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Comment by maccard | Hacker News Reader

> and going home to do whatever they want. Regardless if its watching sports or TV all night.

There's a difference between wanting to do that, and feeling unable to do anything else. If you _want_ to go home and veg for an evening that's OK, but if you can't do anything else, that's probably not OK.

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I would say that for an individual it might be hard to honestly determine between those two states. I'd say for myself there have certainly been times where I _thought_ I wanted to play a video game for several hours but ultimately I understood, based on how I felt afterwards, that is not really what I wanted.

It can be on a day to day basis, but if it’s a chronic thing, it’s usually (in retrospect, of course) easy to differentiate. Person 1 goes home every night after work and feels like they want o watch TV, so they do, every day for a year. Person 2 goes home every night and feels the same, however they meet friends/go to the gym/read a book/_something_ different once or twice a week. There’s a world of difference in retrospect.

> I _thought_ I wanted to play a video game for several hours but ultimately I understood, based on how I felt afterwards, that is not really what I wanted.

This is what I'm talking about. I can spend all day watching Netflix, but in the end I will be much happier if I go climbing, write some code, practice for my next musical performance, or read a book that will help me think better (some good fiction can fit into this category). Some games fit into this category, but not many.

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