Benefits of habit “Stop playing too much video games”
✓ Reduces stress
✓ Increases productivity
✓ Improves social relationships
✓ Improves productivity
First step:
Play 10 minutes less today
Progress:
1. Today, reduce your time spent playing video games by 10 minutes. Do this every day for 1 week.
2. Next week, reduce the time played by 20 minutes every day.
3. Keep increasing, until you don’t play at all or only up to 1 hour every day.
Helpful tips to make it a habit:
✓ Same time is key. If your video game time is huge, the best way to develop a new habit to stop is to choose a time at which you stop, no matter what. No “one more game” or “5 more minutes”. Turn off your PC or console and the area.
✓ Trigger your mind. Use gaming time tracking software to signal how long you’ve been playing and when it’s time to stop. Alternatively, have a huge not in front of your TV to remind you when it’s time to stop.
✓ Let the app help. Set a reminder to ring the end time of gaming. You may also track the days you couldn’t resist one more session and see what progress you made.
✓ Reward yourself. Once you’ve gone a month of being in total control of your gaming time, reward yourself by buying a new game and playing it at the time you have available. See how your enjoyment has increased when it became more scarce.
Tips for beginners:
✓ Addiction. Just like with most things, too much of the same thing can be detrimental. If you find it hard or impossible to stop playing once you start, or you lose large chunks of time when you do game, it might be a problem.
✓ Rest of your life. How much does gaming take out of your day? Is it the only thing you do when you get back home? Do you tend to stay overnight and not notice time pass by? Are you late for work because you gamed all night? These are signs of addiction.
✓ Just too much. It might be so that you’re not addicted, but you can’t find a good enough alternative to games. And you won’t know until you tried. Reducing time playing and actually going out and trying new things could be rewarding, especially if you feel you spend too much time in the virtual world instead of the real one.
