As you can probably tell from my backdrop and my entire room, I am a fan of playing
video games, but I have a pretty complicated relationship with video games and I can illustrate
that on something I like to call the "Work/Play Compulsion Scale".
As you can see here, it looks like a teeter totter and if I had my priorities in order
and acted in the way that I wanted to act on a daily basis, then I would work for a
certain amount of hours and then play video games for a certain amount of hours and I
would be nicely placed in the middle.
Unfortunately I find myself slanted over onto the work side and my work tends to bleed into
the time that I would want to be gaming.
However, this video isn't about my particular problem with video gaming, it's about the
problems for the people on the other side of that teeter totter.
The people who find that video games start seeping into their work time.
The time that they should be studying or getting homework done.
If you find yourself in that area and video games are a major distraction to getting your
work done, then this video is for you and I've got five tips to help you start pulling
yourself more into that middle area.
Tip number one and I think this is probably the most important tip in the entire video
which is why it's going first.
It's to simply set up an environment for studying that is only for studying.
If you saw my video that summarized Marty Lobdell's Study Less Study Smart lecture,
you'll know that I talked about how environmental cues and the context of the situation we're
in, actually largely defines our behavior.
One detail from the lecture that I didn't talk about in that video was a study done
at the University of Hawaii - which actually looks like this - where researchers wanted
to figure out if they could improve students� grades by changing their environments.
They did one simple thing.
They told students to turn their desks around in their dorms toward one wall and put a sticky
note labeled "Study Area" on the lap next to their desk.
The students were instructed to only use this desk for studying and everything else, other
activities had to take place somewhere else.
What do you think happened?
In comparison to the control group of students who didn't do this, the students who did do
it, had an average of 1.0 GPA increase.
The action item here for you should be pretty clear, find an area that is different from
your gaming area and do your studying there.
For instance, the temptation to game out here?
Not that big.
Likewise the temptation to play games in the library or a coffee shop is probably going
to be a lot less than the temptation to play games in your living room or at your computer
that has Steam installed.
Tip number two is to increase the friction involved into getting into a video game.
The idea here is to increase the difficulty and the amount of steps involved into getting
into a distracting activity and basically make doing your work the more attractive option
in that case.
One way that you can do this is by actually creating a different account on your computer
for work and only installing the programs you need for work on that computer.
You can also set up extensions like Stay Focused or programs like Focal Filter to reduce the
amount of distracting web browsing you do as well.
My third tip is to simply game after you're done working for the day.
Use gaming as a reward and this kind of goes back to the concept of high-density fun that
I talked about in last week's video.
Use the anticipation of a long gaming session later on in the day as a motivator to get
your work done more efficiently now.
Tip number four is to play games that work well with your schedule.
If you're really busy and you have a lot of studying to do, then it might not be the best
idea to get invested in a 120 hour JRPG or a super long WoW raid.
On the other hand playing a few sessions of Smash Brothers with your friends is probably
not going to suck up a whole ton of your time.
Just be mindful of the real world commitments you have and select your game accordingly.
Tip number five is my favorite tip because it's actually fun and it's to simply turn
your life into a game.
You can actually reduce the compulsion to play lots of video games if your life feels
like a game itself.
The best way to do this is to simply set goals that are specific and that you're actually
stoked to achieve.
I do this on a page on my website called "My Impossible List" which you can find linked
down in the description actually.
Basically I break my entire life down into different sections and set goals for each
one.
Every time I achieve a goal, I cross it off, but I also iterate on that goal and make something
a little bit harder, so I'm essentially leveling up in every category.
You can also use tools like Fitocracy or HabitRPG to actually track your habits and gain real
stats and actually kind of play a real game while improving your life at the same time.
Hopefully you'll find these five tips useful enough to take gaming from an unproductive
distraction to a healthy habit.
If you find that your own gaming habits are still really hard to break though, there's
actually some online communities that I'd suggest you check out.
Over on Reddit, there's one called r/stopgaming as well as r/nowow.
There's also a site called quitlol.com, which is specifically for people who play League
of Legends, but I think it has some useful information.
I'd also like to give a quick shout out to both some of the members in the College Info
Geek HabitRPG guild and some people over at the r/getstudying Reddit.
They both helped me flesh out the ideas for this video and I'll link to both of them in
the companion blog post.
That's it for this video, if you've got any additional suggestions or experiences of your
own for making gaming less of a distracting habit, then let me know down in the comments.
Otherwise, I will see you in the next one.
Hey there and thanks for watching my video on balancing gaming and your studies.
If you want to get more videos every single week on being an awesome college student,
then click that big red subscribe button right there.
Also, if you want to get a free 100+ page book on getting awesome grades, click the
picture of the book right there and I'll send you a copy.
You can also get a summary and links to any resources I mentioned in the video by going
to the companion blog post right there and if you missed last week's video, there's a
clip of it playing.
Lastly if you have any ideas for new videos or just want to connect, I'm on Twitter @TomFrankly
or you can leave a comment on this video.
Thanks.