Anxiety and video games🎮🎯
How a video game solved my anxiety equation
February 2, 2025
Productive procrastination📚
You sit down on your desk, as usual, to revise and get some shit done. But as everyone knows, distractions bubble up during the first, like 10 minutes while you’re trying to get into the work. But this time, the distraction itself feels productive.
“What if I don’t get into my choice of university? I better look for alternative options and scholarship programs at once!” So you open up ChatGPT and ask it a shitty question, which seems like you’re setting yourself up for something amazing, but, from a bird’s eye view, you are procrastinating on those numericals because of anxiety about the future.
Then you look at the university program, getting angsty about the course content while simultaneously demeaning your current level by comparing it to high-level stuff. The rabbit hole just opened! You open YouTube, and, well, an hour is wasted on just engaging with anxious yet “productive” thoughts.
Productive procrastination is arguably worse than deliberate procrastination because one actually thinks they got stuff done during that time when they really didn’t. At least when one procrastinates without the productive element, they know that they haven’t gotten anything done, which allows for them to learn. Productive procrastination, by definition, feels productive but is paradoxically the cocktail to not get the shit done. You’re just doing the 1% of useful tasks while sacrificing the 99% of the absolutely useful tasks.
The funny part in the above illustration is that you literally were avoiding the things that would get you into a top school. Putting in the work diligently, that is.
The solution is video games🎮
What I mean by the solution being video games is not playing the game itself, but to apply the fundamental logic of one in order to stop this anxiety-driven productive procrastination. I’m going to take the game that I was an addict of called Clash Royale.
The main objective of it is to play battles and climb up the ranks, or “arenas” in the game. In the battle, you place the character cards in a strategic way and destroy enemy towers using your cards and strategy. Losing a battle would force you to think about your strategy and apply a better one. When battles are won, you would receive coins from which you could upgrade your cards and unlock more cards and tougher opponents.
You would focus on the types of players that you would face in your current arena and not worry about the legendary arenas waiting to be unlocked once you reach them. Upgrading your cards, playing with the ones you are dealt with, and getting better at the battles was the core objective of the game. This same logic can be applied to beat anxiety-driven procrastination in the ass.
Why are you worried about the level you have not reached yet right now? I know preparation is needed, but anxioously searching for answers on the web and just fearing high-level stuff is not preparation.
True preparation for the future is the rigor for the work at present. Of course, the present work should be something that your future self would thank you for.