How To Stop Mindlessly Browsing The Internet

How do you stop mindlessly browsing the internet? Find out in today’s episode:

Mindlessly browsing the internet is a major problem you can experience after you quit playing video games. And this happens for a specific reason: By removing games you’ve removed one of the, if not the, major part of your life. They were a main way you spent your time and fulfilled certain needs you have.

Because gaming was a way you fulfilled certain needs you have, if you’re not intentional with how you fill that time after you quit (if you need ideas, check out 60+ New Hobby Ideas) than you will go to what you already know.

And what you knew was gaming. But now that you’ve quit you’ll go to the next most comfortable thing, which is browsing the internet – especially because it’s a “great” way to kill time.

Before I get into the three steps you can take to quit, I want you to remember that this all starts with you, and it starts with you being honest about why you want to quit gaming in the first place.

You aren’t quitting so you can sit around and be bored all day, browsing the internet. You are quitting because you want to start living your life to the fullest, and gaming is no longer giving you that sense of fulfillment that it maybe once did.

Here are the three steps you need to take to stop mindlessly browsing the internet:

1. Choose new activities.

These activities should fulfill the same needs that gaming fulfilled for you: Temporary Escape, Social, Constant Measurable Growth and Challenge.

Now I believe there are three different types of activities you want to pick, and you can learn more about those in Respawn, but one of the types is something to do at home when you’re tired and bored.

If you need ideas, check out 60+ New Hobby Ideas. It’s best if these activities are off the computer.

The key is to avoid boredom, because it’s boredom that you will use to justify sitting around browsing the internet.

2. Focus on engagement, not entertainment.

Gaming, and browsing the internet both come from a place of you wanting to be entertained. They come from a place of you wanting to be stimulated and instant gratification.

This might work in the moment but long term it’s not sustainable and it’s not giving you what you really want, which is fulfillment. Fulfillment comes from engaging with your life, it comes from you checking into it instead of checking out (with entertainment).

Think about what you really want. What are your goals? What are your dreams?

Separate your desire to be engaged from your desire to be entertained. One way to do this is to create projects to work on. This helps give you something specific to focus on, and that helps your engagement.

When you have nothing to do you will desire stimulation, and entertainment is the quickest way to fulfill this desire. But it’s not leading you to where you want to be.

3. Sit with your urges.

We all experience urges to procrastinate. This is an unavoidable occurrence in our life. There’s nothing wrong with this, but what we need to do is prepare beforehand so when this happens we know how to respond properly.

And that way is to sit with it. We don’t need to escape our urges, we can just be there with it for a minute and once it passes we can get back to what we need to be doing.

Remember, the computer is where your comfort zone is, so even after you quit it’s easy to just mindlessly browse the internet. But this isn’t leading you to where you want to be, and it’s not the reason why you quit gaming in the first place.

You have to become comfortable being uncomfortable, and to do this you need courage. Courage is developed in baby steps, but without the courage to get outside your comfort zone you’ll continue to just procrastinate on living the life you truly want to live.

So I hope that helps and if you want to develop more courage in your life, take the Game Quitters Challenge. This is a 30 day challenge I’ve designed intentionally with the latest scientific research to help you become the type of person you want to be, by developing skills in Courage, Discipline, Social Intelligence, Contribution and Tenacity.

It’s definitely my best work yet and I know you’ll get a ton of value from it. Take the challenge here.