technica

Day 18, all good. Played for 2 hrs a few days ago, but that's about it. Rapidly restoring intense focus on my work, met a lot of new people, improved my physical and mental health, etc etc Overall, I'm having a blast and feeling great. I think this pattern is only going to be reinforced because I'm way more intentional and driven. Best of luck to everyone!

What's up everyone! Coming back here after a series of pretty intense and prolonged relapses that are now inhibiting my productivity and other life areas. I see some changes have been made to the forum to produce more dopamine... Noice. Right now I feel like the most important thing for me is building an environment and finding social connections that are meaningful and fulfilling. I think the main reason I'm returning to gaming is that I'm not properly integrated and connected with... Life..? Reality..? Whatever you wanna call it, basically, I know what I want to do, but don't have the motivation/other internal resources to execute on my plan consistently. What has worked for me in the past was having a busy schedule filled with different irl activities and social interaction, so I'm replicating that with some modifications... So it goes like this: 1. Join communities for quitting games, work/productivity, other auxiliary interests 2. Meet 3 new people who might become my friends. Try to have social interactions daily 3. Sign up for 3 irl activites: a public lecture, a museum tour and a party 4. Go through the respawn course *once* again 5. Do 3+ hours of work daily (I really hope that number will increase ASAP lol) That's about it, good luck on your journey as well! Oh yeah and I'm on day 3 rn

Day 4 done. 7-8 hrs of work/study, fell short of my plan but I feel like I could easily pull an 11-12 hour day tomorrow so no worries! I had a biology exam today which I totally aced and that certainly gave me a motivation boost! Plus I managed to watch Lex's podcast with Avi Loeb, I adore his passion and excitement for his field, it feels like he could engage almost anyone in physics and I find it absolutely beautiful! There's not much to say really, everything's going really well for me: I feel energized and driven and barely have enough time to do chores, let alone play videogames or deliberately waste time. Wishing everyone health, wealth and success 😎

Day 3 done. 8 or 9 hours of studying + a few hours of work and an uplifting evening - almost precisely as planned! The only problem is I see my sleep schedule becoming more chaotic and erratic so tomorrow trying to wake up at 9-10 am by any means. The plan is pretty much identical: 11-12 hours of work/study, some exercise and some social/personal time. Today I tried to think about what really made a fictional story attractive... And for me it's probably seeing peculiar, all familiar but weird behaviour that makes humans human in characters and situations. Something unnecessarily specific in a general description, something relatable but unusual, something concrete enough to build a clear and vivid picture, yet subjective enough to take me to an emotional situation from the past and let me complete the picture. A great example I can think of is Chekhov's character descriptions, love his style! Overall feeling good, feeling happy and enjoying the beauty of the Universe 🙂 Good luck to everyone on the same journey!

Congrats! Do you plan to do something specific to unwind or is not having a plan at all a more relaxing option for you?

Day 2 done. I failed to sell or delete my accounts, it's amusing and weird how many excuses my brain comes up with as soon as I start making any progress towards it. Well, it does sure feel stupid, but I'll give it another try tomorrow. Right now I feel very focused and don't want to spread my intent and actions too thin. Tomorrow just doing some work, studying biology and spending time with friends, aiming for good 11-12 productive hours overall and a pleasant evening! Also the main 2 habits to come back to are meditation and running. I can barely sit down and properly work for 30-40 mins without breaks, I know for a fact that exercising and meditating help me to pump those numbers up. Generally feeling good and satisfied, no thoughts about gaming and no time to play

Hey, Jason. Thanks for your words of affirmation. For me personally gaming fulfilled needs in 2 main areas: growth/achievement and social, thus the predominant focus and the overall strategy will be optimized for fulfilling those needs without playing. RIght now I'm very much into my work and studies and I don't feel like I need anything else, I also share my journey and achievements with irl friends, have a few accountability partners and this journal as a pleasant bonus. I agree that continuously staying indoors is daunting and promotes relapses, I run almost every evening now and have a few fun activities to do in case of an "emergency". Overall I feel like I've got all my relapse patterns covered so hoping for the best! Best of luck and a lot of positive intent on your journey as well!

Relapsed recently and wasted a lot of time bois so it's time to get back on track again! And thus begins the new chapter of my Iliad... (except this one is about videogames) So... Day 1 is complete. The general plan is simple and concise: to live life dangerously, get outside my comfort zone and do shit that I truly like. Tomorrow the main point of focus is studying biology and conducting market research. Additionally, I'm going to dedicate some of time to helping dog shelters and coming up with some fun and interesting weekend activites, so you're welcome to make suggestions! What I TRULY need to do is to get rid of all my gaming accounts as it seems like one of the most promising ways of breaking the relapse cycle. I can feel my limbic system clinging onto the memories and emotions associated with them so it's not going to be an easy process. One thing that I PROMISE to do is to sell/delete at least one account tomorrow - that will be my starting point. Anyway, some ideas I thought about today: - What represents the concept of truth more accurately: the sum of its parts (the building blocks) or the overall idea that makes its parts look insignificant in comparison? - What is the limit of thought? Sending fortune and goodnight kisses your way, my broddas

I relate to feeling nervous and almost guilty towards feeling good. Happiness is your birth right so enjoy it!

Days 11-17 without gaming. It's been a week already? Geez. - I've been focused specifically on practising my social/communication/leadership skills. Signed up for toastmasters + a few irl public speech courses (I'll see which one suits me better and quit the other one). I have about 4 events scheduled for the next week. I need to make it at least 7 + volunteer to help at at least 2. I'll also create a group of people who are into entrepreneurship/science to visit public lectures with + discuss ideas. I also need to approach at least 2 strangers/day for the next 7 days. [Why am I prioritizing this instead of doing the actual work? The perpetual ignorance towards the social aspect on my side backfired a lot and in my judgement was a major reason why I started gaming again and had been "paralyzed" for 4 months prior to quitting videogames again. I'm testing if paying more attention towards social/personal life will have a positive effect on other areas as well.] - I might have a theory on how to combat the fear of rejection when trying to approach people (which came very randomly to me lol). I want to focus on a specific brain area and feed it with oxytocin and dopamine every time I approach someone. (In this case, I'm assuming I'll mostly focus on HOT BITCHES as it is the quickest way to get this bad boy to realize the importance of social interaction). This is probably stupid and there are most likely way easier methods to do it, BUT it's no fun + that's the shit I came up with so it doesn't stink. - I'm also working on a population growth simulation that's supposed to show it's pattern and dynamic when the average lifespan is increased to 150 yrs and hopefully disprove the current studies that claim it will be a major cause of overpupulation. I think that cellular automata is probably the best tool for that (I'm very likely wrong though, lol) Main lesson: As I'm just a consciousness in a jar I need to expose myself to a lot of positive examples of achieving what I want to achieve over and over again. i.e. If I want to learn how to approach people it really helps to be in an environment that promotes that + where others can show me an example of that. Get in a social mood ->Repeatedly expose myself to social situations where the next one is a bit more uncomfortable than the previous one.

Stay strong broski, i hope your relationship situation will be resolved

Days 7,8,9,10 without gaming -The date was pretty fucking disastrous to my surprise LOL (we initially hit a very nice vibe which got exponentially worse with every minute), I'm not worried or frustrated though -Met 2 people that I'm now regularly chatting with, potentially could become friends -Worked mostly on trivial tasks and chores that occupied my mind + came up with some nice systems on how to entirely outsource food and water for cheap. -Regarding main work: Bioengineering course ~45% complete, some team members still don't answer my calls and ghost me lol so I'll give it 2 days and then just show up at their places. Additionally, found some insanely useful information on how to proceed in my rocky situation and now have way more clarity. General plan: give myself 1-2 days to learn what I need -> Decide whether I want to rebuild one of my old companies or start a new one -> Execute Found a quote that resonated with me so much I smiled for 10 minutes straight: "What would you do with eternity, Harry?" Harry took a deep breath. "Meet all the interesting people in the world, read all the good books and then write something even better, celebrate my first grandchild's tenth birthday party on the Moon, celebrate my first great-great-great grandchild's hundredth birthday party around the Rings of Saturn, learn the deepest and final rules of Nature, understand the nature of consciousness, find out why anything exists in the first place, visit other stars, discover aliens, create aliens, rendezvous with everyone for a party on the other side of the Milky Way once we've explored the whole thing, meet up with everyone else who was born on Old Earth to watch the Sun finally go out, and I used to worry about finding a way to escape this universe before it ran out of negentropy but I'm a lot more hopeful now that I've discovered the so-called laws of physics are just optional guidelines." Main lesson: Successful people don't worry about trivial shit I'm concerned about. Everything I want to do is easy and is purely subjected to my paradigm and my world overview. Don't confuse myself with pointless, fear-based questions and proceed with what I think is the right course of actions irrespective of what my unconscious wants from me as it doesn't know any better.

Days 4,5,6 without gaming. - I haven't really thought about videogames actually, I have so many problems to solve and so much stuff to do that I barely get to reflect on progress - Completed ~36% of my bioengineering course - Finished the majority of boring and monotonous part of my work so now moving on to more exciting stuff like research and team building (I shit bricks just thinking about cold calling but I'll do it nevertheless) - Socialized a lot, going on a date in a few days Main lesson: My focus and attention have been very scattered for the past few days, I also didn't follow my schedule. I need to set my priorities straight and have the willpower to stick to them, otherwise I'll have no results by the end of the year and then will scratch my head in confusion like an idiot.

Day 3 without gaming (yesterday) - Morning ritual partially complete (2/4) - Did some creative work, have about 5 potential designs for the brand - Mostly focused on improving social skills by meeting people on social media + went out to approach strangers but only made small talk. Time breakdown: Sleep: 11 hrs (again, 2 hrs unsuccessfully) Work: 4.5 hrs Productive activities: 0.5 hrs Rest + time sink: 8 hrs Main lesson: I don't think that the concept of failure can exist within social situations (Or maybe even generally. There is only desired outcome and actual outcome. Failure is when the first one doesn't match the second. Yet when I do stuff by myself and don't like the outcome I don't consider it as failure and regard as "I've done my best, I just need to get better" thus failure (at least for me personally) is mostly about social judgement and to be more precise about my perception of their perception of me or my performance. On top of that, my desired outcome or expected performance can only be constructed within the paradigm of my subconscious beliefs and their expected outcome of mine is based on their perception of me which can be biased and inaccurate in either direction. Either way, someone's perception can't directly influence other people's personality, identity and physical skills so it's not only a variable impossible to measure, it also has no effect, thus, it should be disregarded. I think theres a simpler way to describe that but that's how I reasoned it with myself

Thank you a lot. Not sure what you mean by "a backup plan", I'm assuming that predetermined activities or location changes in case of urges can be regarded as a backup plan haha. I mean a company, fortunately I don't have any people holding me back in the process of quitting games. Quite the contrary, they are usually amused about how much time it took me so it's a relief for everyone lol.