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@hazelnot a friend once cut the power cable to his gaming pc to keep himself from playing all the time but there's prolly less drastic ways of being in control of your computer usage habits

@melody no no I do want advice, please post it!

@hazelnot@sunbeam.city hahaha, ok

Not a psychologist, etc, so take it with a grain of salt. But my experience is in some ways similar to yours, and the key for me is to avoid thinking in black and white about stuff like this.

My instinct would be to say "I discovered I am happier when X, therefore I will deny myself Y, I must avoid Y at all costs". This is both ineffective and a recipe for feeling guilty and a failure when you inevitably slip.

What I'm about to say sounds easy on paper but it's really hard to do, and it took me 10+ years of therapy to get to this point where things are finally sorta kinda starting to work for me.

I try to use what I know about myself to gently guide myself towards the version of me that I want to see, focusing on the positive. (and importantly, if I slip, I forgive myself for it)

For example, I try to do some light planning because that's what helps me. If I write down in advance "this thursday I will do art" it's much easier for me to... do art when the time comes.

If I have no plan and I'm just sitting there and realize I have some time, could I do art right now? but maybe I could also play videogames... Or I could also do a secret third thing... If I have to pick there and then, I'll get anxious, and maybe I'm tired from work, or I have some anxieties about the art thing, so I'll end up picking the path of least resistance and the one I'm most used to, which is to play videogames.

Only you can know what sort of "trick" or "method" works for you, but regardless, be kind to yourself ​​

@joepie91@social.pixie.town @hazelnot@sunbeam.city you wouldn't necessarily even have to use a dual boot setup to accomplish the same thing. What you could do, is log out of steam on your main account's user. Separate the games to a different account that you have to consciously log into. If you want to go further you can use parental controls (most operating systems support parental controls) to limit the amount of time you can be on that account.

@joepie91@social.pixie.town @hazelnot@sunbeam.city even on *nix we have https://linux.die.net/man/8/pam_time which can help you accomplish this goal. Of course it's up to you in order to follow through with setting that up but there are plenty of ways to accomplish this. There are apps where you can have people you trust "monitor" that usage (and i am failing to name those apps because the specific one i am thinking about is well not generally used for this purpose...)