I'm currently beta testing a new optimization - I'm only allowed to play WoW Classic after my todo-list is done. One if the items on the todo-list is "do something productive for 30 minutes" (and currently, there's no shortage of things to fill those 30 minutes with).
Maybe I can use the extreme gravitational force gaming has on me to do good..
I love that part. I may try that some time. 30 minutes could also be a good breaking point where it's worth it to keep doing that productive thing instead of doing something else.
It's very important that I actually make sure I'm happy if I manage to get 30 minutes in though. It's important that I'm able to trust myself. If every session turn into a 45 minute session and I start feeling inadequate because I "just got 30 minutes in today", then I'm back on a downwards moving spiral again.. More than 30 minutes is great, but so is 30 minutes. Way better than my default mode, which is wasting 100% of my time :)
True, founding and being the Guild Master of a hardcore raiding guild wasn't great for my ability to focus on my real job. Main Tanking and leading 40 players through endgame content 3-4 nights a week didn't do any favors for my social life.
But the skills I developed ended up transferring pretty well over to founding and running a remote web dev agency. In fact it turned out that managing paid employees over the Internet is easier than managing volunteers in many regards. When you screw up, your employees tend to go easy on you, because they like their paychecks and changing jobs is a lot harder than changing Warcraft guilds.
I was young and kind of a loser at the time and there was little chance anyone was going to give me anything important to manage. WoW gave me an opportunity to develop a valuable skill set at an early age.
That being said, there are plenty of successful people who play video games. And there are plenty of addictions that are at least as time-consuming and no more productive (TV, alcohol, Hacker News). Everyone has to balance for themselves how much time they'll spend in unproductive pursuits.
Nice work. You're so manly now.
I think he triggered some people because they know he is right, he has lived both sides unlike your common gaming addict with no real breaks in their activity for years.
Lol...lot's of men play games, stupid or otherwise, and it doesn't make them less of a man. Responsible men (and women) just know how to moderate. You seem to not be feeling particularly manly (whatever that is) in general, so you should probably try to do whatever you enjoy in moderation, and you will feel better about yourself.
I feel related to this comment and I think I know what you mean, and it's most likely that the other guys are misunderstanding you. And obviously, the guy "beta testing a new optimization to play and be productive" is having addiction issues.
What I relate to is that most of my life I just used games as a scape mechanism (of pretty much everything) and it was my default thing to do most of the day. Even when I was bored of playing, I just kept playing to pass time by and avoid doing anything worthy. I tried to leave them several times (unsuccesfully) because whenever I felt bad/sad/any negative emotion, I said to myself: "I'm just gonna play a little bit to get into a better mood", and guess what, before I knew I was all overconsumed again. At some point, I realized that if I wanted to progress in my life, I needed to go cold turkey on games, ALL KIND OF GAMES. I was mostly a PC gamer, but I know that console or phone games will drag me to the addiction again. So now I don't even consider gaming, it's completely forbidden for me (unless it's a social thing, with friends to hang out for example). I'm even considering doing the same with T.V., it's mostly wasted time.
So to sum it up, leave games all together if it doesn't help you progress in your life, can't achieve what you want to and are addicted to them; this will help you "become a man".
I've played games back in the day with at least one person who has become a billionaire in software.
Everyone is different, your way is not the only way.
Now if you're addicted and don't see yourself moving forward, then sure, adjust it. But you should do that if you're addicted to anything.
This resonates a lot. I used to be a huge gamer, but as I moved along my career I had less time and less mental bandwidth to game.
In a pique of nostalgia I tried one last hurrah recently and built a gaming PC (documented here https://www.leonroy.com/blog/2018/10/teeny-tiny-workstation/ ) but even with a machine which 20 something me would’ve drooled over I find I no longer have the patience to play something like the new Assassin’s Creed, Breath of the Wild or Witcher 3. It leaves me a little sad because gaming brought past me a lot of joy but after sinking 80+ hours into a game you question whether that time would have been better spent doing an online course or heck spending an extra hour each evening exercising instead of twiddling thumbs on my controller.
Same goes for TV IMHO - I ask myself what was the last TV show which affected my outlook or moved me in some way and heck The Wire maybe, Battlestar Galactica perhaps? I’ve watched all of Dexter, Chuck, Game of Thrones, Greys Anatomy, Castle, the list goes on and not one of them feels like they had a measurable improvement on my life. I do wonder when we go too far the other way though.