Lampshade

Same thing happened to me. Things got a lot less emotional. How are you tracking your habits?

Do you distance run? Nothing releases pent up emotions like grinding away on the pavement until there's nothing left of yourself.

*glances nervously at super-schedule after a week of doing very little* I'll be interested in seeing how you adjust now that you figured that out.

Day 29 I participated in a study about MMORPG players problems with gaming. Link here. Just send him an e-mail, he gets back to you pretty quickly with a word doc of 12 questions that takes about an hour to write out answers to. It's basically all thigns that we write about on here anyways, and that we've put a great deal of thought into. I feel like this community, on average, is more capable of answering these questions in a useful way than other participants they might get, so I hope others will do it as well. I think that there is a lot of work to do in the research-world about gaming addiction: the couple times I sought therapy when things were bad, I was paired with older therapists who specialized in gambling addiction and didn't even know what an RPG was. In other news... It's such a strange feeling simultaneously being bored with my habits and enjoying/being proud of them. I resist them so hard internally. Like my mind gets bored of being so stable. Days like this it's easy to see why addictive things are so dangerous to me. I'm listening to the audiobook Grit during my runs and car drives. It seems to be about persistence. The author mentions a few studies that measured short-term 'grit' (persistence, determination, ability to accept failure, etc.) in ways like endurance running and found it to predict long-term success/happiness (they controlled for physical fitness). It's funny, and similar to my first paragraph, how obviously good something can be but still our bodies resist it. Like what actually is it that makes a person give-up on something they want. Self-doubt? Okay, but what if the habit was a cure for self-doubt and there is a bunch of evidence to prove it? What then causes the give-up? Doubt over the evidence? I just don't get it, even though I experience it. It's kinda the same with exercise. We know that it just makes life better, it's basically a fact at this point. Yet so many people just chose not to. It seems ridiculous to ask somebody if they would want a better life at the cost of 30-60 min. and have them say no, but that is the most common answer. I've been working out forever. I enjoy both the process and the endpoint. Still like half the time my brain is like 'nah'.

@BooksandTrees Bunch of great stuff, thank you. I'm going to respond to most as a way of organizing my thoughts. You first mentioned one of the things that I was struggling most with, the idea of consistent habit vs. deep work. Mostly for the writing, reading, and experiments. For the rest I've found I find I am more likely to keep with it it if I make it a daily habit. However, a day divided as much as I have above feels like it would be jarring, and too diverse. I think I can do A/B days for Reading+Writing /Experiments+Coursera. Family time and hobbies I try to overlap. My wife and I workout together 3/5 days for example, so I count that as hobby, family, and exercise. I also consider spending time with her and the dogs to be something of a hobby. Basically just talking, learning, or doing what they want to do. Other than that the only hobbies I have since quitting gaming are stretching and readings. I also count those as family time because I am in the same room and available. Scheduling breaks is good advice. My plan was to just work through the dailies until around lunch time, then take an hour-ish. There's a lack of flexibility the way the schedule is done right now, for sure. It doesn't account for spending half-an hour writing a journal entry, for example, lol. You're right about the sleep too, I know for a fact that there will be days I sleep in, or have another appointment. It would be nice to not feel awful when that happens. I have a general feeling that there's just too much that I'm trying to pack into a day. I tried to account for that by leaving 3 hours open during the day, but yeah. Unfortunately 60 hour work weeks are kinda expected for my career track. A/B days seems like the most obvious answer to bring in more flexability and deep work. It's possible I'm getting too carried away with trying to turn everything into a daily habit. Truth. So hard to cut things out, though. Especially when feeling optimistic and motivated. Stay tuned for v2 Day 28 Going to keep this one short but I do have one update. My dog's mobility in his back end took a big down-turn last night. He's probably not going to make it to the winter. This will be the 3rd family dog that I've seen go to mobility problems, and the first dog that was raised by my S.O and I that we will have to put down. It's heartbreaking, but he made it to old age and had a rich, full life and a good death is one of the best gifts we can give him. We got him as a puppy when we were 18, so he got to be young and reckless when we were the same. He traveled to a bunch of new places and had no major health scares aside from those coming from old age in the last year or two. He's spent the last 7 years exploring the woods that surround our house (supervised, he was not a loose dog), and the last few of those he got to spend barking at squirrels and rabbits in from the deck. Lately it's been more sleeping on the deck, but getting him to that point was always my goal.

Did you uninstall again? I'm noticing in your entries a lot of the same impulses I struggle with. I've found that eventually I don't catch the impulse in time, blink, and I'm gaming instead of working towards my goals. Fighting those impulses all the time is taxing.

And the further into the loop you get, the more difficult it is to get out of it. Dealing with real-life tasks with a mental handicap both in terms of ability and falling behind. Struggling is a trigger, rinse and repeat. I see a lot of similar trends that you wrote in myself. It would be funny how obvious it was, if it weren't so dangerous. Best of luck, I'm glad that you also feel like these forums have been a help. I've noticed the same.

Whole buncha lawls. Day 27 So yeah, I suck at relaxing. I've noticed it the last few times that I was supposed to take time off. I'm just not as happy when I'm trying to force myself to relax. Yesterday I tried to just sit around being lazy and relax, I was anxious all day and craving a coffee. Ended up going to get one and going for a big run with the auiobook Grit playing. Got home and laid out a daily schedule for myself that's pretty much by the hour. It's a lot, but I'm gonna try to go for it starting next week and lasting until Dec. 20th-ish. I hate having days so structured, but the alternative is cutting out certain things that I hope to accomplish/be in the future. Those things will not happen without effort, so I'm going to spend 30 days or so applying the effort, deciding if it's worth it, and then making the decisions on what to admit to myself won't be in my life. I've got 4 hours set aside for family time everyday, as well as 3-hours or so of flexibility during the work day, so I think that the schedule is hard but realistic. The hardest part is going to be the 5:15 wakeup. Actually here it is. I want to try to do all this every day for 30-ish days. Thoughts? I Reading work material - 1 hour Writing/editing paper - 1 hour Exercise - 1.5 hours Self-improvement apps (Headspace, DuoLingo, Datacamp)- 1 hour total Experiments - 2 hours Coursera courses - 1.5 hours Family and hobbies - 4 hours after dinner Sleep - 7.5 hours Realized today that the hardest things I'm struggling with right now is caffeine addiction and sleeping too much. Not a bad place to be, all things considered. Well and the background depression and anxiety that lays under it all. That's probably why I feel the need to stay so busy 🙃

I like how you frame recommitting to goals as a positive, rather than beating yourself up over doing something that you decided you didn't want to do.

Here's a code for 1-month of Headspace if you're interested, I don't think it's been used yet: REW15-L69YTP4RTDDS

I'm pretty good at planning, less so at executing.

Day 26 Supposed to be a pretty nice day outside today so I'm gonna see if I can meet up with a friend and play some ball. Other than that, I've got a therapy phone call soon and I need to do some e-mailing/admin-type stuff. It's so hard to balance work and life. Seems like whenever I get my work where I want it, my personal life suffers, and vice-versa. For example, right now I am doing great with my personal habits and am taking care of a reasonable amount of the house work/maintenance/repairs that I had fallen behind on but I haven't made any real progress on my main work projects in days. My morning routine is taking like 2.5 hours, I think I have a plan to cut that down some by moving showers to every second day and doing yoga and stretches in the evening. It still seems like it's going to be difficult doing all the things that I want to do in a day without getting up at 5am. Definitely going to have to when things get busier for me again in January. Ideally I like to leave time in my day for 'just whatever', rather than making my entire day one giant to-do list. So tough to cut things out that more concretely progress you towards clear goals though.

When chill days become good days ❤️

Grats on that! Headspace was the thing that finally got my meditation habit to stick. Having that bit of guidance in the early days was key. I've got a code for a free month if you haven't subbed yet: REW15-L69YTP4RTDDS Yeah that's awkward af. I feel like it would make the cashier uncomfortable too. I've done jobs like that and hated when people thought they could just say whatever to you because you had to be there and had to act friendly for minimum wage. I dunno, maybe the point is to just put you in uncomfortable social situations? How's the rest of the book been so far?

@JSmithPowershell and DOS scripts working are what I send my friends when I want to impress them into thinking I work the matrix lol. Day 25 Wife is on vacation this week so I'm trying to take some time off too. I'm terrible at vacationing when there isn't a trip or something to do though. Especially now that I work from home, so my vacation place is pretty much my workplace. Usually I end up trying to force myself to be relaxed and lazy. It doesn't usually work, instead I just end up sleeping a bunch and get back into my vices. Right now the worst one is coffee, though, so I think I'm doing alright. Sleeping in too I guess. Not many plans for today. Gonna go into town just to hang out with the SO while she does chores. I'm on the last 7/8ths of the third Stormlight Archives book so that's my main source of entertainment. I was also enjoying learning coding casually on my phone with those apps I mentioned but I've hit the limit for the free version and I'm not sure I want to pay for it. That felt so silly to write considering how much I've spent on coffee, and the gas to go get it since there's none in the house, over the last few days.

Yeah lol. I describe working with R as that feeling you get when you type in your password somewhere and it tells you it's wrong, and you argue with it. I've had that bookmarked forever! Also heard great things

@codepants I'm trying to learn more coding. I really enjoy it, it's just a matter of time. Right now I basically just have a few snippets across languages that I have figured out for specific tasks. I'm trying to get better at learning the logic and terminology behind it all. Tested out Datacamp and M1Mo, next week or so I'm gonna try a coursera course but it seems much less fun in structure. Any suggestions? I mostly need R and Python, prob R more-so. Some kind of file management thing might be helpful too, I've done some things in Powershell that have been cool. Maybe Linux? I dunno And yeah I could prob get away with stubble and shower every second day. Just those 2nd days I don't feel like I look my best, y'know? I also find shaving more comfortable if I do it every day, prob cause I cheap out on blades lol. AM meditation has been key for me to get the habit streak up, otherwise it just gets pushed off forever. And dogs are great but don't underestimate the commitment. We pretty much haven't done any traveling for years cause of how much of a pain it is to make sure the dogs are taken care of. Expensive too once the health issues creep in. And man, those health issues can get emotional. In the end though, if you can commit to them as a priority, they become your best friends. Day 24 Last week I made some appointments for free/low-cost therapy options. I'd been procrastinating it because I'd heard the waiting list was like 6 months. I've got two options to try out, and my intakes are scheduled for next week and the week after. First time ever doing it. I'm excited and nervous. I just feel like I'm at the point where I'm working on taking care of most of the obvious things and need some professional help for the rest. I've been cutting out all the bad distractions and have been finding that underneath it all is mostly depression and anxiety. I've been prescribed a couple of different meds before but I really don't want to go that route. I've cycled through a bunch of recreational drugs (recreational doesn't seem the right word the type of drugs or how I used them, but I think you get what I'm trying to say) and I'm worried about the addictive potential + withdrawal symptoms of prescription drugs for psychological issues. I really don't like the idea of having to take a drug for the rest of my life, with a high-likelihood of real mental problems if I ever have to stop.

I bet that question has been asked by millions of people of thousands of years. It's a part of consciousness. And games creeping back in is pretty normal, cause this shit is hard. I also noticed my social media and internet usage creep way up to fill the gaming void. For the first half a week-week though, for me, the goal was all about quitting gaming so I was fine with it. After that first week or so the gaming urge went down and I was able to work on the other addictive parts more easily. I agree with @TheNewMe2.0. I've been posting everyday in the early days and it has helped reaffirm and track trends, analyze behaviours, see common features between people, etc. Just helps learn about an important topic. I'll give in to @Commissar, I refuse to be the champion of cynicism lol. I just found that in the early days I craved that fun I got from gaming (even though at that point it wasn't even fun) and struggled to get it anywhere else for like the first couple weeks after I stopped. After that though, yeah, actually having diversity in life has been pretty spectacular. And overwhelming, I want to do everything!

I think we're on similar days away from gaming and I've also noticed a couple of my habits slipping. My health related ones are fine, it's more the ones I would consider equivalent to your uke playing (hobbies?). I haven't been trying particularly hard to maintain them and have instead been doing other things and I think I'm okay with that. What are your feelings towards losing a couple of the habits you set out for yourself at the beginning of the quit-gaming journey?

Welcome @Little Guy. Self-improvement is a long, slow, boring grind but it's worth it/

I'm sorry, but I'm cracking up picturing your life narrated Arrested Development style lol

Day 24 Well, didn't achieve my goal of getting the paper submitted by last night. Just classic procrastination. I spent a couple hours picking out courses to learn things I want to learn, answering emails, dealing with financial stuff, etc. All semi-responsible, but not the right focus for the day. Semi-responsible shit is also a super effective procrastination. It's tough finding that balance of scheduling yourself to death and allowing yourself to work on things as you feel like it. I see lots of motivational/disciplin-al propaganda that drives home that successful people just keep grinding. I haven't seen much for the other side of the story, working on things as you get excited by them. I think there's value in each. There's probably a balance. Just seems counter-intuitive to schedule in 'inspiration work'. I'm still going strong with no gaming, but the next WoW xpac is comping out. It feels weird just letting it go by. Normally this would be cause for like a minimum 3-week binge as celebration. The crowded world, everybody excited and happy. I keep getting hit with the same feeling, that getting in and starting early my character could be so ahead of the curve. Even playing like 3-4 hours a day, you fall behind in gear. Honestly, it seems hollow now. I still crave the fun of it, but I feel better able to recognize that the image I create of myself when I am playing games like that is a lie.

Motivation and the habits are super complicated. Especially when you get energy days! Just want to get at it! It's so obviously rewarding to have good habits nailed down though, just gets overwhelming sometimes when you look at the daily list and there's like 15 things on there lol. I dunno about acupuncture curing depression. I agree with you about environmental causes. I think it's just one of those cases of a layperson not understanding the complexity of what they're saying. Relaxation has got to have some benefits though. Definitely benefits for muscle recovery too. I was getting physio for a few different things and was looking up effectiveness of acupuncture vs. the electric shock thingies and they were about the same (looked at maybe half a dozen papers). Acupuncture is just so much more comfy though. lol

Tommy's such a cool, badass character. The first couple seasons of that show were awesome.

Congratulations!