The Task Reward System

For a long time now, I had always thought that addiction was only a habit towards something bad. I know addiction itself is a negative word but I realized that people could also get addicted to things that are not morally bad.

I don't know if to call that a positive addiction but its still addiction anyways. People can have a habit of doing a particular thing but I still feel that doing something good always and at the wrong time is still an addiction

For some time now I have been addicted to watching kdramas, it started like a mere fun but in the long run I was so into it that I wouldn't want to stop watching till I'm done with it the entire episodes and seasons.

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I would keep track of every new kdrama that comes out. In fact my friends knew me to be a lover of kdrama. I didn't know what really caught my interest in it but I really enjoyed watching them. It was so bad that most times I would stay awake all night to make sure that I watch all the episodes.

I got so used to it that even during exams period I would still be downloading them, I would always watch and read or most times I would always finish the entire episodes before studying.
This addiction was getting dangerous, I knew that what I was doing was not right but I couldn't stop myself from doing it either.

I would be writing my first professional exams in some month time not far from today. Each time I would want to study I would give myself intermittent break of five minutes for every 30mins that I read and guess what I would use that 5mins for? To watch kdrama and most times I would end up spending more than the 5 minutes that I was supposed to.

One day I wanted studying but I ended up watching movies the entire time. After watching I felt so dissatisfied in me, I was so very angry with myself but my anger wasn't going to solve anything.

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I decided to punish myself by not downloading any of them anymore, after two days, I still downloaded it, I just couldn't control.

At this point I knew I needed help, so I watched a video of one man on YouTube talking about how we could gradually get rid of bad habits. He said something that was very striking and I can still remember till now.

He said, “if your habit is not a morally wrong thing, if it's maybe a hobby but turns out to be an addiction, you could make it be your act of reward after accomplishing things.”

That was just the word I needed to get me going, I said to myself, so I can actually keep it as a reward system. That was how I started, I said to myself, “So I would be doing a task reward system, I would choose topics to finish up in a week and if I'm able to finish them in a week, I can now download maximum of three episodes of kdramas and that would be my reward for successfully completing my task.”

I repeated that for like one month and that was how the whole narrative changed and now I can stay a whole week, months without feeling like watching it the way I used to watch them before but I only get to do them after accomplishing a task.

So the task reward system is what helped me out. I am so very glad I discovered what save me right on time.

Thank you everyone for reading, I love and I care.

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