I'm not sure if i should stop gaming or if i have other problems that are just intensified by it

[Notusingrealname]

I'm at a point where i don't know whether or not i should quit playing games because even though i play a lot of them, i haven't been doing that badly in college , i work out 6 days a week between martial arts and gym, managed to get my diet up to a decent standard even though there's the occasional pizza that is just bound to happen. However, what i feel like is that i want to study more than what i currently am, and if i ever play video games before i do anything else in that day, it makes it way harder to concentrate on say long studying sessions, which i hate but are absolutely mandatory for my ultimate goal of getting to the point where i'm working on brain surgery ( i'm a medicine student and one of my ultimate goals is to be a surgeon). I've tried splitting my studying sessions in blocks such as 25 mins of reading/writing, 5 mins of rest. My only problem is that when i start playing a game it's very difficult to stop and i think about them more often than i should. I think the only instances of me getting legitimately hurt by videogames in real life is when i mess up my sleep schedules and failing to deliver one research project last year ( but then again covid kinda killed many research projects including mine, though gaming definitely didn't help). Should i take immediate action? I asked a friend to keep my steam account and change the password temporarily but i'm not sure as i actually do have good fun when playing games and managed to quit toxic experiences such as league of legends ranked mode entirely.

As for the reason why i game, it's mostly a hobby  but i also often feel a need to be able to escape from reality a bit as my routine can often be very mentally and physically taxing to me, and i also generally enjoy being good at the things i do ( which builds into the point that i need to study more )

 

Edited January 7, 2021 by Notusingrealname

[Bird By Bird]

Experiment. You are a researcher after all and researchers do experiments.

Stop gaming for 90 days (or 30 days or even just 1 week) then go back to gaming again and compare your productivity, health and general quality of life.

Let us know the results either by daily forum journals or weekly reports or a post after your no game experiment is over.