I'm not a gamer. If anything, I'm yet another old cranky coder guy complaining about new people and new stuff. Dang it! (Looks outside to check lawn)
Having said that, Factorio is the bomb. I like the point this essayist makes about closed vs. open-ended problem-solving. There's also the matter of building something for now vs. building something for later. Probably the biggest mistake I see in shops are people building for the endgame when they don't even have a basic and simple value loop set up. Factorio teaches this by direct practice and interaction. Because solving coding problems can take a long time, many times programmers can go an entire career without actually learning how to solve problems, instead just learning more and more about how to add solution details.
For some, if they're not going to learn good architecture evolution here they'll never grok it.
Recommended. But beware: it's a freaking huge time sink. I had to take it off all but one of my PCs.
I think there's a fallacy. It's like people that get into chess for the sake of becoming better at logic. Which is good for a while until it becomes a problem of pure memorization. Or people that spend their time playing poker in order to get better with probabilities and statistics instead of going through a textbook with pen & paper. Factorio is a very good game, I've enjoyed it for a while, but it's not a replacement to solving coding problems.
To quote a buddy of mine, after I jumped on Discord to play some other game with him, as I woke him out of his Factorio slumber: "Help, get me out of here. I don't remember building all this, nor when I last went to bed."
He's no longer allowed to play Factorio.
When another buddy recently bought it on sale and we told him this same story, he simply laughed it off. The last we've heard of him since was a few weeks back on Discord, simply stating "my god".
> But beware: it's a freaking huge time sink. I had to take it off all but one of my PCs.
I didn't even enjoy[0] Factorio and it still ate just over 60 hours of my time, so please heed this warning everyone. Factorio is Nerd-Sniping: The Game.
[0] I would like to take a moment to say that while I personally have a distaste for the kind of experience Factorio is, it is an incredibly well made version of what it is. I discovered only one bug[1] during my playthrough and the simulation can handle millions of interacting objects in a vast play area in real time to an impressive degree, and I don't consider myself to be easily impressed by the speed of modern software since modern computers are so ludicrously fast.
[1] It is possible to drop the deconstruction planner into the world as an object an infinite number of times even before it unlocks.
This was the most stressful game I ever played. First, because there's always something to do, that needs your attention. Second, because it was so addictive that even my work suffered. The rocket was the probably the least satisfying ending to a game, but I have never been so relieved to finish a game.
Yeah, that's a pretty good summary of my experience as well. I didn't enjoy it, but I finished it anyway because A) I could, and B) I was "working" from home with COVID[0] at the time.
[0] Which I caught at work along with pretty much everyone in the office because the person running the company decided they absolutely needed all of us back there after about a month of most people working from home (but not me!). To be fair, the people working the plant did legitimately have to be onsite, and they also all caught it. 2020 was our best sales year to date, and no one died, so I'm sure there were no lessons learned. Yes, I am bitter about this.
The benefits of playing Factorio compared to? Compared to programming on your own project? Compared to reading something intellectually stimulating? Compared to working out or investing time to eat healthy and sleep properly? Compared to spending time with people you love? Compared to fulfilling your actual _responsibilities_?
> "If you’re in a slump (rut), chances are you feel like you can’t complete anything. You feel like you’re unable to finish anything so what’s the point of starting. Factorio is a great cure against that. Especially when you view it as a challenge."
"Why you should play Factorio" ; you absolutely can, it might have more benefits for you than other games, but besides that I really have trouble with such a headline, especially since the URL is called "deprocastination" (the home page sells an e-book, which promises to solve your problems and you can sign up via e-mail, not confidence inspiring). If you want to stop procrastinating, you probably should just delete Steam and get on with your tasks?
I'm not saying it's easy. There are things that can help: Meditation, proper task scheduling, talking to people about your problems, stress management techniques, in extreme cases therapy ...
"Play Factorio!" - Great advice /s
> "You can start taking the skills you learned and use them for anything else that is productive."
FAANG should look for new employees on World of Warcraft servers... /s
There is no technological cure to a spiritual problem. This is selling snake oil.
Edit1: interesting to see the up-/ and downvotes on this. I am not dissing gaming, not dissing the game. But recommending a computer game as a means to deal with procrastination and develop "real life skills you can use being productive" (paraphrased), that notion I do indeed find ludicrous and stand by it.
Edit2: From an answer I gave to a comment below (sorry for the edit, but I think I worded it in a nice way there):
The implication, that "procrastination" means "no due diligence" in anything is _WRONG_. It's due diligence in things that should take no priority as the very means to avoid the things you should be doing instead!
"Play Factorio, it has benefits for you that help you be productive" in response to someone dealing with procrastination? If that isn't absurd, I don't know what is.
Your post comes across as extremely condescending and, honestly, misinformed. You clearly believe that playing video games is a complete waste of time; whereas things like meditation and working on your own project are not. And then you try to layer on things like eating healthy, sleeping, and working out; which are good things in their own right, but serve different purposes that playing a video game does.
I agree that things like WoW and Factorio are not going to help you avoid procrastination. However, they are not, themselves, procrastination any more than working on your own project is, or getting together with friends. WoW has a strong component of problem solving and working together with friends. Factorio is almost all about problem solving. Taking the time away from "responsibilities" to let your mind do other things is also very good for you (see also, meditation).
Taking time to "play" is an important path of a healthy life , and Video Games are almost a canonical example of doing that.
I tried to make a point, you might call it condescending, I think it's poignant. But I see what you mean. And that probably explains some people's misgivings with my comment.
Computer games are fine. I'm not playing these days, but I've played my fair share (by which I mean _a lot_). It's a perfectly valid use of one's time (not that I try to judge in any way, shape or form), but not as a supposed "virtue" for an individual that is struggling with procrastination.
If you are someone with a day job, active social life, and spend time playing computer games, there are certain games that will give you value, ideas, fun, intellectual stimulation. I'm not arguing against gaming, and for reading. Neither is a "fix" for procrastination. "Start reading a chapter a day in a book to fix procrastination", calling that nonsense is not arguing against the virtues of reading.
If you are someone procrastinating, not doing important tasks and not fulfilling your responsibilities, saying "play this game", as it will teach you to "overcome procrastination" and "how to be productive in real life", all of which is either directly stated or at least strongly implied in the article, then I strongly disagree, and even go so far as to consider the advise dangerous, and laughable.
For someone suffering from severe procrastination, to the point at where it has a strong negative impact on one's life, I think stress management, introspection, reaching out to people, meditation, forming healthy habits, in some cases even therapy, all of that is far better advise than "Play Factorio".
At nearly 40 I really struggle to justify the time to play games. The really good games, the kind that offer amazing experiences, require so many hours to get to that point that you start to compare it against other activities that are far more fulfilling. Looking at some people's Steam play times, they are in the 100's of hours on a single game, which is the time needed to, for example learn a new language. (0)
Now we all need to switch off sometimes, but games require a real commitment, whilst other activities such as watching TV, I can walk away and come back months or years later to carry on with a series.
Or do exercise - which has real benefits in a short period of time.
In my 20s I spent several hours each day playing games. Time I'll never get back and I have nothing to show for it :(
You have a couple points there. I might change the headline.
Keep in mind that this is the last post of a series specifically geared towards helping people stop gaming.
> If you want to stop procrastinating, you probably should just delete Steam and get on with your tasks?
> I'm not saying it's easy. There are things that can help: Meditation, proper task scheduling, talking to people about your problems, stress management techniques, in extreme cases therapy ...
Naturally, our articles cover the above, as does the book (that you casually dismissed)
And to your last point, technological cures (like the extension on our site) and specific techniques are often the start of the journey. For many people they are more approachable than the "spiritual" approach.
> Keep in mind that this is the last post of a series specifically geared towards helping people stop gaming.
What? This post was about why you should play a video game. A game that many people here say is incredibly addicting. How does that possibly help people stop gaming?
OT: but back when Stripe did the CTF challenges, I wondered if they used it as a recruiting platform. They had both a measure of technical ability and there was also a discussion forum that almost certainly illuminated good communicators who conducted themselves well.
(I consider upvoting or downvoting such comments a stupid game, especially as far as opinions are concerned - if the number of people shouting "I disagree" is larger than "I agree", you'll just get greyed out.)
Having played Factorio, I partly share your sentiment. All in, it's just a creative game that can teach you forward thinking in a way different than, say, chess. And you can spend your time in a way that gives you more satisfaction and benefit.
However, there are some aspects of Factiorio that make it stand out. I'd say that it is unique in the sense of teaching how to scale whatever you do taking into account limited resources. The particular skills learned might not be easily transferable to the other areas of your life, but the general principles (of assessment, planning, paying attention to what you have and what you can have, the importance of quick adjustments to changing circumstances) are.
Sorry, but your reply sounds like "just stop being poor".
Procrastination is serious problem and anything that helps someone deal with it should not be dismissed.
Edit:
Procrastination is all about avoiding a problem (could be work, could be phone call, anything really) by looking for excuses/reasons why it cannot be done or why it must be postponed before something else is done first.
In Factorio, if you don't have enough let's say steel plates, you _HAVE_ to go and increase your ore production. No excuses will help you avoid the issue and if you get used to it, it can help you get this attitude outside the game and apply what you've learned in real life.
Edit2: (I can bypass the time lock this way? interesting)
Considering I'm nice person as well, I'm just going to say that it's probably more useful for people actually having the problem than meditation and similar new age nonsense.
Doing anything right when it needs to be done can be a huge step forward from the horrible swamp that is procrastination.
I'm pretty sure plenty of people addicted to MMORPGs don't forget leveling up their character, and going to the "ruins at 7 pm with their teamspeak party to raid for magic staff wand XYZ" ; to peddle the tool they use to procrastinate as a _cure_, because at least you're doing something diligently? Sorry, I am a nice person, but I am able to have strong opinions: This is nonsense.
The implication, that "procrastination" means "no due diligence" in anything is _WRONG_. It's due diligence in things that should take no priority as the very means to avoid the things you should be doing instead!
"Play Factorio, it has benefits for you that help you be productive" in response to someone dealing with procrastination? If that isn't absurd, I don't know what is.
Except OP was explaining how it doesn't solve procrastination, at all. Procrastination problems don't get solved by having a new method of procrastination. That's like trying to combat crack addiction by switching to heroin. Nothing in their comment seemed like, "just stop being poor".
I've consciously decided not to buy Factorio because I know that would be my favourite thing for months, if not years to come and it would distract me from my duties.
> NATURE OF THE GAME
> Especially we are not responsible if you stay awake all night long playing Factorio and can't go to school / work in the morning :)
I find it similar to Civilization one more turn syndrome.
There is always something small you meant to do, one more improvements that will take only a min... suddenly you hear birds singing outside... its 4am...
I actually thought factorio is tedious because it has it's own 'DSL', optimal formulas, optimal paths, stuff that needs to be memorized, stuff that is tedious and you're back to doing what you're doing for a living - googling the unknowns and trying to piece together a puzzle. And for me that's a no go, because fun has to be instant.
Factorio will not help you develop skills to deal with procrastination. A source of procrastination is doing things only based on how urgent they are, not how important. So you do urgent, non-important tasks and drop the ball on non-urgent, important tasks. Playing a video game that streams urgent, non-important tasks at you will not help.
Things that have worked for me:
1. Spending 30 minutes most days on whatever my oldest tasks are, regardless of how important. I just go with the oldest first.
2. Meeting a project manager for 30 minutes each week to talk about what's going on in my life. [0]
3. Quitting video games. (Civ 5, really).
4. In the morning, I throw on some clothes, go for a five minute walk, and then work for 2 hours on my core work (for me, coding).
[0] If you hire a life coach to do this in the US to do this in the US it's very pricey. And I tend to dislike the type of person who wants to be a life coach. A PM in Latin America is much cheaper.
My biggest problem isn't procrastination per se, but that I often find that I have little control over where my focus is directed. If I'm not focused on something, it takes me (often, literally) exponentially more time and effort to accomplish it. As a result of that, I optimize first for curating focus on the things that matter by putting myself in places (mentally and physically) where those things are the most interesting presence and likely to "naturally" draw my focus.
I've spoken to many counselors, psychologists, and psychiatrists about this, and while some have been supportive of my approach none have seemed to really understand the importance of exploiting my "natural" focus over overriding it via willpower. Of all places, I recently found that a lot of people on TikTok with self-professed ADHD describe very similar challenges and coping mechanisms.
In short, ADHD seems to not be a deficiency in the ability to focus. Indeed, it comes with the ability and tendency to engage in extreme focus for long periods. The problem is that I don't get to consciously choose the target of that focus, and that it's extremely difficult to break it once I'm focused on the wrong thing.
Slightly off topic, but on the topic of "deprocrastination" and gaming. How do other people here feel about managing gaming habits and such, among their other side projects, work, and the day to day chores. I've been off video games for soon 3 months now because I felt I was unable to properly moderate my gaming habits. I was ending up playing late in evenings or during a weekend where I arguably had better things to do.
I've found that there really aren't any replacement hobbies for gaming as such. Lots of things to do instead, but nothing really replaces it. Personally, the closest thing I came to the same kind of enjoyment I got out of gaming is meeting other people IRL and being social.
Games for me was able to fill a very odd spot in my mind I think, they were challenging to the extent that you felt like you were growing a skill, and at the same time rewarding with various power-trip-gimmicks like "winning" or just plain old fun things like explosions, guns and (fantasy)-violence, stuff that gets your lizard brain going you know. It boiled down to "fun-work", and by that I mean truly fun work, stuff that you completely voluntarily do and which is void of the added boring fluff that comes with normal work. And as said, also something to grow into where a skill is actually being developed and a kind of deeper gratification can be found by continuous progress. (All the previously mentioned aspects were however too fake for me in the end, the lizard brain part doesnt understand that it was fake skills and fake victories though, so it liked them all the same)
On the topic of Factorio: I am absolutely certain this game would suck me in for far too many hours. I've heard stories about it and I can imagine how neat the problem-solving to feedback loops are, combined with creativity and you know, explosions.
However, if you have employees that are struggling with exactly solving open ended problems, games like this one probably does train that brain function.
> Games for me was able to fill a very odd spot in my mind I think, they were challenging to the extent that you felt like you were growing a skill, and at the same time rewarding [...] stuff that gets your lizard brain going you know.
For me, I see games as a very simple effort/reward process. I can put in some time solving a problem and I get a dopamine hit. It's like junk food for my brain's reward centers :)
The "odd spot in your mind" that you mention, for me, is that cycle: solve a small problem, receive dopamine hit, move on to the next problem. Gaming makes that reward cycle very fast. That makes it efficient, but it also seems to acclimate me to a cycle speed that isn't common in real life.
I find that some hobbies are an acceptable substitute, at least for a while. Most of those involve physical skills that need to be built over time. Some hobbies that I've tried that fill the same mental niche for me include:
* repairing and restoring vintage fountain pens
* metalworking/machining
* building and flying (but mostly building) FPV drones
* shooting sports (always expensive, but much more so right now)
* mechanical watch repair/"modding"
* playing a musical instrument (ukulele is inexpensive and fun)
* photography
* 3D printing - both optimizing the printers themselves and designing solutions in CAD
That sweet spot is not learning. Just an illusion of it. I did learned some things as a hobby, but real learning does not feel like gaming. Your progress stops and starts again.
In any case, I decided to never pay big games 2 times and the second time sticked. The crawings went down over time, I rarely feel it anymore. And offer time I got used to hobbies that don't cause those emotional ups and downs, I don't expect them anymore, so they don't bore me anymore.
But after a year, you look back and you see massive progress. You see yourself doing things you thought are impossible for you a year ago. And all that while you are fully aware you still wasted ton of time by doing nothing. It is not like I would be overworked from useful learning. It just happened, piece by piece.
I allow myself free games on cell phone once in a while. But the decision to never pay naturally means I will either reach the end soon or get bored with it.
For games that I think are going to eat a lot of my time, I put them off until the end of the year where I have a lot of vacation time, it is fucking winter, and the fact that it is the holidays allows me to silence the "you should be doing instead" voice.
That goes out the window this year on 5/15 when the new Subnautica is released though.
I also enjoy playing old games though, so in order to silence that voice I stream those sessions, which somehow allows me to feel like it is a productive use of my time even though I have never made any money from it and among the least popular regular streamers in an already low-popularity category.
I play one hour (maybe two on occasion) most nights just before I go to sleep. It doesn't seem like much but if you relentlessly stick to it like I have the hours add up.
I avoid online multiplayer and competitive gaming. I stick to single player games I can "finish". It's a great way to get that fix and have a great sense of accomplishment without gaming overtaking your life. I've finished more humongous games this way than I ever did and I've been a serious gamer my entire life (cutting out multiplayer definitely, no doubt).
I’m very careful about the types of games I play. I like one-and-done experiences that lead me through a story. I avoid anything with xp/grinding mechanics, which I consider largely-exploitive.
Like movies and books, these games have a beginning and an end and a set duration between the two. Examples include Portal (1&2), Gris, Sayonara Wild Hearts, and Journey.
What I do is play single player games and cheat the grind over. Say if I am actually interested on exploration and story and not fighting for 5 minutes after each corner same guys over and over I just find a cheat or give up.
You might enjoy boardgames as a similar hobby. Many varieties focus on set collection and push your luck. All have a social aspect that games cannot replace. The core principles are the same. One difference however, is you have to keep track of the rules yourself, the game isn't going to enforce them for you.
Games are great and irreplaceable activity that we as humans need and computer games are even more awesome but totally mess up this great thing about games, they make it too easy to fall into the other extreme and get diminished returns while sinking too much time that should be spent on other things such as socialization, phisical activities and work if games eat into it.
Not all games are equal though, some of them respect this and force us into sessions or have a journey with a beginning and an ending.
I want to throw another reason to play factorio onto the pile: The experience of working with excellent software is wonderful. It will infect your expectations and you will come to resent the lack of quality elsewhere.
Readit News
Having said that, Factorio is the bomb. I like the point this essayist makes about closed vs. open-ended problem-solving. There's also the matter of building something for now vs. building something for later. Probably the biggest mistake I see in shops are people building for the endgame when they don't even have a basic and simple value loop set up. Factorio teaches this by direct practice and interaction. Because solving coding problems can take a long time, many times programmers can go an entire career without actually learning how to solve problems, instead just learning more and more about how to add solution details.
For some, if they're not going to learn good architecture evolution here they'll never grok it.
Recommended. But beware: it's a freaking huge time sink. I had to take it off all but one of my PCs.
To quote a buddy of mine, after I jumped on Discord to play some other game with him, as I woke him out of his Factorio slumber: "Help, get me out of here. I don't remember building all this, nor when I last went to bed."
He's no longer allowed to play Factorio.
When another buddy recently bought it on sale and we told him this same story, he simply laughed it off. The last we've heard of him since was a few weeks back on Discord, simply stating "my god".
Deleted Comment
I didn't even enjoy[0] Factorio and it still ate just over 60 hours of my time, so please heed this warning everyone. Factorio is Nerd-Sniping: The Game.
[0] I would like to take a moment to say that while I personally have a distaste for the kind of experience Factorio is, it is an incredibly well made version of what it is. I discovered only one bug[1] during my playthrough and the simulation can handle millions of interacting objects in a vast play area in real time to an impressive degree, and I don't consider myself to be easily impressed by the speed of modern software since modern computers are so ludicrously fast.
[1] It is possible to drop the deconstruction planner into the world as an object an infinite number of times even before it unlocks.
This was the most stressful game I ever played. First, because there's always something to do, that needs your attention. Second, because it was so addictive that even my work suffered. The rocket was the probably the least satisfying ending to a game, but I have never been so relieved to finish a game.
[0] Which I caught at work along with pretty much everyone in the office because the person running the company decided they absolutely needed all of us back there after about a month of most people working from home (but not me!). To be fair, the people working the plant did legitimately have to be onsite, and they also all caught it. 2020 was our best sales year to date, and no one died, so I'm sure there were no lessons learned. Yes, I am bitter about this.
> "If you’re in a slump (rut), chances are you feel like you can’t complete anything. You feel like you’re unable to finish anything so what’s the point of starting. Factorio is a great cure against that. Especially when you view it as a challenge."
"Why you should play Factorio" ; you absolutely can, it might have more benefits for you than other games, but besides that I really have trouble with such a headline, especially since the URL is called "deprocastination" (the home page sells an e-book, which promises to solve your problems and you can sign up via e-mail, not confidence inspiring). If you want to stop procrastinating, you probably should just delete Steam and get on with your tasks?
I'm not saying it's easy. There are things that can help: Meditation, proper task scheduling, talking to people about your problems, stress management techniques, in extreme cases therapy ...
"Play Factorio!" - Great advice /s
> "You can start taking the skills you learned and use them for anything else that is productive."
FAANG should look for new employees on World of Warcraft servers... /s
There is no technological cure to a spiritual problem. This is selling snake oil.
Edit1: interesting to see the up-/ and downvotes on this. I am not dissing gaming, not dissing the game. But recommending a computer game as a means to deal with procrastination and develop "real life skills you can use being productive" (paraphrased), that notion I do indeed find ludicrous and stand by it.
Edit2: From an answer I gave to a comment below (sorry for the edit, but I think I worded it in a nice way there):
The implication, that "procrastination" means "no due diligence" in anything is _WRONG_. It's due diligence in things that should take no priority as the very means to avoid the things you should be doing instead!
"Play Factorio, it has benefits for you that help you be productive" in response to someone dealing with procrastination? If that isn't absurd, I don't know what is.
I agree that things like WoW and Factorio are not going to help you avoid procrastination. However, they are not, themselves, procrastination any more than working on your own project is, or getting together with friends. WoW has a strong component of problem solving and working together with friends. Factorio is almost all about problem solving. Taking the time away from "responsibilities" to let your mind do other things is also very good for you (see also, meditation).
Taking time to "play" is an important path of a healthy life , and Video Games are almost a canonical example of doing that.
Computer games are fine. I'm not playing these days, but I've played my fair share (by which I mean _a lot_). It's a perfectly valid use of one's time (not that I try to judge in any way, shape or form), but not as a supposed "virtue" for an individual that is struggling with procrastination.
If you are someone with a day job, active social life, and spend time playing computer games, there are certain games that will give you value, ideas, fun, intellectual stimulation. I'm not arguing against gaming, and for reading. Neither is a "fix" for procrastination. "Start reading a chapter a day in a book to fix procrastination", calling that nonsense is not arguing against the virtues of reading.
If you are someone procrastinating, not doing important tasks and not fulfilling your responsibilities, saying "play this game", as it will teach you to "overcome procrastination" and "how to be productive in real life", all of which is either directly stated or at least strongly implied in the article, then I strongly disagree, and even go so far as to consider the advise dangerous, and laughable.
For someone suffering from severe procrastination, to the point at where it has a strong negative impact on one's life, I think stress management, introspection, reaching out to people, meditation, forming healthy habits, in some cases even therapy, all of that is far better advise than "Play Factorio".
Now we all need to switch off sometimes, but games require a real commitment, whilst other activities such as watching TV, I can walk away and come back months or years later to carry on with a series.
Or do exercise - which has real benefits in a short period of time.
In my 20s I spent several hours each day playing games. Time I'll never get back and I have nothing to show for it :(
(0) https://www.clozemaster.com/blog/how-long-does-it-take-to-le...
Keep in mind that this is the last post of a series specifically geared towards helping people stop gaming.
> If you want to stop procrastinating, you probably should just delete Steam and get on with your tasks? > I'm not saying it's easy. There are things that can help: Meditation, proper task scheduling, talking to people about your problems, stress management techniques, in extreme cases therapy ...
Naturally, our articles cover the above, as does the book (that you casually dismissed)
And to your last point, technological cures (like the extension on our site) and specific techniques are often the start of the journey. For many people they are more approachable than the "spiritual" approach.
Deleted Comment
What? This post was about why you should play a video game. A game that many people here say is incredibly addicting. How does that possibly help people stop gaming?
Having played Factorio, I partly share your sentiment. All in, it's just a creative game that can teach you forward thinking in a way different than, say, chess. And you can spend your time in a way that gives you more satisfaction and benefit.
However, there are some aspects of Factiorio that make it stand out. I'd say that it is unique in the sense of teaching how to scale whatever you do taking into account limited resources. The particular skills learned might not be easily transferable to the other areas of your life, but the general principles (of assessment, planning, paying attention to what you have and what you can have, the importance of quick adjustments to changing circumstances) are.
Procrastination is serious problem and anything that helps someone deal with it should not be dismissed.
Edit:
Procrastination is all about avoiding a problem (could be work, could be phone call, anything really) by looking for excuses/reasons why it cannot be done or why it must be postponed before something else is done first.
In Factorio, if you don't have enough let's say steel plates, you _HAVE_ to go and increase your ore production. No excuses will help you avoid the issue and if you get used to it, it can help you get this attitude outside the game and apply what you've learned in real life.
Edit2: (I can bypass the time lock this way? interesting)
Considering I'm nice person as well, I'm just going to say that it's probably more useful for people actually having the problem than meditation and similar new age nonsense.
Doing anything right when it needs to be done can be a huge step forward from the horrible swamp that is procrastination.
You don't typically deal with something by making it worse, in this case spending more time not doing work...
The implication, that "procrastination" means "no due diligence" in anything is _WRONG_. It's due diligence in things that should take no priority as the very means to avoid the things you should be doing instead!
"Play Factorio, it has benefits for you that help you be productive" in response to someone dealing with procrastination? If that isn't absurd, I don't know what is.
No you don't. Unless you have literally zero supply. You can always settle for "good enough" and live on less than perfect supply of any resource.
Because of the sleep deprivation I felt the day after, I decided it was cocaine and dumped it.
"Factorio is a great cure" my butt.
> sleep deprivation I felt the day after
Yep. I've had a more than my share of "five minute" gaming sessions like that :)
So your comment alone would tell me all I need to know about the nature of the pull of this game.
> NATURE OF THE GAME > Especially we are not responsible if you stay awake all night long playing Factorio and can't go to school / work in the morning :)
They warn you ahead of time.
It's not an avarage but in a burst
There is always something small you meant to do, one more improvements that will take only a min... suddenly you hear birds singing outside... its 4am...
Never again.
Things that have worked for me:
1. Spending 30 minutes most days on whatever my oldest tasks are, regardless of how important. I just go with the oldest first.
2. Meeting a project manager for 30 minutes each week to talk about what's going on in my life. [0]
3. Quitting video games. (Civ 5, really).
4. In the morning, I throw on some clothes, go for a five minute walk, and then work for 2 hours on my core work (for me, coding).
[0] If you hire a life coach to do this in the US to do this in the US it's very pricey. And I tend to dislike the type of person who wants to be a life coach. A PM in Latin America is much cheaper.
I've spoken to many counselors, psychologists, and psychiatrists about this, and while some have been supportive of my approach none have seemed to really understand the importance of exploiting my "natural" focus over overriding it via willpower. Of all places, I recently found that a lot of people on TikTok with self-professed ADHD describe very similar challenges and coping mechanisms.
In short, ADHD seems to not be a deficiency in the ability to focus. Indeed, it comes with the ability and tendency to engage in extreme focus for long periods. The problem is that I don't get to consciously choose the target of that focus, and that it's extremely difficult to break it once I'm focused on the wrong thing.
I've found that there really aren't any replacement hobbies for gaming as such. Lots of things to do instead, but nothing really replaces it. Personally, the closest thing I came to the same kind of enjoyment I got out of gaming is meeting other people IRL and being social.
Games for me was able to fill a very odd spot in my mind I think, they were challenging to the extent that you felt like you were growing a skill, and at the same time rewarding with various power-trip-gimmicks like "winning" or just plain old fun things like explosions, guns and (fantasy)-violence, stuff that gets your lizard brain going you know. It boiled down to "fun-work", and by that I mean truly fun work, stuff that you completely voluntarily do and which is void of the added boring fluff that comes with normal work. And as said, also something to grow into where a skill is actually being developed and a kind of deeper gratification can be found by continuous progress. (All the previously mentioned aspects were however too fake for me in the end, the lizard brain part doesnt understand that it was fake skills and fake victories though, so it liked them all the same)
On the topic of Factorio: I am absolutely certain this game would suck me in for far too many hours. I've heard stories about it and I can imagine how neat the problem-solving to feedback loops are, combined with creativity and you know, explosions.
However, if you have employees that are struggling with exactly solving open ended problems, games like this one probably does train that brain function.
For me, I see games as a very simple effort/reward process. I can put in some time solving a problem and I get a dopamine hit. It's like junk food for my brain's reward centers :)
The "odd spot in your mind" that you mention, for me, is that cycle: solve a small problem, receive dopamine hit, move on to the next problem. Gaming makes that reward cycle very fast. That makes it efficient, but it also seems to acclimate me to a cycle speed that isn't common in real life.
I find that some hobbies are an acceptable substitute, at least for a while. Most of those involve physical skills that need to be built over time. Some hobbies that I've tried that fill the same mental niche for me include:
* repairing and restoring vintage fountain pens
* metalworking/machining
* building and flying (but mostly building) FPV drones
* shooting sports (always expensive, but much more so right now)
* mechanical watch repair/"modding"
* playing a musical instrument (ukulele is inexpensive and fun)
* photography
* 3D printing - both optimizing the printers themselves and designing solutions in CAD
In any case, I decided to never pay big games 2 times and the second time sticked. The crawings went down over time, I rarely feel it anymore. And offer time I got used to hobbies that don't cause those emotional ups and downs, I don't expect them anymore, so they don't bore me anymore.
But after a year, you look back and you see massive progress. You see yourself doing things you thought are impossible for you a year ago. And all that while you are fully aware you still wasted ton of time by doing nothing. It is not like I would be overworked from useful learning. It just happened, piece by piece.
I allow myself free games on cell phone once in a while. But the decision to never pay naturally means I will either reach the end soon or get bored with it.
That goes out the window this year on 5/15 when the new Subnautica is released though.
I also enjoy playing old games though, so in order to silence that voice I stream those sessions, which somehow allows me to feel like it is a productive use of my time even though I have never made any money from it and among the least popular regular streamers in an already low-popularity category.
I avoid online multiplayer and competitive gaming. I stick to single player games I can "finish". It's a great way to get that fix and have a great sense of accomplishment without gaming overtaking your life. I've finished more humongous games this way than I ever did and I've been a serious gamer my entire life (cutting out multiplayer definitely, no doubt).
Like movies and books, these games have a beginning and an end and a set duration between the two. Examples include Portal (1&2), Gris, Sayonara Wild Hearts, and Journey.
Not all games are equal though, some of them respect this and force us into sessions or have a journey with a beginning and an ending.