Alejandro Portela

ps3 iphone I recently got a second hand PS3 to basically play Call of Duty with my friends.

That thing is a time sucker.

Just like on every good TV show, the last seconds of each game are the most exciting, making you play “just one more”.

You know THAT never happens, and what started as a 30 minute “break” turns into 2 and a half hours of intensive gameplay that literally sucked every minute of your free time.

So here is the plan that I will be following to deal with my mild video game addiction.

1) Put A Measurable Limit To Your Free Time

Take a look at the watch and plan ahead an escape strategy, every time.

Let’s say it’s a crappy rainy day and you are tired from too much work making money so you can spare 3 hours just screwing around doing non-productive stuff.

Before you decide how many hours you want to spend playing, you need to set up a time limit to go back to work or “call it a day” if you are a late night gamer like me.

Then you have to quickly decide how much of that free time you are going to dedicate to play video games.

2) Break Down Your Free Time Before You Start

Because you normally don’t want to just play games, think of all the other thing that you will be doing in those 3 hours and break your spare time in blocks.

Do you consider watching a 2-hour movie or two episodes of your favorite show (80 minutues) more valuable than “leveling up” or trying to beat a new personal record in that same amount of time?

3) Start With The Activities That Have an Implicit Time Limit

If you decide to start watching the movie you will consume two thirds of your free time. Leaving you with only 1h for playing games.

And in most cases you will just want to get off the couch and get some fresh air.

This way you make sure you don’t step into this classic scenario ever again:

“Oh well, I only have 80 minutes left before I go back to work, not enough time to watch a movie so I’ll keep playing…”

Been there, done that.

4) Set A Timer On Your Phone And Keep A Log Of Achievements

Whenever you grab the gamepad set the timer on your iPhone to remind you when to stop.

Then, when the session is over, write down you achievements.

I recommend keeping a simple text file synced in your dropbox, evernote or simplenote.

This way you’ll be able to think about what you are doing with your free time when you are not in the heat of the moment.

It sounds more stupid than you think when you are sober…

“11-10-2011: I killed 68 people in 60 minutes”

Teh lame…

Do you have any other tips for overcoming video game addiction? Share them below.

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ios productivity I got the bad habit of checking my email inbox and twitter timeline every five minutes from too many -long and boring- accounting classes back at the university.

After learning the hard way that my productivity would go down dramatically due to the lack of continuous focus, I knew I had to implement some kind of system to help me “get my head out of the twutter”.

Here are four different things that I did to instantly reduce social media and email distractions, increase my concentration and get more important things done:

Disable Push Notifications

When I made the switch from the official Twitter app to Tweetbot, the fact that I’d lose notifications got me kinda worried in the first place. But then I discovered that I could live with it.

I manage five different twitter accounts on my iPhone so you can imagine how big of a deal this was.

Most of the time you are not required to instantly reply to a tweet. In fact, I don’t know anyone who saved a friend’s life with a fast @ reply, do you?

If they really need to reach you, they can probably do it with a phone call, whatsapp, or a regular text message.

Put Your Social iOs Apps in a Stinky “Hermit” Folder

One of the things that I’ve tried is to put the most distracting apps far away from the main screen. This way I have to take some extra steps in order to get to them, which makes it less likely to happen being the lazy-ass person that I am, sometimes.

Enable Lockscreen Passcode

I’ve been trying this one for two weeks and the results have been truly… surprising.

Just by adding another security layer to the famous “slide to unlock” I turned checking twitter, facebook and google+ into a “pain in the ass” kind of task.

Now I have to reach into my pocket, grab my phone, take it out, wake it up, slide to unlock, remember a lame four digit passcode, enter it, swipe a few screens to the right, open a folder, click on the app icon…

See?

so.not.worthy. (and that’s the beauty of it)

Go Offline

I’ve never been a fan of the airplane mode but I try to stay offline as much as I can to reduce distractions and increase battery life.

If you have a jailbroken iPhone, I recommend SBSettings (on Cydia) to quickly switch your data and wifi ON an OFF, from anywhere you are, just by swiping your finger across the status bar.

You don’t need to implement all these tweaks at once, start with the passcode one and you’ll be surprised, it’s one of my favorites now!

I want to try to disable push emails for 30 days and see if I can do fine with just checking it once in the mornings (or once a week ala 4HWW).

Subscribe to my RSS feed or follow me on twitter and google+ to join me on this productivity challenge, coming soon ;)

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