Stewie's Favorite Time Sink: Candy Crush
This is part of my How to Stop Procrastinating series.
Hey, friends!
Can I make a confession? I love the mobile game Candy Crush. The recipe is perfect: puzzle-solving, short feedback loops, and tiny rewards all serve to keep me hooked. For hours. Every time I get a match, every time I see the animations and hear the sounds, my brain gets a dopamine hit. Every time I complete a level, I feel a sense of accomplishment as I waste hours of my day and days of my life.
Candy Crush is a massive time sink. When installed on my phone, it guarantees that I will procrastinate. Every time. Who chooses to work on a difficult project or have a difficult conversation when such a wonderful diversion sits in your pocket, begging you to play?
Five times I’ve downloaded this game. Five times I’ve ignored my work, my family, my reading goals. And five times I’ve deleted it.
My desire to play Candy Crush, months later, still hovers at a 2 (on a 1–10 scale). I doubt the desire will ever diminish.
But here’s the interesting part: If I started playing it, my desire to keep playing would skyrocket to a 7. Unlike guzzling a glass of cold water, where my thirst is quenched after 10oz, playing just one round of this stupid game increases my desire to play more. Put another way, playing for one minute and then stopping requires more willpower than abstaining. It’s almost as if someone engineered this to be addictive.
(Sidenote: I have the same problem with sweets and potato chips—one bite increases my desire to eat more.)
Candy crush is, in short, bad for me. Modern society preaches, “There are no bad things—just use moderation!” Such nonsense. Some things are bad for me because they require more willpower to stop than to abstain from. Some things are bad for me because they guarantee procrastination.
We all have our own personal How to Waste Time and Feel Bad Afterward cookbook. For me, Candy Crush is on page one.
None of this should be surprising; my family has a history of addiction. So I keep Candy Crush (and Blossom Blast (and a dozen other games)) off my phone. This one decision decreases procrastination and preserves willpower. Win-win! (Honestly, success in life often just depends on avoiding the really stupid stuff.)
But that’s me.
What about you? What are your time sinks? Reflect on the last week—what devoured your time? Browsing social media? Binge-watching shows? Window-shopping online? Or something else?
Growing up, my family preached “moderation in all things.” But now I know better: Some things should be avoided altogether. It’s up to us to figure out what those things are. And eliminate them.
Read more on How to Stop Procrastinating.
Thanks to Brynn for reading a draft of this!
I agree that some things should be avoided entirely. I heard a good point about snack food. Where it's likely too extreme to avoid it all together, but instead just don't buy it and bring it home. Only consume it at the restaurant or when out. That way you separate the consumption from your house where it is too easy to eat the snacks.