Jump to content

NEW VIDEO: The EASIEST Way to Stop Gaming

Karabas's Journal


karabas

Recommended Posts

3 hours ago, karabas said:

No games: 90/90

What about No games: 90/90 though??? I think that is absolutely amazing! I know you could be much much better, but you could also be much worse! Definitely a thing worth celebrating and feeling good about! I can't say anything about the motivation to crush it right now, but hey, maybe later.

Edited by JustTom
Link to comment
Share on other sites

No games: 91/90
  No vids: 0/90
Early to bed: 0/7        
Productive Hours: 0/8:00      

Bedtime last night: 5am
Woke up: 11:30am

Waste of a day. Vids weren't so much of a problem (though I did watch some stuff), but I actually had a problem with reading a book. Like I mentioned way back when I first joined this forum, if I don't game I watch vids and if I don't watch vids, I read books.

I recently got a new book on my Kindle, it was super addictive and SUPER long (I think over 15 hours of reading total) and the worst part is that there are like 15 sequels or something. So the past few days have been full of my just reading this thing.

It's finally done and I'm not getting the sequels because there's no way I'm doing 15x15 = 225 hours of reading.

On 7/13/2018 at 2:29 AM, JustTom said:

What about No games: 90/90 though??? I think that is absolutely amazing! I know you could be much much better, but you could also be much worse! Definitely a thing worth celebrating and feeling good about! I can't say anything about the motivation to crush it right now, but hey, maybe later.

Thanks man. Yeah, it feels a bit anticlimactic for me. But I think part of it is that the only reason I didn't relapse is because I was like "I'm not going to ruin the 90 day detox when I'm less than a week away". So I held out just on that, but I'm pretty much decided on going back to gaming now that 90 days are over. BUT I do have enough willpower to set some ground rules. Going to only let myself do it if I finally get my 8 productive hours in and I have to stop by 10pm. If I fail at controlling myself and breaking those rules, I'll do a mini-detox of like 7 days and will keep increasing as necessary.

The other part is that originally I was going to detox from games + vids together and reset my detox counter if I relapsed into either. And now I'm having trouble even starting the video detox. And the effect for the last several weeks has been the same: I'm getting almost nothing done.

But yeah, no. I didn't know I could go cold turkey from games for a whole 90 days. That's pretty nuts and feels like a super long time. So there's definitely something to celebrate! Now to just get my life back on track...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No games: 92/90
  No vids: 0/90
Early to bed: 0/7        
Productive Hours: 4:25/8:00      

Bedtime last night: 2am
Woke up: 6am (napped 12:30-3pm)

Gah! I was really excited about today because I woke up for prayer at 6am and wasn't tired. Here it was, a chance to get all my 8 productive hours in by 2pm (my wife was sleeping in, so I was all alone, no distractions).

So I watched a ton of vids instead, mostly for the game that I want to play myself.

The funniest part is that I already told myself that I'll allow myself to play as long as i get the 8 hours in... so I could've had like 4-5 hours of game time if I wanted to. But instead I just watched videos.

This is the epitome of my not working towards my goals. I can't even focus for the sake of gaming.

Sigh. This is stupid. I'm making another commitment to no more videos (which really shouldn't be a problem given that gaming is the prize on the line). I'm going to type out a daily to-do list so that I can get some good momentum going by crossing off to-dos. I'm also going to try to break up tasks into smaller chunks to make it easy. I need to start tracking the time I spend on different things. Also I need to start realizing that when I want to watch videos, it's an addiction. I need to stop for a bit and focus on the feeling and just accept it instead falling into it.

Anyway. My hope is I go to bed early today, wake up at 6 again and retry the whole process. Hopefully will report something better tomorrow.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

No games: 93/90
  No vids: 0/90
Early to bed: 0/7        
Productive Hours: 3:20/8:00      

Sleep: 1:30am - 6:00am; 1pm - 4:30pm

A few reasons for failing again today: my health issues have been pretty bad (I spent 3 hours in the bathroom... have a suspicion as to the food that's causing... will test), the world cup final happened and took another ~2 hours of my life, and vids. I used excuses like "oh my friend sent me this, it's OK to watch it" or "this is educational" and ended up wasting several hours.

I was prioritizing my studies, which means that I got most of those done, but almost no work. I'm going to have to change this. The last week has been the worst in terms of work, I probably got about 10 hours from the whole week. I can't live on that little money ?

I'll have to change this going forward. Start the day with getting work out of the way, then do the studies. I find studies easier to do than work, so it should be easier to finish the day off with them.

Still haven't played games because I can't get myself to get those 8 productive hours in. *Sigh*

Also keep failing with the going to bed early. It's like a habit. I even bought a bag of chips to reward myself for going to bed early and so far it's still sitting in the kitchen. *double sigh*

Anyway, here's to a better day tomorrow.

Daily Routine:

  • 15 min Qur'an reading: check (2 day streak)
  • 30 min Qur'an re-memorization: fail
  • 45 min Islamic Law study: check (2 day streak)
  • 45 min Purification of the Heart study: check (2 day streak)
  • 30 min personal tasks: check (2 day streak)
  • 15 min working on my business: check (2 day streak)
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

New Detox: 2/6  

So the last week or so has been a total disaster.

I did relapse in terms of gaming. That lasted a few days and I racked up 50 hours of gaming within those few days. It was bad.

I got really sick of myself but wasn't ready for another long detox. So I decided to do a 6-day detox and allow myself a day of gaming on day 7.

The mini-detox has been great in that I haven't gamed or watched videos. But I guess I found an alternative (which I always had): books. I spent the last two days STILL not doing anything except bare life necessities and reading. I finished two books (which were the last two in the most recent series I got addicted to, so thankfully I'm at a good stopping point).

Overall this has been a disaster. I think I've relapsed worse than my last relapse 90+ days ago, because at least I was doing SOMETHING at that point. My last week has been virtually all gaming or videos or books and barely any work or study or anything else.

It's sad, because I feel like a complete loser for not being able to do things that I feel passionate about. There are so many things I'd like to accomplish. And to accomplish any one of those things would be far more rewarding than becoming a top-league football manager in some stupid game.

But it is what it is.

It's early and I'm going to bed now. I'm planning to wake up early, have my breakfast, hit the gym, and finally crush the day.

And you know what? At the moment, I'm not feeling like coming back to that game at the end of the week. Maybe I'll set another detox and I want to beat my past ~95 day record. Let's say 120 days. That's a 1/3 of the year.

Let's see how I feel about it tomorrow.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

On 7/24/2018 at 1:41 AM, karabas said:

New Detox: 2/6  

So the last week or so has been a total disaster.

I did relapse in terms of gaming. That lasted a few days and I racked up 50 hours of gaming within those few days. It was bad.

I got really sick of myself but wasn't ready for another long detox. So I decided to do a 6-day detox and allow myself a day of gaming on day 7.

The mini-detox has been great in that I haven't gamed or watched videos. But I guess I found an alternative (which I always had): books. I spent the last two days STILL not doing anything except bare life necessities and reading. I finished two books (which were the last two in the most recent series I got addicted to, so thankfully I'm at a good stopping point).

Overall this has been a disaster. I think I've relapsed worse than my last relapse 90+ days ago, because at least I was doing SOMETHING at that point. My last week has been virtually all gaming or videos or books and barely any work or study or anything else.

It's sad, because I feel like a complete loser for not being able to do things that I feel passionate about. There are so many things I'd like to accomplish. And to accomplish any one of those things would be far more rewarding than becoming a top-league football manager in some stupid game.

But it is what it is.

It's early and I'm going to bed now. I'm planning to wake up early, have my breakfast, hit the gym, and finally crush the day.

And you know what? At the moment, I'm not feeling like coming back to that game at the end of the week. Maybe I'll set another detox and I want to beat my past ~95 day record. Let's say 120 days. That's a 1/3 of the year.

Let's see how I feel about it tomorrow.

You did it last time, mate, and you will succeed this time! You said you relapsed again. Did you analyse why it happened? Last time i played that hard (i played in June 14 hours per day average and there were two days when i played 45 hours straight) i didn't know why i did what i did. Perhaps, if i knew what triggered me to play that hard back than, i could have escaped that. I just hope you learned your lesson. You got this :)

Edited by Manhotelle
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 7/25/2018 at 2:19 PM, Manhotelle said:

You did it last time, mate, and you will succeed this time! You said you relapsed again. Did you analyse why it happened? Last time i played that hard (i played in June 14 hours per day average and there were two days when i played 45 hours straight) i didn't know why i did what i did. Perhaps, if i knew what triggered me to play that hard back than, i could have escaped that. I just hope you learned your lesson. You got this ?

Thanks man. I think overall it was watching the world cup. It encouraged me to spend an hour or more a day watching games, replays, catching up on news, discussions, etc. It also brought me back to watching videos on YT. And it brought me back into gaming (I'm playing football manager).

I almost relapsed during my 90 days because I saw news about the upcoming fallout game and I wanted to go back and play old fallout games.

So I think I'm overall good as long as I don't get "triggered" by a reminder of a game or another I used to play. Considering how many thematically different games I've played over the years though, it's unlikely I'll be able to just avoid those triggers.

My other problem (that's currently coming into the forefront for me) is that I can't for the life of me go to bed early. It's probably one of the biggest reasons I relapse or am unproductive even when I don't relapse. But it was my attempted goal throughout my 90 day detox and I was never able to do it for more than a few days in a row.

This is something I really don't know what to do about because nothing I've tried so far worked.

Anyway, let's see...

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sup! How are you doing? If things are bad, don't forget that this is a long-term effort. Losing a battle is fine, as long as you don't give up and keep fighting. As one of my teachers in high school said once to me that really stuck: "The only thing you need is the desire to desire". 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

20 hours ago, JustTom said:

Sup! How are you doing? If things are bad, don't forget that this is a long-term effort. Losing a battle is fine, as long as you don't give up and keep fighting. As one of my teachers in high school said once to me that really stuck: "The only thing you need is the desire to desire". 

Thanks man. Yeah, I'm really trying to get in the mindset that it's not about quitting games & other addictive tech for good, it's about having as many detox days as possible and keep the relapses as short as possible. I think that helps with the feeling of crapiness that comes when you relapse.

Anyway, I started a new journal here: 

 

Gonna try to do 120 days this time...

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...