Man this hits different because I see the same thing everywhere, not just games. People pile up hobbies, shows, books, plans until the whole thing feels like a job and the fun drains right out. My buddy did it with guitar, bought 6 pedals and 3 guitars, played less than when he just had one beat up acoustic. Less stuff, more actual doing.

40 bucks in fives is exactly how I started too. Mine was a $50 bill I broke at the gas station so I'd have small ones, and watching that stack shrink hit different than staring at my banking app. Went full envelopes for groceries after that and never looked back.

My brother in law did the same thing with YouTube last fall. He deleted the app off his phone completely and just used the browser version if he really needed it. Said the extra step of typing the address killed about 90 percent of his random scrolling. I tried that with Instagram for two weeks and it worked until I saved the website to my home screen, which put me right back where I started. Now I just keep the app on the last page of a folder inside another folder, and it is enough of a pain to find that I mostly leave it alone.