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Comment by openfuture | Hacker News Reader

I got a thinkpad when I was 10 years old, found my first use for it when world of warcraft was released a few weeks later.

Recovering from World of Warcraft addiction at age 12 (having spent the time fully immersed all day every day) caused me to read B.F. Skinner's research.

I was quite shocked reading about the Skinner boxes and felt empathy for the mice after having been trapped in one myself.

By coincidence I went with a friend to a lecture at the local university at this time... some guy called Richard Stallman was speaking about computers.

I came home and installed Linux, I have been learning what I need to participate in this fight ever since.

Originally I just wanted to be free from manipulation, so I put in the hours to protect myself.. but now I want everyone to be free from manipulations so I try to find out which kind of software I should contribute and maintain to move us closer to that dream.

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Question: do you still play games? If so, how much? I absolutely love gaming, but I can really lose myself in it, and also sometimes think about what I could do if I would spend these hours on for example learning (I'm a web dev). Sometimes I think about quitting gaming entirely and spending that time on programming projects/learning entirely for fun. At the same time I like gaming, but I have a hard time not getting immersed in it.

I've been struggling with something similar. Where I've landed (for now at least) is to ask, "What does this game give me? Will I be happier/better when I'm done? Is there nothing I'd like to do instead?"

If I have good answers, I'll let myself play the game. "I've been programming all day and my brain needs a break," is fine. But if it comes out that I'm playing because I just want to fill time or am procrastinating taking the next step on a project, I put it down and do something else. Doesn't have to be the thing I was procrastinating, just something that won't automatically expand to fill all available time.

Similar experience for me, played all through my teens and early twenties. Something has clicked in the last year, that I want to spend my time more productively

What's worked for me has been using a blocker. For example "cold turkey" I'm using ATM. I normally set blocks of 1 month or so, then end up binging a gaming weekend when it becomes unblocked, then go again

Seems to be working pretty well. Considering just setting it away for 3 month blocks, but I'm still hanging on to there being a nice middle ground :)

That's awesome! I really like the idea of setting blocks, and still playing once in a while.

Tried playing less before, but never succeeded for long.

Just not playing at all will probably suit me better. Especially when I know I will be able to at the end of the block.

Starting with it from now! Thanks for sharing :)

Glad it's helped, good luck on your journey to reclaiming some extra hours back!

Not really no, I am kind of fed up with electronics tbh.

I still LOVE games though and I think in terms of them all the time. However I prefer physical games with good design, there's something about having a small enough statespace that it fits in your head but a vast enough posibility space to encourage replay that tickles me.

Nowadays I want to design some games but I want to do a lot of things, so we'll see what happens...

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