday. I am writing this entry right after my entry for yesterday in terms of timing. Today, I technically played a computer game version of a physical cooperative card game with the excuse I guess of testing the card game out before buying it since the base set is quite expensive but from what I hear from the reviews, contains everything you need to be able to play comfortably without having to buy any expansion packs. This was with the intention of being able to bring something to the party in the case that everyone decided to play a party computer game such as Jackbox, where I would be able to just grab a few people (even just 1 person) and play this card game instead together. I ended up not buying this card game since plans changed for the party due to COVID.

Am I too hard on myself in terms of my definition of the detox? Sure and I believe there’s nothing wrong about being hard on myself since this isn’t something to take lightly. Welcome day 0 of detox! I am aware though and I can definitely feel the difference between non online and non digital games vs online computer games that I used to play regarding the level of addictiveness.

This past week has been pretty rough for me in terms of staying on track but what I do know is that I will not stop reporting in to my diary entries and I will always hold myself accountable, regardless of what I do.

Onwards and back on track we go!
 

[Rasa's diary]

Day 80/90 detox 

26/12/2020 Saturday 

Play games / watch game related videos? No 

Workout? Yes (pull) 

Study? Yes 

Duolingo? Yes 

Reading/podcast? Yes 

Meditate? Yes 

Sleep before 11:30pm? No (11:35pm) 

This diary entry is for Saturday. Not productive today. Did all of my dailies but study wasn’t efficient since I was at home. Sleep time was very close to my target though so that’s a positive. 

 

Day 81/90 detox 

27/12/2020 Sunday 

Play games / watch game related videos? No 

Workout? No 

Study? No 

Duolingo? Yes 

Reading/podcast? No 

Meditate? No 

Sleep before 11:30pm? No (7:52am) 

This diary entry is for Sunday. Extremely unproductive today. Was binging the same show for the whole night until morning. This does remind me of the times when I used to play games all through the night. I can feel that this is distinct from that in that in terms of TV shows at least, there’s an end to the series while for games, there really isn’t a definitive ending, especially the games that I was playing previously. 

 

Day 82/90 detox 

28/12/2020 Monday 

Play games / watch game related videos? No 

Workout? Yes (legs) 

Study? No 

Duolingo? Yes 

Reading/podcast? No 

Meditate? No 

Sleep before 11:30pm? No (1:30am) 

This diary entry is for yesterday. Once again an unproductive day. I am finally up to date with that series and so the schedule of release for the episodes is now once a week. I can assert that despite it taking up so much of my time, TV shows are by far the lesser of two evils vs games. They stimulate the same parts of the brain in terms of dopamine but at the very least, there is an end, i.e a point at which the time spent on it becomes limited by factors other than a reliance on your own self discipline, since there aren’t any more episodes per say. I am ready to resume my original planned daily routine now. 

[Rasa's diary]

Day 79/90 detox 

25/12/2020 Friday 

Play games / watch game related videos? No 

Workout? No 

Study? Yes 

Duolingo? Yes 

Reading/podcast? No 

Meditate? No 

Sleep before 11:30pm? No (5:40am) 

 

This diary entry is for yesterday. Christmas day. My studying wasn’t very efficient and I binged watches some TV shows with a friend as well as by myself. Still recovering from exercise. I did set an alarm at 10pm like I said I would to prepare myself for sleep but at the time I was watching the show with a friend and didn’t want to I guess just ‘cut off’ from it. I think what I can do now is to let my friend know that after 10pm, I have the possibility of cutting off at any time to go to sleep so I’ll try this going forward. As a result of ignoring my 10pm cutoff, I guess it opened a floodgate to binge watch the show for the rest of the night. Still a slow and ongoing process of learning how to be able to control that sleep time. 

[Rasa's diary]

Day 76/90 detox
22/12/2020 Tuesday
Play games / watch game related videos? No
Workout? Yes
Study? Yes
Duolingo? Yes
Reading/podcast? Yes
Meditate? No
Sleep before 11:30pm? No (12:40am)

This diary entry is for Tuesday. Standard work day with a bit of study.

Day 77/90 detox
23/12/2020 Wednesday
Play games / watch game related videos? No
Workout? No (rest day)
Study? Yes
Duolingo? Yes
Reading/podcast? No
Meditate? No
Sleep before 11:30pm? No (3:15am)

This diary entry is for Wednesday. Standard work day with a bit of study. Went to sleep a lot later than usual since I had a few deadlines by tomorrow for work. I guess I could consider waking super early to do them instead though.

Day 78/90 detox
24/12/2020 Thursday
Play games / watch game related videos? No
Workout? No
Study? Yes
Duolingo? Yes
Reading/podcast? Yes
Meditate? No
Sleep before 11:30pm? YES (11:29pm)

This diary entry is for yesterday. Standard work day with a bit of study. I tried working out today but I’m still recovering from some soreness so I stopped after 10 mins or so. Managed to sleep before 11:30pm though!

[Rasa's diary]

On 12/23/2020 at 3:47 AM, codepants said:

What's happening with sleep? Is it that you're doing things until that time or that you're in bed but can't fall asleep?

If you were my client, I would ask you: What's the advantage of being up late? You keep saying sleep is an issue, but you are also consistently up late. There must be some advantage, some reason to do it?

Hey codepants,

I'm usually doing things until that time or just procrastinating about going to sleep. When I'm in bed, I fall asleep quickly so that's not an issue. The issue really is for me to get onto bed. It's a mental thing for me tbh, like I deprioritise sleep time since it feels unproductive since you aren't really 'doing anything' while sleeping. However, I do understand that sleep is most definitely productive in terms of allowing your body to recover from the day. Also, my family sleeps very late too so it's not easy in that respect too since we have dinner late, etc.

I really appreciate you pointing this out to me and what I can do that is actionable right now (done already) is to set an alarm at 10pm which will repeat daily. This should allow me sufficient time to wrap everything up to sleep before 11:30pm and then I'll move those tasks that are unfinished to the next morning.

To answer your question, there really isn't any advantage to being up late that I can see since the same amount of time I spend at night, I can easily spend in the morning. So in that sense, that's not a reason for me to stay up late!

[Rasa's diary]

Day 75/90 detox
21/12/2020 Monday
Play games / watch game related videos? No
Workout? No
Study? Yes
Duolingo? Yes
Reading/podcast? Yes
Meditate? No
Sleep before 11:30pm? No (1:10am)

This diary entry is for yesterday. Had work and managed to do a bit of study. Was a bit lazy on the workout side as I should’ve exercised. Work is going great though and am super productive. Sleep is a still an issue and I’m not getting the required min 7 hours on work days.
 

[Rasa's diary]

6 hours ago, royal panda said:

I also find going to other places help with studying efficiency. Besides library i would suggest a coffee shop, or a park. I would also suggest putting what distracts you in your bedroom and then working in a different room, then studying. I also think the pomodoro technique works if you are really struggling. goodluck

I find I study best when it's almost silence around me so even ambient noises are a little distracting unfortunately.

[Rasa's diary]

Day 74/90 detox
20/12/2020 Sunday
Play games / watch game related videos? No
Workout? No (rest day)
Study? Yes
Duolingo? Yes
Reading/podcast? No
Meditate? No
Sleep before 11:30pm? No (12:30am)

This diary entry is for yesterday. I studied today but the efficiency was not the best. Binged a bit of Youtube. I’m thinking about going out to the library to study since there’s almost no distractions there and it would improve my study efficiency.

[My journey for a new life]

On 12/20/2020 at 4:33 PM, Jason70 said:

Thanks for all the advice @Bird By Birdand @Tabula rasanot sure how much it would have been helpful today but yeah

Day 0 (part 2):

Played again today, i am wondering if it was the right move to not play i know thats not a common thought on this community but when i played today i felt happy. idk maybe it was cause it was sucking me into its grasp but honestly i am not sure. One thing i am sure about is to stop wasting money. Like for a twitch stream i dont have to have the streamer notice me or anything. Anyways though questioning because even though I played I still had a productive day. Idk let me know what you all think

Please I need some input

Jason

Hey Jason,

You have come onto this forum because at a certain point in your life, you questioned whether quitting games is right for you and that realisation is the first step. It really has to come from you, whether you think that you'd be better off without games or not. No one will be able to make this decision for you except yourself as is with most things in life.

What are your priorities and goals, especially long term ones if any? Does gaming contribute towards them?

The more questions you ask yourself, the better.

[Rasa's diary]

Day 73/90 detox
19/12/2020 Saturday
Play games / watch game related videos? No
Workout? Yes (legs)
Study? Yes
Duolingo? Yes
Reading/podcast? No
Meditate? No
Sleep before 11:30pm? No (12:40am)

This diary entry is for yesterday. I studied today and made good progress on study. I also watched an couple of episodes of a TV show with a friend. Organised presents and a couple of social related activities as well from home. Sleep is still post midnight, however my regularity is good since I'm sleeping and waking at around the same times daily.