How can I balance coding and gaming effectively as a CS student aiming for success in IT while managing gaming addiction? #codervsgamer #balancingact
### Gaming Addiction and Coding Skills Development
As a CS 3rd-year student, I am struggling with managing my gaming addiction while trying to focus more on software development skills than data structures and algorithms. How can I confront this challenge of balancing both activities that require being in front of the same computer?
### Reducing Gaming Hours Without Abandoning Childhood Passion
I am working on reducing my gaming hours per week to prioritize my coding skills development. However, I don’t want to abandon gaming completely as it holds nostalgic value from my childhood. How can I strike a balance between the two while aiming for success in IT to afford my dream gaming lifestyle?
### Seeking Advice from Successful IT Professionals
While I have a strong interest in coding, I feel like I am not at the same level as my peers who have achieved success in the field. How can I improve my coding skills and habits to reach their level of success? I would appreciate any advice or tips from those who have excelled in IT. #successintech
By effectively managing my time between coding and gaming, I believe I can achieve my goals and aspirations in the IT industry. Thank you for sharing your insights and experiences! #codingandgaming #successstory
Discipline
You gotta work, but you gotta have fun as well, try to find the perfect balance
You gotta get over your gaming addiction. You could replace “programming” with any skill, and you would still need to tackle your addiction.
Almost all of the people that dropped the CS track when I was in university did it because they chose to grind ranked instead of study and write code. Mother fuckers would stay up till 2am the day before an exam.
Stop playing video games, and then get gud at programming. It’s that simple. Stop trying to balance in your addiction that is clearly negatively affecting your life
You start with coding and when its done then you may or may not play games
If you have a gaming addiction, you should stop gaming, rather than “balance” it.
I have found a decent, competitive multiplayer game on my phone that I play, and I play for 30-60 minutes most days. But I *only* game on my phone. When I’m at the computer, I’m writing code.
The device separation really works, for me.
I code in the day, gym then game at night lol
This might be weird but the more I code the less I’m enticed by gaming. Coding is my favorite game (usually) and I might still play a few hours of whatever story game I’m playing at the moment each night to wind down, but I see coding as a game in itself.
Make a schedule for each and only do them during those times.
i would say use a different computer and go into a different room, but if you only have the one its a bit harder. your brain is wired to go into “play mode” when you’re wherever you normally game, so changing the location may help.
I have a school laptop I only do work on, and I wont sit in front of my desk but I’ll head to a quiet place in my house, and i do much better work like that.
If you don’t have the ability to balance gaming and other stuff you just gotta stop. You will continue to shoot yourself in the foot if you don’t stop
Don’t worry. The more you’ll learn how to make them, the less you’ll want to play them 🤣
Spend my weekdays coding and weekends gaming. Usually spend 20-30 hours a week studying how to code and doing course work for university and then I reward myself on the weekends with gaming
set up a different session for studying with no access at all to your game library, specially multiplayer games, those are designed to suck you in
I’m not out of school yet so maybe take what i say with a grain of salt but i used gaming to get better at coding. I made projects that incorporate aspects of valorant and games i enjoy and turned them into coding projects. Then i dove down the rabbit of ‘oh i made something now i have to host it’ and am currently learning ab kubernetes so i can hook up my project to my raspberry pi cluster. Eventually i became so obsessed w finishing my projects that i would willing not play games so i could finish my project that can make the games more fun.
If you can afford it, get a cheaper laptop for programming and use the beefy one for gaming.
Welcome to adulthood man, this is part of the whole shebang. If you wanna get anywhere in life you need to learn to cut back on your gaming. It’s a luxury leisure activity. If you wanna change careers, you might end up gaming only 5-10 hours a week. You need to learn to be okay with that. Discipline and work ethic are simply two things you can’t go without as an adult and expect not to fail in some area(s).
If you’re in a spot where you’re saying “I want to be successful at my career but I don’t want to give up gaming time and the only way to become more successful is to game less” and sincerely don’t automatically know how to handle that situation, you might need professional help for your addiction. I don’t say that in a shit talking way, addictions come in many forms and can be debilitating to making progress – if your career could improve and all it takes is cutting back on gaming and that’s legitimately hard, you probably do need help.
Allocate time appropriately by planning out a detail time table and **stick to it**.
It’s just self-control. I don’t even particularly enjoy coding (not that i hate it, it’s just something I don’t mind doing and am reasonably skilled at) but you have to have the discipline to do what needs to be done before other stuff. That won’t just apply to programming, it’s for anything you might do.
Switch to Mac. You hardly can game anymore.
I used to play after work, but then it went away on its own, I no longer have the desire as before
Hey buddy, looks like we are in same boat, I want to play stellar blade but also want to upskill and increase my package
Coding gives me a better dopamine hit than gaming does these days, so I rarely game anymore unless there’s a release that I’ve been interested in for a while 🤷♂️
I had a problem with competitive games and some mmorpg’s so i quit them all. It was not as easy as i make it sound like, but it had to be done in my case. Now i fully focus on programming.
This is a self moderation issue. I had it too. This probably transcends coding. In life, in general, you have to learn to moderate yourself and strike a balance between entertainment and responsibility. Otherwise all the attempts you make to avoid the real world through mindless distractions will fail as the things around you that are important stress you out further as you try to correct things you neglected. I’m speaking from personal experience.
Attempt to moderate first. Set an alarm for an hour or two. Play games that let you save and quit on demand (No Fallout 4 survival modes requiring you to find a bed to save). If that fails, stop cold turkey for a week. Try to moderate again. If that fails, stop for a month. Try to moderate again. You’ll figure out that balance eventually.
I was able to balance gaming and CS in college. Since graduating and getting a job I can’t stand sitting in a chair longer after work staring at a screen gaming. I don’t play video game anymore.
>I don’t wanna abandon it coz it’s part of childhood too.
What are you saying here? That gaming was a part of your childhood, so it’s nostalgic for you now?
Or that you are still IN your childhood and gaming should be a part of it??
Gaming? Lol
😂 WITH WHAT TIME!
I only game a couple times a week, with friends from college. I rarely game solo, except for the occasional simple mobile game.
Just self moderation and part of growing up.
The key word I’ve seen getting used for a while is “discipline”. While that’s true, I feel like they’ve neglected to mention that you need the motivation to go through with your plans, as well as to set a goal for yourself.
I don’t mean the cliché “I’m gonna do this to the very end” kind of goal, I’m talking about very personal goals that you won’t just forget in about a week after writing them down on paper. I mean the internalized, meaningful goal you want to chase. Only you can determine what’s worthy for yourself and what’s not.
Take me for example: moving out. I realized how badly I wanted to get away from my current life so that’s currently what’s pushing me onward. I want to work hard enough to see myself through to the point of being able to be fully independent and I’ll keep working things out from there.
Once you have that sort of drive, you’ll find that ignoring distractions becomes that much more manageable! I use the Pomodoro Technique to set a schedule for myself, and luckily there’s a handy .io website for it too. The times can be tailored as needed to suit your flow. Of course it’s not perfect; I still find myself low on energy or sidetracked at times, but I now have more focus and a genuine objective to work towards. Whenever things get rough and I’m feeling down, I can remind myself of what it is that I really want, and keep enduring onwards.
Maybe for you, the goal would be to learn all this stuff so you can understand how games work, and become even more enamored with them once you do – but that’s something for you to figure out on your own.
Wishing you the best of luck, keep chasing!
I completely stopped playing video games when I was in Undergrad. I purposely got Laptops only good enough for school. Can’t play good video games when you do everything on a Microsoft Surface 🤷♀️. I also don’t like solo queue League, so that helps I guess.
Not sure this helps but I got a membership at a coworking space. I was struggling to stay focused on coding and was easily distracted by games and other things at my apartment. For me, the simple act of removing myself from my space where I have my PC, Switch, TV w Netflix, etc, is huge as I am simply unable to fall back on those things when coding gets hard. Additionally, at the coworking space I am surrounded by other people so I can’t just doof off and watch YT videos as to some extent you’re held accountable by being in a work environment with by other people who are also working.
I tried cafes for a while but I found them distracting as well, and it was still difficult (and expensive) to hunker down for 6-8 hours and put in a full work day.
After I’ve put in a sufficient amount of work, I feel a lot more a lot more comfortable when going home and gaming. It’s worth avoiding the stress and pressure you put on yourself knowing you should be improving at code. Over time I’ve noticed that leveling up in coding is in many ways more interesting and fun than leveling up in gaming. Good luck
you become a game developer 🙂
I don’t play video games
Agreed with the addiction part from most people here, I would also argue that if you like programing as much as you like gaming then ignoring gaming for a week won’t hurt you.
Back in college I had my on/off periods in gaming, mostly focused on pushing out a new project so I can put something on my portfolio. Now with a good job I do more gaming than leveling up my skills but I am planning for another gaming hiatus to boost myself up and reach a level where I am comfortable.
As for balancing tips I’m seeing a lot of “use one system for gaming and one for work” while I do agree and those help a more cheaper option is to have two accounts on your OS one for personal use i.e. gaming and one where your number one priority is focus on work.
And don’t worry about progress, it comes and goes as it pleases, the point is that you are progressing and when you need it you will know when to use it or to retrack the steps on how to use it.
It sounds like you just need help with the addiction side of things. You need advice from people who deal with addiction, not from programmers.
You just have to start cutting back, maybe put on parental controls so that you can’t play for more than a few hours.
Or even sell or store your game systems and software until you are more confident about being in control.
TBH one of the better ways to get out of addiction is to be responsible for something, like volunteering at something or joining a club, and being responsible for going there for the given time.
Also get rid of mobile games if you have them, the worst time wasters and the games aren’t even that good.
Sometimes you have to have pain to make gains. Suffering from no games and forcing yourself to study now will make sure that you have enough time and money to actually do what you want later in life, which includes many other things than just gaming.
I personally fucked up and it wasn’t just because of games but ultimately I failed to get a degree or work that I wanted and ended up in shit jobs.
Wasn’t even able to game or do anything fun I wanted because I didn’t have time and money to invest in them.
Now I am turning things around but I wasted a lot of time. If I had forced my self back then I would probably be able to be semi-retired or working at a job I like now and doing things that I enjoy.
Keep gaming an aspect of your life, a hobby, don’t let it take over your life. This goes for pretty much everything else too.
I have a desktop gaming pc that I use for some projects. I dual boot with windows for gaming, and linux for everything else. The small barrier of rebooting is enough to make me rather do homework than game. If I know I have homework to do, I will specifically reboot my computer into linux before I go to bed or something to make the barrier to doing homework lower and the barrier to gaming higher.
This question sounds like you might have unmanaged ADHD? If so, everyone’s advice about “just be disciplined” is probably not going to work out for you until you address the underlying cause.
What’s your favorite video game? Figure out what language was used to create it, then try to learn that language. Try to make a mini version of that game. You’ll combine the best of both worlds.