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Managing the addiction


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I am tired of working more than usual at work (because I didn't play Hearthstone and watched only 20 Minutes of no-gaming-content-youtube). That's why I will use the last 20 minutes of my workday to read Respawn again and post the first exercise here:

Reasons why I played games

  • Temporary Escape!
    Every time my private life/work gets stressful/challenging, I have urges to escape. As a teenager, I read a lot of fantasy in these cases, later on, it was WC3/dota/LOL/Hearthstone or something else. I think it is because my life was so easy in many ways that I never learned to handle stress/expectation in a healthy way. Still not sure what this healthy way would be.
  • Social
    It was really fun to play with real life friends, especially if they aren't reachable otherwise. But I didn't do this since I admitted to my addiction around 2017. But I still sometimes miss the activity of doing such things (like playing wc3 with one of my best friends 2on2)

Reasons why I will quit games

  • Takes too much effort for me to enjoy
  • Lets me neglect my family and myself
  • Makes me a bad person (I start lying and "forgetting" things I promised and become completely passive)
  • I want to be a role model for my boys
  • I want to take care of my family and be someone to lean on and to trust
  • I want to feel successful and be proud of myself.

How I feel now with the decision to quit gaming

  •  anxious of the challenge, relieved that this is possibly over now, scared of relapse, tired of resisting urges, happy for the possibilities, sad for all the lost time and the good memories, cut open for letting emotions out, sad for me, sad for my friends and family

Putting up the barriers

  • This didn't work in the past. At least for me, it isn't a spontaneous thing to relapse. If I can't go to my goto game I will find something else to escape. The thing that helps is to keep in mind that I am addicted and can't go back without all the negative effects I experienced so often. For this, I will post here daily from my phone and sometimes (less frequent) from my work laptop (doesn't have a private computer anymore)

Gaming Replacement Activities

  • Engaging: helping other people to have more success at work by becoming better at the social and technical aspects of my job. Work only 32 hours for the same pay and more output (by becoming more effective).
  • Resting: Sit and dream, doodle pictures, Read novels, Walk and enjoy the world, play with my kids, housework and audiobooks (fiction)
  • Social: (This one is hard with my two kids). Think of ways to talk/meet my friends, schedule regular walks with my sisters, my mother and my father. Call my former best friend from time to time instead of sending speech messages.

Thats it for now.

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Yesterday was a good day. I could be okay with me and still got some work done at work. Handled my emotions instead of escaping.

This morning it is harder. Waster half an hour on an audiobook instead of working. I am shameful because the night was awful (the little one was awake like every hour and my wife got almost no sleep), so if I just took care of him instead of pretending to work she could have slept longer. I just wanted to listen a little further. Then I started surfing on the side. Then I watched porn. Then I searched for other escapes of not having to tackle that hairy work problem.

Luckily, I thought of my routine of posting here and this got my out of this rut. I need to be very wary of these patterns. It is key that I directly start a work routine if I go to my office in the cellar. Tomorrow I will fill my water bottle, list my tasks and start the first one for at least 10 minutes, Hopefully this evades this kind of problems in the future.

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Didn't post in the morning because I had another start in day with a bad start doing basically nothing productive (audiobook, youtube). But at least I stayed away from gaming content and didn't game.
At work things get better because I am able to tame my anxiety and actually do stuff. But this takes a little bit longer then I like or I do admit in my time logs. But its still progress.

At least nobody seems to suspect that I am working so little. So I am in a really lucky position to be able to fake it till I make it.

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It is hard. I search different Outlets dir escaping. YouTube Videos of streamers, Note Audio books. It makes me realize how much I currently need escape. That sucks. I how this geht's better next Werk. Otherwise I need to Change Things i do currently to have a healthier relationsship with my responsibilities. 

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In of the biggest factors I feel bad about myself currently is how little I am able to actually work.

I am alone today and had some time to reflect. I work around 20-50% of my logged time. This is objectively bad. I can argue for myself If I only work 50-80% because it is knowledge work and it just isn't possible to stay focussed and energized for 100% of the time. Some breaks, some distractions and I would still be outperforming many people. But that puts me in "do as little as possible to keep your job" area. And this isn't satisfying. Especially because my job is overall a good one (well paying, nice colleagues, flexible work times, a good portion of it is interesting challenging work). In my opinion this is an intrisic problem.

I feel anxious if I open my mails because I fear someone asked me about stuff I failed to do. There are a lot of negative emotions connected to work currently. I classify it as time away from my family, time I must be reachable for "work", time when I am judged, time which is missing in my life. I need to change this

Or change my job. As I started in this job (I just quit gaming) this wasn't the case. I really liked doing stuff, improving processes and having fun with my team. But then I had some illusions about work life and "new work" I don't hold anymore. Working just doesn't seem to be challenging anymore. I seem to miss validation from peers. I realize if I fail, but I don't realise if I am doing good work. It feels like a big amount of time spent failing and not being good enough and not spending enough time. This is partly the jobs fault because I am a one man team and my boss is really busy with a lot of other stuff. I think I need to grow up and find the value in my work for myself.

That was a reflection. Now to the part of what I try to do about it.

  1. Find wins in my working day. Write 3 Wins I had today at the end of the workday and try to feel proud about them. They can be little or big.
  2. If I am able to spend 50%+ of my time, this is a win for now.
  3. Prioritize the administrative stuff (time logging, project management, note-taking, Mailbox to zero) to feel in control again. Do this before implementation work.
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Yesterday night I went walking for 45 minutes with the little one in the wrap. IT helped that my wife got some sleep (because afterwards he slept for 3 hours without waking).  I guess the walking was good activity too. But I got to little sleep. I feel like things are going better lately. I am more on top of things.

 

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This morning I feel under tension. That my son didn't want to go to the kindergarden and me starting later for work was enough to keep me stressed. I think it is hard for me that my wife's mental health is currently getting worse. This is most likely only a step back because of sleep deprivation. But it scares me. I don't want to go back to that place.

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The measure of a good objective is how much positive energy I get from it in total (or how much energy loss I can prevent) directly after reaching it + indirectly over a period after I reached it. This means there should be a bias towards objectives that give you positive energy over a long time.

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Yesterday I was on a day-long bachelor party. It was a fun day and really weird to be a day and a night without my wife and both kids. That makes me realize how little I socialize on a normal day, since I am a father. Now its time to to my best at work aagain. But I wanted to post here quickly to keep the routine going.

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After only 4 hours of sleep this was a really unproductive day. I did fall back on my pre detox nivaeu which is really low. But on the other hand I am way more organized right now and think I can compensate this to still reach the important goals of this week. But I need to sleep today.

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can relate, couldnt sleep, too. I switched from staying up late until 4am playing games to an alarm clock that has a 6:00am written on it for a couple of days now and I couldnt manage to wake on time one day. 6:15am was the closest. I just cant find sleep. dunno.

Witch your kids you shouldn't worry too much: When they become older those problems should disappear. Keep that in mind. It's only a temporary problem and one that should solve itself without much intervention. Just make sure that you work towards the same nighttime/morning routine with them that you are on. Make them part of your routine and so you can spend time with them and slowly move towards a better sleep quality for both of you.

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