Growing up my diversion of choice was video games. I spent many hours playing on the Magnavox Odyssey 2, on the Commodore 64 (yeah I'm that old), and later on PCs. “Interactive games” back then involved Player 1 / Player 2 stuff with your opponent sitting beside you.
Oh, to be young again.
Games as an adult have a higher cost
Unless you're Ninja or Shroud or anyone else who's turned gaming into a business or job, playing games can have a high time cost and even a high money cost.
I have an addictive personality and for a long time a new game on my phone was a giant shiny. Candy Crush Saga, oh my goodness the time I spent there. The most addictive ones got more challenging so gradually that it was easy to play for hours at a time for free. I rarely paid for upgrades, booster packs, whatever, in these freemium games, but that didn't keep me from spending waaaay too much time playing them.
An hour or two playing games once in a while isn't that much, but every night the lost time adds up. After a while, I was saddened to see that my website traffic was down, because I hadn't been posting as much or learning as much.
That's time I'll never get back.
I only play a couple of word games on my phone now
It's strange that I still have dozens of games installed on my phone, but I only play two of them: Wordle and Connections. Both of them are New York Times games.
You've likely heard of Wordle. It's part Mastermind and part Hangman. You get six guesses at a mystery five-letter word. After each guess, correct letters in the correct spot in the word are colored green, and correct letters in the wrong spot are colored yellow, to lead you toward the answer.
Connections is a newer one. Sixteen words appear in a square array, and the goal is to discover the four groups of four words they belong in. The editors of this puzzle are pretty devious at times with their choices and their groupings, so these can be quite a challenge. Group things incorrectly four times and you lose.
So how do these games help me stay on task?!
On the face of it, these games sound pretty addictive, don't they?
They are. My current streak playing Wordle is 61 days. I don't know about my Connections streak but it's similar.
The reason that these games help me to stay on task, despite being as addictive as they are, is that I can't play them as much as I want.
I can't binge Wordle or Connections. There's one puzzle a day for each of them. If I miss the puzzle for a given day, I can't go back (plus I lose my streak, and that's sad).
One a day seems to be enough, and that's great for my productivity. It satisfies my gaming itch, and then I can put it down to do other, presumably more productive things.
I have to give a hat tip to the NYT for structuring it this way. It's a refined approach to gaming. Have some fun, but just so much, and then get back to the finer things in life that make you a better person. It provides the restraint that other games don't, and that I often have trouble exerting myself.
As a bonus, I often spend time with my wife doing these puzzles. We do them at about the same time, so if one of us gets stuck we can ask the other for hints or help. It's a fun little time together.
Find time-friendly ways to indulge
It could be that you have absolutely no trouble limiting your screen time, game time, Netflix, whatever, and that's great. I wish I had half of your self-control there.
Or maybe you never started doing these things. Even better.
For me — and possibly for you — will we look back on a year of regret, or a year of accomplishment?
Life doesn't have to be free of fun, or void of any kind of diversion, but if that's how we spend most of our time outside of work, it can be empty in retrospect.
At least for my gaming habits now, though, I'm much less kid of the 1980's and more adult of the 2020's, and I'm good with that!
Thanks for reading!
I love helping people spend less and make more to relieve financial stress and sleep better at night!
Click here for solid cash tips that will boost your financial peace of mind immediately!
(header photo by Kyle Nieber on Unsplash)