Committing to a digital detox - weekly weekend journal

[D_Cozy]

Hello everyone, I'm back after a long hiatus, ready to committing for a whole digital detox this time.

I've been feeling pretty down about how I perform at work, and how I've been feeling detached and out of the moment. Have been looking for advice and resources. Reading through this forum and the r/StopGaming sub has helped me a lot, I can relate to how it feels not being able to stop despite knowing the negative consequences that abusing my internet time is causing me.

Short background about me, I have ADHD, which has caused me to have low self-esteem, and makes me second guess starting tasks (procrastinate). While I have developed a lot of strategies to help that, it's still not at where I'd like to be, and I'm inconsistent. When I get at my worst, I turn to things that are easy and give me quick pleasures. A few years ago it was mobile games, which I did manage to cut out thankfully, but in retrospect I think I transferred a lot of bad habits to internet use; wasting large amounts of time watching youtube, scrolling through Discord convos, feeds on Reddit and Twitter (X), reading Wikipedia and the news, engaging in online conversations, and so on.

I want that to stop. It's just so easy to avoid the hard and challenging task I have at work, and instead waste several hours away distracted. I'm sick of losing precious work hours, I'm sick of staring at my phone and feeling this craving to get Reddit karma or check my notifications on wiki articles I'm watching. So sick of feeling hopeless because I can't start a work task that was assigned to me and waiting a week to get my shit together. So sick of feeling like I'm slow.

My goal is to abstain from using passive screen time to not conflict with my workdays, Sunday evenings to Friday afternoons, so that I can be more present and aware, and reach my full productive potential.

What that includes:
* no social media at all during weekdays; including this forum. I will check only on weekends (Friday evenings to Sunday afternoons).
* no entertainment videos, except while working out on a treadmill
* no video games, except casual ones like Mario Party with family (kids, wife) & irl friends after work, and stop before 10pm (Fridays and Saturdays; before 11pm ideally)
* limit TV and movies to watching with kids and wife, and stop before 10pm (Fridays and Saturdays; before 11pm ideally)

And yeah, I know it's ironic that I'm posting this on a web forum. To be frank, this forum was also a source of abuse for me back when I tried to detox. Not the forums fault necessarily, I need to do better. But I also need to post this somewhere, so I can hold myself accountable. That said, I'm not going to be posting every day here again. But I will make sure I come back on weekends to post an update and engage for a bit.

I also know that this isn't exactly a game quitting post, but I don't know of any other communities that I can share this with. So hope it's okay that I detail my journey here. Or let me know if there's a similar support group for my case.

I am filling my time with a journey of self improvement, with things that include meditation, reading and journaling. I'm planning on talking about this with an ADHD coach that I've been seeing every Friday too. I think a good way to keep me accountable is to also post here on this forum; I know that it's not exactly a game quitting case I'm on here, more a digital one overall. So hope that is ok. I'm also going to be conscious of not overdoing it during weekends either, so I have an app in StayFree and extension in StayFocusd installed to help with managing that on my computer and desktop browsers respectively.

Posting this on a Monday, so I guess my journey officially starts now. I'm logging out and will check back in closer to the weekend.