Milestones

Dean

08 Jun 2025 — 1 min read

I was never successful in controlling my excessive gaming by going cold turkey. The strategy which worked best for me, was to make gradual changes. I took small steps away from gaming, as I took small steps towards RL. For example, when I was focussed on reducing my interaction with WoW, some of the success milestones looked something like:

* Restricted raiding to once a week, and caught up on neglected duties at work and home.

* Stopped raiding in WoW completely, and tried out new hobbies (still played WoW).

* Decreased social interactions in WoW, and increased social interactions in RL (reconnected with old friends, and made new friends through work, hobbies and volunteering).

* Stopped playing WoW completely, and joined an in-person D&D / board games group (still played other games).

* Restricted gaming to small Indie titles, and focussed on life goals.

These days I treat gaming in pretty much the same way as I treat alcohol: Never partake alone, and never partake too much. So I pretty much just play Couch Co-Op games with my friends and/or girlfriend for no more (and often less than) two or three hours a week, usually on a Friday evening or Saturday. It’s just enough to scratch the itch, and have some fun with friends, but never enough to derail life goals.

Right now, I have three core goals to focus on:

* Learn a new language (I live abroad these days).

* Write a weekly article for this blog.

* Improve physical fitness.

There are other things which take up time and energy, such as a full-time job, steady girlfriend, running a small apartment, social life and hobbies, but those three are the ones which I keep track of and push myself to improve on week to week. Once I established those key things to focus on, I found it much easier to avoid excessive gaming because I had carved out a plan for the future and had something to work towards.

Nowadays, every time I feel like I want to play a game alone, or just want to play games with friends for a little too long, I just don’t. I believe it takes too much time and energy away from the things that matter. I also want to avoid that deep empty feeling I get after playing games for too long, especially when I could be experiencing that satisfied feeling of fulfillment when I make progress with a life goal.

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But in the end

Temptation

Synthesised sunk-cost fallacy

Reframing