I recently quit gaming, and I want to replace it with a different activity, but I always find myself going back to it because it gets boring to me in comparison to gaming. What should I do?
I was in the same boat with tv until the new year. I used to binge watch Netflix nearly every night until well past midnight, sometimes 3 AM, wasting my time and energy on entertainment even more mindless than gaming (at least with games, you have to take action; tv you just consume).I quit. I decided I would not watch TV at home for a year at least. Movies are okay, and TV while out is okay, but at home, no television. And I have had absolutely no problem sticking to it so far.My secret? Gambling.I bet my brother $500 I could keep from watching TV at home longer than he could keep his own resolution.Why does this work? It leverages two tricks of human psychology. The first is the fact that we fear losses much more than we want gains. For most people, if you have a 50/50 chance of either winning $100 or losing $100, you will not do it, because the fear of loss is stronger than the desire for gain, even though logically the expected value is zero and we should be indifferent. So, I intentionally set the situation up so that failing to meet my goal caused a loss for me, which is much more motivating than thinking of how much more productive I will be when I don't watch TV (a gain).The second psychological hack is that it is much easier to commit to something once than to make an effort day after day. So, instead of trying to create a habit of not watching, and having to decide every day not to watch, I created a situation where I only needed to decide once to call my brother and set up the bet, and then I was stuck for a year with the consequences.Plus, gambling on competitive activities can be fun, and gets my competitive side going, which is further motivation to stick to it.So, you want to stop gaming so much? Don't worry about what you will do with the time; you will figure that out. Instead, find someone else who wants to achieve a resolution, and put your money where your mouth is.
What would be a good gaming username?
notcringy1That would be a fairly obvious one although probably not one you’re looking.Your name Pol Dartasr is pretty cool but if that’s you’re real name I can understand why you wouldn’t want to use it.Coming up with a username is fairly difficult. I had a username which I absolutely loved which I used back with diablo 1, 2 and Starcraft we’re out. I’ve since dropped the name, left online gaming for about 10 years, came back and found out there were three people who used my old user name, two of which are still active. One still uses it for gaming as far as I know and the other claims it has a Twitter handle. The gamer uses a variation of it on Twitter.I have settled on another user name (pretty original) for myself but I don’t really play online games any more. It’s more light-hearted than my old name. I’m also pretty annoyed that I let the name go and the others couldn’t come up with original names, but hey stuff happens. I thought my old name was pretty darn original.I can’t come up with a name for you but how I came up with my names? The first was focusing on an emotion I constantly expressed as a teenager and tying it into the game Diablo’s hell theme.RageofHades.The second name, is more of a light hearted name and I came up with it as a troll for friends I used to game with. They wanted a serious name like Rathgar the buccaneer or some crap. Since I wasn’t feeling it, I decided onwalls2theball.