All very true. Without diminishing this suggestion, though, I feel it's worth pointing out that some people can't just 'readjust their dopamine sensitivity' by changing some things in their environment. If you have chronic issues with regulating attention and they're strongly impacting you in multiple areas, seeing a professional could change your life.

Or, as is my experience with seeing professionals, it could just cost you a bunch of money.

Also true. Remember, half of all (normally-distributed) X are below average, and one in 20 are two standard deviations below the mean.

Do you have any specific type of professional to suggest?

I'd assumed from the context it was clear that I was referring to a psychiatrist.

It could also be worth talking first to a clinical psychologist. They're less about the drugs and more about the analysis, and sometimes that's able to get you working with just a 'software patch.' Sometimes, though, when you've tried everything and your brain still isn't doing the thing, medication can be absolutely lifechanging.

As the saying goes, if you can't make your own neurotransmitters, store bought is fine.

I actively disrecommend talking to a psychologist. If you suspect ADHD, the first-line treatment is getting stimulant therapy via a psychiatrist. Understanding and talking about your problem does not fix it. They've studied this, it's simply an ineffective treatment for ADHD. People go from being distracted all the time without understanding why to being distracted all the time with tools and techniques they don't actually end up using.

Stimulant therapy, on the other hand, is effective to a degree that every other mental health intervention wishes it could be. I am a relatively conscientious high performing software developer with medication, and borderline unemployable without it. Night and day difference.

Therapy and education is more appropriate for the people around the ADHD patient. Getting a sense of empathy for their situation and learning how to generate an effective context for them to operate in is incredibly valuable.

I've quit toxic competitive gaming (League of Legends, Overwatch) and replaced it with Netflix and shortwave radio listening. I'm still procrastinating because I work a bullshit job, but at least I don't rage as much and I always have some topics for small talk and conversation, which I feel is boosting my mood by a lot.

Similar but less drastic -- I traded League of Legends, Counter-Strike, and Valorant for games like Minecraft, Rust, and Valheim. I can play at my own pace, and even doing "nothing" in those games is calming and fun. I'm definitely a much less anxious and angry person because of it.

Do you know if any scientists have studied the effects of intense games on mood when not playing?

It's funny, but I feel in the opposite position. To me, computers had become associated with work-only, so much that I needed a change. I decided to assemble a new machine for fun coding and maybe some games (though I probably won't really have much time for it). starting up the new Flight Sim feels great and gives me a different perspective, after staring at a screen of e-mails and calendar and presentation slides for hours.

I did this last year and I don't regret it for a second.

I've also developed a kind of higher standard for the games that I allow to take some of my time.

Praise be to Valve, as Proton has freed me from the tyranny of Windows.

Is that due to you reducing your gaming (did you completely eliminate gaming?) or is it because the laptop gives you portability to work at different places - whether that includes cafes or different spots in your home that may have less distractions of whatever sort? Just curious about what the before/after looks like for you.

Primarily cutting off gaming –the only gaming I have left are the occasional chess games on the week-end – I haven't got much opportunity to work outside comfortably yet with lockdown. It changed my relationship to computers: sitting at my desk is now about work, and I do much more things outside of it.

I would consider selling my expensive gaming PC if whatever I replaced it with had a reasonable similar CPU. Not sure if I can get that from any type of laptop though at least not without paying more than I paid for my PC. Also I kinda need PCIe lanes.

Amusingly, I had just built myself a pretty expensive gaming PC right before selling it all, and then got myself a second-hand 2015 MBP. I'd say the newest M1 MBP are worth the money, my metric shifted from raw performance/$ to experience/$.

And honestly, I will gladly sacrifice some CPU power just to keep myself away from gaming.

I don't understand this. People who are addicted to games won't play any non-intensive games, like League of Legends (or Which is the lower spec one) or speed chess ?

For me, a big draw of gaming is being part of the zeitgeist. New game comes out, I want to try it, talk about it online, etc. Sometimes my friends get into a game extensively (like COD Warzone) and I don't want to be left behind. If I just had a laptop, it wouldn't be possible to run those games on it. And because I don't have any friends playing League of Legends or participate in online communities talking about, it's not really appealing to me.

How did you go about replacing gaming? I often game mostly out of habit but haven't found anything I'm really jazzed about to replace it

It was though, at first I simply switched to surrogate dopamine dispensers which I ended up blocking, only allowing myself access to certain hours for a limited amount of time. Overall: blocking myself from such activities turned out to work well, can't recommend it to everyone though.

I picked up new things by making an habit out of it, such as reading at least a few pages of a book every day. It's cliché, but setting medium to long-term goals also clarified what I wanted my days to be made of, so now I'm very focused on a personal startup project.

Bonus advice that may not apply to you at all: don't be surprised if relatives tries to keep you from changing your habits, or if you find yourself distancing away from friends, it's a feature of improvement not a bug.

I don't have an addiction to games, but I play a lot of them because it's how I keep in touch with my friends from across the country. At the start of COVID/WFH, I was pretty concerned that I'd become a gaming addict. The reason I didn't is one of those smart/dumb oxymorons: I've just been plugging the peripherals from my gaming tower into my work laptop. After a day of work, the absolute last thing I want to do is sit at the same desk staring at the same screen and play games. Even on the weekends, I look at the desk and get this "ugh this feels like work" feeling which has really helped with not playing games in my spare time.

This of course has two huge caveats:

1. I didn't have a gaming addiction in the first place, evidenced by the fact that I have a Nintendo Switch that gets played in short bursts, rather than constantly.

2. I work with embedded systems/hardware, so I need to have an actual workstation area to keep the tools (debugger probes, power supply, oscilloscope, etc) on. The embedded systems curse of always needing more ports has been a pretty effective anchor for keeping my workspace in the same place as my PC, and if it wasn't, then I'd probably get more "I should spend all day today playing games" desires

I ended up feeling the same thing as you. I only have the room for one desk, and so the screens/ other stuff had to be shared. After 8 plus hours in my bed room working the last thing I want to do is spend the time before I sleep there too, looking at the same screen. In the before times the urge was much more stronger.

A cheaper alternative to buying a laptop is install Linux on your existing machine, to add friction to the process. Or, buy a Mac mini.

...then you get addicted to configuring your Linux machine for gaming. Double-edged sword!

Someone commented but deleted on how they felt laptop CPUs have gotten worse in recent years, using the example of their U series cpu being slower than a much older M series cpu. Since I wrote the comment, posting it here:

The U series are "low power CPUs". They can do a lot more than they could in the past, but the H series are the actual successors to the M series. It's why the 10980HK is still the top performing of Intel's CPUs in a lot of workloads (quite significantly in some cases, we're talking 60% reductions in compile times for large C++ projects, like Chrome): https://youtu.be/pdO4u87UCYI?t=346 , and for that workload even an older 9300H handily wins against their current efficiency flagship in the 1185G7.

You are trading off a lot of power for improvements in power efficiency.

It was me! Thanks for the tip about M -> H. Sorry I deleted the comment - I wasn't 100% sure about the models (I don't have the laptops near me at the moment and I didn't want to spread misinformation).