Procrastinating Engineer

DAY #1 of Daily Journaling (15/11/22 - Tuesday) 1. Good habit to nurture: DAY #1: Practise meditation 2. Bad habit to gradually reduce: DAY #1: Sleep at least 15 mins earlier from the night before + no screens 15 mins before bed Time I stopped screens: 3:30am (15 mins before bed) Time I went to bed last night: 3:45am (15 mins earlier than night before) 3. What went well today / things I'm grateful for: - helped my dad solve his keyboard issue - completed shuffle game mechanic in Sheep Sheep Game (so proud!) 4. What I could have done better: - watched a whole movie even before doing anything productive for the day - didn't manage to meditate during daytime (plan to start meditating before doing any work starting tomorrow) - didn't manage to reenrol for next semester's units 5. Plans for tomorrow: - meditate during daytime (plan to start meditating before doing any work starting tomorrow) - reenrol for next semester's units - learn more about Habitica features (rewards, add dailies, to do's, join party) - continue on Sheep Sheep Game development: add game over and win screen (add these to the play test stage too) add progress bar + level name at top in play level Overall not really satisfied with my performance today but I'm sure I can do better! Gonna start listening to a hype song after I wake up to get me motivated for the day tomorrow. Lets do this!

The concept of my journal is simple: 1 good habit to stick to, 1 bad habit to eliminate, what went well today, what I could have improved on, what I plan to do tomorrow. Aiming more for consistency than quantity of content so gonna keep it short. For my first post I'm gonna list out all of my good and bad habits first then slowly pick them from this list: Good things I wanna improve at: - meditation - learning to control my thoughts - keeping up with news and general knowledge (covid, financial, politics, technology, history) - learn about different industries for career - public speaking (confidence, pronunciation) - time management (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly plan / assignment planning) - exercise and build fit body - gradually reduce procrastination - going out in public alone without the fear of what others think - consistent study / learn something new everyday - typing speed and efficiency - learn Cantonese - game development (pixel art, sound design, game design) - read books - consistently check emails - practise pomodoro and consistent breaks in between work - be more emotionally resilient (not taking everything personally) Bad habits to eliminate: - inconsistent sleep schedule and sleeping late - laying in bed after waking up - staying in comfort zone (try new stuff/activities) - self doubt and keep double check - porn detox --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DAY #0 of Daily Journaling (14/11/22 - Monday) 1. Good habit to nurture: DAY #0: Practise meditation 2. Bad habit to gradually reduce: DAY #0: Sleep at least 15 mins earlier from the night before + no screens 15 mins before bed 3. What went well today / things I'm grateful for: - went cycling for the first time in around 2 months - added some habits, dailies and to do's in Habitica - did some programming on paper on tile shuffling mechanic in Sheep Sheep Game - meditate for 15 mins before sleep on Balance App 4. What I could have done better: - still lazed around a bit and watched too much Youtube 5. Plans for tomorrow: - learn more about Habitica features (rewards, add dailies, to do's, join party) - program finish shuffling feature in Sheep Sheep Game - reenrol for next semester's units Gonna update this journal every night from today onwards. Wish me luck!

Finally decided to start my journey here after discovering this forum a few months ago. I'm a 22-year-old Engineering student who is forced to extend one extra semester in my university because of failed units. Causing my parents to fork out extra money for my tuition and accomodation fees, being behind my peers in starting my career and suffering the biggest dip in motivation and confidence, all because of this game with a funny idea of a car hitting a soccer ball into a goal some might know as "Rocket League". I wasn't much of a gamer since young, but during the Covid-19 lockdown in September of 2020, I got introduced by a friend to Rocket League which just became free to play on Epic Games at the time. I still vividly remember the first time I played it, my pupils were dilated, and I thought to myself: "Omg how have I not discovered this amazing game before? How does such a perfect game even exist?" Looking back at it now, the current me, having decent knowledge of gaming addiction, would have noticed these behaviours as the first danger signs for addiction. But me then lacked the awareness and thought it was just for 'fun'. So I started looking up tutorials online on how to improve and starting practising on a daily basis. I was steadily improving at the game in ranked and even had the ultimate goal of reaching the highest rank (Supersonic Legend) which usually took players at least an insane 5000+ hours to reach. However I let this false sense of achievement get the better of me as my grades fell from my best in the previous semester to my worst at the time, but it went downhill from then on. Rocket League was always my number 1 priority and it was constantly on my mind, even frequently dreaming about it during sleep (not joking). It got to a point where in the first half of this year my confidence and motivation became an all time low that I wasn't even completing and submitting assignments for several subjects, occasionally even having suicidal thoughts as a final resort to escape my dire situation. I got fed up of it and decided to get some help from a university counsellor with persuasion from my close friend. Many different methods were provided to me by the counsellor to help deal with my procrastination but none of it helped in the long term, mostly just to provide enough short term motivation to complete some assignments. I was up to 8-10 hours per day of gaming in my final study week before my final exams, not having studied a single word. Then I stumbled on Cam's Ted Talk and for the first time since I've been down the rabbit hole, I felt a surge of strength and light at the end of the tunnel. Cam's reasoning on why we get addicted to games struck me and I realized I've been using it as a tool to escape all the pain and non-stimulating assignments. Even though it was too late to salvage my exams that time, a switch in my brain flipped and after just 1 relapse during the break after that semester, I've managed to control my urges to play Rocket League and it has been 123 days since then as of this post (woohoo!). I've also learnt that its just particularly Rocket League that I find addicting and not any other games, credited to Rocket League being the only game with its unique game concept. But nowadays the most I do is offline single player games (because there's an end and no competitive ranks) and with my friends only. In fact I've even started to delve into game programming and am currently deciding to make it my career as I find it much more interesting than engineering. However, I'm not sure if its just because of my past addiction to games that I'm into game development or will my tendency to game addiction affect my career as a game developer down the road (any game developers who decided to quit games out there would love to hear your thoughts on this!). So as of now just continuing to hone my skills in game dev and wanting to reach out to more likeminded people in this community plus other places too. I'm still having issues with procrastination and Youtube addiction though, still finding ways to solve them. Thank you so much to Cam for allowing me to be part of this amazing community :). Gonna start posting once every day with good habits I want to cultivate and bad habits to eliminate. Hope anyone who sees my posts can gain something useful from my experiences and feel free to leave any suggestions or comments!