You should throw out all the games. I'm serious. I never really began to succeed until I stopped playing stupid games and became a man. Now I'm managing younger guys who can't put down the controller. Last fall I had to fire someone who was clearly staying up all night playing video games and was never prepared for work nor doing an adequate job at it. Sadly, his own sense of privilege prevented him from being able to even comprehend why we were firing him. He was falling asleep in meetings every day and the code he was turning in was not only sub-standard, but often just non-existent.
As a counterexample, I attribute much of my success to being a compulsive World of Warcraft player in my 20s.
True, founding and being the Guild Master of a hardcore raiding guild wasn't great for my ability to focus on my real job. Main Tanking and leading 40 players through endgame content 3-4 nights a week didn't do any favors for my social life.
But the skills I developed ended up transferring pretty well over to founding and running a remote web dev agency. In fact it turned out that managing paid employees over the Internet is easier than managing volunteers in many regards. When you screw up, your employees tend to go easy on you, because they like their paychecks and changing jobs is a lot harder than changing Warcraft guilds.
I was young and kind of a loser at the time and there was little chance anyone was going to give me anything important to manage. WoW gave me an opportunity to develop a valuable skill set at an early age.
> I stopped playing stupid games and became a man.
Lol...lot's of men play games, stupid or otherwise, and it doesn't make them less of a man. Responsible men (and women) just know how to moderate. You seem to not be feeling particularly manly (whatever that is) in general, so you should probably try to do whatever you enjoy in moderation, and you will feel better about yourself.
>You should throw out all the games. I'm serious. I never really began to succeed until I stopped playing stupid games and became a man.
I feel related to this comment and I think I know what you mean, and it's most likely that the other guys are misunderstanding you. And obviously, the guy "beta testing a new optimization to play and be productive" is having addiction issues.
What I relate to is that most of my life I just used games as a scape mechanism (of pretty much everything) and it was my default thing to do most of the day. Even when I was bored of playing, I just kept playing to pass time by and avoid doing anything worthy. I tried to leave them several times (unsuccesfully) because whenever I felt bad/sad/any negative emotion, I said to myself: "I'm just gonna play a little bit to get into a better mood", and guess what, before I knew I was all overconsumed again. At some point, I realized that if I wanted to progress in my life, I needed to go cold turkey on games, ALL KIND OF GAMES. I was mostly a PC gamer, but I know that console or phone games will drag me to the addiction again. So now I don't even consider gaming, it's completely forbidden for me (unless it's a social thing, with friends to hang out for example). I'm even considering doing the same with T.V., it's mostly wasted time.
So to sum it up, leave games all together if it doesn't help you progress in your life, can't achieve what you want to and are addicted to them; this will help you "become a man".
There is obviously a balance. If you get a lot of joy from gaming and still lead a productive life you should keep gaming. The "work all day everyday do nothing else!" mindset is destroying our society and causing depression/addiction. Too much of anything (yes even work) is simply not good for you. Balance is so important and yet it is almost like everyone has abandoned it for a radical mindset. It is like you cannot find reason anymore in the wild. Every one is "its all this" "NO! ITS ALL THAT" Things are complex and there are not universal generalities. Such things sound nice but they are fiction in a world of complex adaptive systems... Sorry for tangent this has bothered me for a while.
I think he triggered some people because they know he is right, he has lived both sides unlike your common gaming addict with no real breaks in their activity for years.
If the purpose of life is to be as productive as possible, then throwing out video games (and any other form of entertainment) is obviously best. Most people will be more productive if they work more.
That being said, there are plenty of successful people who play video games. And there are plenty of addictions that are at least as time-consuming and no more productive (TV, alcohol, Hacker News). Everyone has to balance for themselves how much time they'll spend in unproductive pursuits.
You should throw out [addictive behavior X] is what you really mean. I'm 35 and have multiple hobbies and kids, gaming is one that I just limit to a few hours a week. Anything prohibiting you from fulfilling your responsibilities is a problem area.
This resonates a lot. I used to be a huge gamer, but as I moved along my career I had less time and less mental bandwidth to game.
In a pique of nostalgia I tried one last hurrah recently and built a gaming PC (documented here https://www.leonroy.com/blog/2018/10/teeny-tiny-workstation/ ) but even with a machine which 20 something me would’ve drooled over I find I no longer have the patience to play something like the new Assassin’s Creed, Breath of the Wild or Witcher 3. It leaves me a little sad because gaming brought past me a lot of joy but after sinking 80+ hours into a game you question whether that time would have been better spent doing an online course or heck spending an extra hour each evening exercising instead of twiddling thumbs on my controller.
Same goes for TV IMHO - I ask myself what was the last TV show which affected my outlook or moved me in some way and heck The Wire maybe, Battlestar Galactica perhaps? I’ve watched all of Dexter, Chuck, Game of Thrones, Greys Anatomy, Castle, the list goes on and not one of them feels like they had a measurable improvement on my life. I do wonder when we go too far the other way though.
It's not so black and white. There are plenty of successful people that "play stupid games" and are full grown men, likely with the same responsibilities you have, if not more.
I did the same, but it was because I have very low self control since a young age, and telling myself "OK this will be the last round I'll ay tonight" (of League of Legends, Super Smash, etc.) never, ever worked. The cumulative result of all that gaming means next to nothing for my career now, aside from being more calm when getting trolled. Not worth it.
