Why do I spend more time on game when I am busier?

Life Out of Control

This weekday I had 3 blog analyses due on Thursday, a history test on Friday morning, a community leader application due on Friday afternoon, and a blog due before Friday midnight. So with so many works waiting for me, I chose to play League of Legends, a computer game, on Wednesday evening until 9 pm.

As a student who cares about his grade, I find it a mystery that I almost screwed my academic life by indulging myself in meaningless battle on Internet. Actually, this was not my first time to do such ridiculous thing. I decided to find out what happened to me on the Wednesday night.


Brain under stress

I first tried to understand why I did it by recalling the night on Wednesday. I just finished my dinner and was so full. Siting on my chair in front of the desk and staring on the history textbook, I suddenly felt the revulsion to read it and wanted to do something else. Being so ambivalent, my mind was finally blown up by the contradiction and decided to give up thinking to do whatever I want. Then I chose to play computer game.

An article on Time.com about decision making argues that “It's counterintuitive, but under stress we tend to focus more on the rewards than on the risks of any decision”. An experiment referred in this article was designed to study the impact of stress on decision making by stimulating similar situation. 


Researchers found out that males are more inclined to take risk and make a faster decision, while females always react oppositely and make decision more slowly. Now I know that I played game because I am so stressful that my brain chose the most favorable one and refused to consider the consequence of the choice.

Time to Hack the Mind

However, instead of blaming the mechanism of brain evolved from ancient time, I want to figure out some ways to counter it. So here comes a problem: How? There are a lot of suggestions online about how to make tough decision under pressure. Here is one that I found on Forbes.com:

1.      First, Frame The Question (by asking 4 questions)

2.      Find Your Answers

3.      Evaluate Your Answers And/Or Decisions

4.      Apply Your Decision

Actually, this does not work for me, since I could not even finish step 1 before I quitted. I found a much more helpful suggestion from a Chinese question-and-answer website called Zhihu in which the most voted answer points out that when you choose to play game, you don’t really need it, since playing game will only make you more exhausted. 


On the other hand, it recommends that “do not blame yourself for being self-indulgent.” Seemingly counterintuitive, it is based on the truth that people have limited energy and willpower. Instead of solving the problem, blaming yourself and feeling guilty, indeed, increase your stress and therefore the possibility of failing next time. The ultimate solution is to love yourself, which means to admit your limitation as a human being and to forgive yourself. Make sure this does not mean to indulge yourself, and you should follow your own principles.

Additionally, when I am hungry and tired, I don’t want to study any more. So before you are about to tackle your paper or test, make sure you have enough energy to go through the hell.


Stop blaming. Love yourself. Eat enough. Sleep enough. Enjoy hacking your brain.