Planning and discipline

[Talby]

Question for the community. How do people go about being disciplined, making plans and then balancing out following that plan with an acceptance that not everything on it will happen. It's something I generally don't like doing but I'm keen to get better at it. It's even tougher during the 90 day but essential I feel? 

[nils]

Interesting question! The importance of day planning and following these daily plans varies from person to person I guess. For example, I dont have many appointments atm, I am single and I live in a shared flat where I am usually on my own. So if I dont plan my days, I start getting lazy and undisciplined, wasting my time on Youtube and computer games. Other people might have a girlfriend or other accountabilty partners or just have a job that demands good organization so they are used to it.

In my opinion, the goal should be to define achievable tasks and goals for the day, but staying flexible at the same time. You cannot forsee what will happen the next day. Maybe smth will interrupt your plans and draw your attention. In this case, one should not be too harsh to oneself, I think. Your daily tasks might not work out as planned but at least you tried it. More important in my opinion is staying on track. Structuring your days is a habit that is repeated day by day (my understanding of discipline). So if something interrupts you, you should focus on how to get back on track as soon as possible. When you are in a 90 day detox right now and you have a problem with distractions when having a lot of time or feeling boredom for example, try to stay busy, e.g. meeting friends outside, going for a walk, doing sports. 

I am not sure if I got your point right. Just let me know if I talked past the topic. 🙂 Anyway, good luck with your goals and 90 days!

[Talby]

Thanks! It's good to get different perspectives on approaching the structural elements of quitting/cutting back. I know respawn goes in heavy with the environmental aspects and making sure your free time is filled, even if that is time to yourself but not gaming. 

A friend bought me atomic habits last year and it completely changed how I approach planning and execution. I trialled it on my running and after a few months I was running 6 days per week, covering a minimum of 30 miles. I've always struggled with consistency, I've liked to go in hard in the past and burnt out or not been able to cope with it so it was a revelation to start small and build up regularity. 

[goodvibes]

On 4/10/2022 at 1:30 PM, Talby said:

Question for the community. How do people go about being disciplined, making plans and then balancing out following that plan with an acceptance that not everything on it will happen. It's something I generally don't like doing but I'm keen to get better at it. It's even tougher during the 90 day but essential I feel? 

to me the discipline of quitting games is pretty easy once you change your environment. The detox itself is breaking a habit while giving you a choice on what to do with your new freed up time. Typically we have other habits that seem to naturally step in to fill in all that free time from quitting games and this can lead to many crossroads of deciding what habits are helping, which are hurting us, and what habits we aught to be making as we replace old ones. Making & following through with new plans, habits, and goals for me is impossible if I'm sitting at the computer I am very distracted there so I write them down on paper and I feel it's important to focus on only one at a time or else I lose sight and either ignore or forget about it. For more of my thoughts on this subject check out my April 9th post to my journal here.

[Talby]

On 4/15/2022 at 7:32 PM, goodvibes said:

to me the discipline of quitting games is pretty easy once you change your environment. The detox itself is breaking a habit while giving you a choice on what to do with your new freed up time. Typically we have other habits that seem to naturally step in to fill in all that free time from quitting games and this can lead to many crossroads of deciding what habits are helping, which are hurting us, and what habits we aught to be making as we replace old ones. Making & following through with new plans, habits, and goals for me is impossible if I'm sitting at the computer I am very distracted there so I write them down on paper and I feel it's important to focus on only one at a time or else I lose sight and either ignore or forget about it. For more of my thoughts on this subject check out my April 9th post to my journal here.

Thanks for weighing in! The pen and paper vs pc thing is interesting for me because I'm a data scientist so work at a computer intensively all day, writing journal entries and plans digitally can seem like just an extension of the work day. But I just lose paper all the time! Or find it hard to access info because it hasn't been indexed in a way that my favourite journal application or planning app will. That's something for me to perhaps plan to move towards in the near future if I start to feel overloaded with screen time.