Yayda Azərbaycan filmlərinə baxmağa qərara gəldim. Kim istəsə marafona qoşula bilər. Bu günkü film - “O olmasın, bu olsun”. Bundan əvvəlki “Bir qalanın sirri” filminə aşağı xal (3/10) versəm də, bu film həqiqətən yaxşı idi və açığı 1957-ci ilin Azərbaycan filminə güləcəyimi düşünməzdim. 6/10
Hey. I want to talk about my "8-hour strategy"—or generally, the "time strategy"—which I used until a few months ago, stopped, and recently started using again. It has been truly effective in helping me overcome my porn addiction. More precisely, I am trying to understand why this strategy actually works. I hope Dr. K sees this post.
Let’s go back a few months into the past. As I mentioned, I have a porn addiction, though it isn't extremely severe. A few months ago, I wanted to get rid of this addiction, just like always. However, I simply couldn’t give my brain a valid reason to stop. Until then, I had watched countless videos, read articles, and read books about porn addiction. I knew everything: the harms of porn, the triggers of addiction, how to cope with it, etc. I knew it all, but I couldn't present a solid reason to my brain to quit. My brain would constantly say, "Okay, you say let's quit, but why? How harmful can it really be to look at a screen and masturbate for 2-3 hours now and then? Why should I stop?"
It sounds like a joke, right? In reality, I knew very well how harmful porn was, and I truly wanted to quit. I was unhappy, wasting my time, my dopamine system was badly affected, and I was aware of all the other harms of porn that I am too lazy to list here. Yet, I still lacked that one reason that would make me say, "Okay, this is where it ends, I'm quitting." Then one day, I told myself: to quit an addiction, we must have a reason that we genuinely care about, that we are aware of, and that is worth sacrificing this addiction for. Yes, I had many reasons to quit porn, but because they either weren't causing active, visible harm to me at the moment, or because I wasn't fully aware of that harm, I couldn't quit. So, what is the thing that I actually care about, value, and would quit porn for? I thought and thought, and bingo! Time.
What am I talking about? I had changed my life for the better a long time ago. Instead of sleeping late, waking up late, and sleeping for hours, I was now sleeping early, waking up early, and getting roughly 7.5 to 8 hours of sleep. I had quit my social media addiction, and I was spending next to no time on gaming anyway. The motivation behind all of this was to not waste my life and to make good use of my limited time. So, I said to myself, "Okay, the thing I value is time. So let's try to beat my porn addiction from this perspective." I did a calculation and saw that I was spending about 8 hours every week on porn. I said, "Okay, now we will move forward along this path." At that time, I was tracking my habits in a physical notebook. I opened a new section in my notebook. I would place a checkbox at the end of every week and check it off when the week was complete. This meant I hadn't watched porn that week. And do you know what happened? Surprisingly, this strategy worked. I went 100+ days without watching porn, and during this period, I experienced urges at most twice.
If you ask what happened next, at some point, I stopped tracking. Because I felt I had already beaten my addiction and didn't care that much about keeping track of it anymore. I told myself, "What's going to happen, am I going to track that I saved 8 hours every week until I die?" and in short, I stopped. Then—I don't remember exactly whether it was a few days or 1-2 weeks later—I relapsed. It was nighttime, and I hadn't slept. Urges were hitting harder during that period, and I couldn't resist, so I relapsed. I didn't understand why it happened. Did I lose my awareness? Was I not masturbating enough? (At that time, I held a belief that I should only masturbate once a week, but later I learned this was unnecessary and that masturbating whenever you want isn't harmful as long as it doesn't go to extremes). Or did it happen because I broke my 8-hour strategy?
Anyway, 2-3 months passed. Finally, about a week ago, I thought about using this strategy again. This time, I am tracking my habits in an app called Streaks instead of a notebook. I created a weekly task like this, and by marking the task as completed every Sunday, I show that I didn't watch porn this week and that I gained +8 hours. The little star below shows the streak; since it is 1 star, it means I haven't watched for 1 week and have gained one +8 hours.
And as you can see, it worked again... This is the main purpose of this post. I don't fully understand why this strategy works. Do you know why? Because I don't even actively think about it or care about it. Meaning, I don't constantly think things like, "Oh, I saved this many hours today," or "Wow, I didn't watch porn this week either." I don't even say, "I gained 8 hours this week, so I will spend these 8 hours on these productive activities." In fact, I don't care at all (I mean, sure, knowing that I save 8 hours every week is a good feeling, and that’s already the purpose of the strategy anyway); I just live my life normally. I even used to have a rule about not using my phone in bed. Because my brain had probably encoded my bed as a comfort zone, and when I used my phone there, it became much easier to watch porn and violate my social media rules. Since implementing the 8-hour rule, even though I haven't followed this bed rule at all, I still haven't fallen back into porn. This surprises me even more: why is this strategy so effective? Was the main reason for my relapse after 100+ days a few months ago really just the fact that I abandoned this strategy? Maybe my brain gained a subconscious awareness, and even if it doesn't actively care, being inside a structured process keeps it away from breaking that process. I don't know, and I wanted to post this to ask about it. Can people who truly understand the human brain and psychology share their thoughts?
Also, I have these thoughts inside me like, "Am I going to keep doing this strategy forever?" Yes, there is no real issue; this strategy is basically just marking a task completed every week and getting it over with. But maybe my brain is playing games with me to make me abandon this strategy, lol.
By the way, let me also state that while this strategy is effective for me, it might not work for everyone. Not everyone values time the same way. On top of that, my lifestyle is generally orderly and disciplined. I am someone who wakes up early in the morning, reads books, uses social media limitedly, and has no gaming addiction. So, maybe these factors also had an impact on my process. A person who has many addictions and lacks this kind of lifestyle probably wouldn't benefit from the 8-hour rule, because they wouldn't have productive activities to spend those saved hours on anyway.
Thank you to everyone who read this far.
P.S. I don't want you to confuse this strategy with counting days. This is definitely not counting days, and I hate counting days in addictions.
Çox bahadılar aq
I watched Coherence recently, but I watched Primer a while ago.
What confuses me is that my reaction to Coherence was very similar to my reaction to Primer. Both films felt equally clever, engaging, and memorable to me.
The reason I’m asking is that with Primer, my opinion seems to be much closer to the consensus. A lot of people rate it very highly, and even YMS gave it a 10/10. With Coherence, however, YMS gave it a 6/10, and most people seem to rate it somewhere around a 7 or 8.
I understand that different people value different things in movies, and I’m not saying everyone should rate Coherence as highly as I do. I’m just trying to understand what I’m missing.
For those who think Primer is clearly the stronger film, what specifically makes Coherence weaker? Is it the characters, dialogue, acting, internal logic, screenplay, or something else?
From my perspective, both films left me with a very similar level of admiration, so I’m curious why the gap in reception is so large. What are the main criticisms of Coherence that prevent people from rating it as highly as Primer?
Bakıda eləsi kitabxanalar varmı ki, gedib kitab götürək və deyək ki, 1 ay sora gətirib qaytaraq ya da vaxtını təzələdək? İngiliscə oxumaq istədiyim nə qədər kitab var amma ingiliscə kitablar baha olurlar və hamısına pul çatdırmaq çətindi. Belə baxıram xaricdə insanlar gedib götürürlər istədikləri kimi oxuyub müddətin sonunda da gətirib qaytarırlar. Plusdaki yox yoxdu hər cür kitab var. Universitetimizin kitabxanasında bunu edə bilirik amma zəngin kitabxana deyil və xarici ədəbiyyat demək olar çox zəifdi. Olanlar da heçkəsin oxumadığı rus dilində kitablardı
This morning I noticed that one of my accounts got the Instagram Plus. Honestly, there’s not a single feature that feels substantial, meaningful, or worth paying for. It seems more like they designed the features for attention-seeking, insecure teenagers trying to act mysterious xd
I am much more focused when my phone is not with me. However, in this case, I miss out on important notifications. If I leave the phone aside with the notification sound turned on, there is a high risk of losing my focus again once I pick it up. Is there a lightweight, secure, and open-source application that allows me to see my phone notifications on my computer? Being lightweight is crucial because I don't want to put an extra load on my PC just to see notifications. Even if all notifications aren't possible, I would at least like to see my WhatsApp notifications. I am aware that this is possible via WhatsApp Web or the Windows app, but as I mentioned, I am looking for something much faster and more lightweight.
