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Keeping myself occupied


Justin Whitelock

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So far this year, I went through two 4 month periods without playing video games. Personally myself, I never had a intention to 100% quit playing video games, but rather make it a mostly obsolete activity that I rarely do. I achieved that and it is something to be proud of. So how did I do it? Well here is how I did it.

Before I delve into that, I want to say that I know that some of you probably think that its incredibly difficult to do double over 90 day detox and many outside the quitters community find it to be down right impossible. I guess it can be... if you don't know how habits work. What I suggest to anyone reading this is to pick up the book called "The power of Habit" By Charles Duhigg and read it to get a good understanding on how habits work. In the book, Charles goes over how people get locked into doing a routine because the brain knows it gets a reward for doing so. This is whats known as the habit loop, it has three components:

  1.  The Trigger (Anything that sets your brain to automatically perform the habit)
  2.  The Routine (Otherwise known as the habit itself)
  3.  The Reward (The reason why you perform the habit itself)

All of that plays a huge roll in why people play video games, for me, it was being bored or having nothing to fill my time. So being bored was the trigger, playing video games was the routine and not being bored or satisfied was the reward. So what did I have to do to fill in the routine that wasn't very self destructive? I filled it up with other tasks or activities to do, including working long hours.

Obviously working long hours at work is not very appealing, so, like I said, I filled that free time with other activities. Such as bowling, starting a business in voice over, learning another language and learning how to draw. Not only that, I made a big list of goals I wanted to accomplish this year. Obviously I won't complete all of the goals, but the point of it is, is for me to have direction in life and keeping myself occupied. Not only did all of that, but I also started dating and became debt free! All of that from controlling the hours I put into video games and of coarse not playing for long periods of time, which may very well happen again. I don't know about you, but I say I am experiencing more of life by only playing 1-2 hours on the weekend (sometimes every two weekends).

Of coarse some of you believe that totally playing video games is the best way to go. I won't argue with you there, if you decide playing video games at all is destroying your life, then by all means get it out of your life. Life is short, live it to the fullest. So anybody on their 90 day detox, I wish you the best of luck!

TL;DR

To put it short, do what cam suggests and fill in your free time with other activities to keep yourself from getting bored.

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