The first clicker games I played were very simple ones, found on websites like Kongregate or Newgrounds, and I never played them for large periods of time. This was when I was younger, maybe in middle school. Once I hit high school, I discovered the game called Cookie Clicker.

Cookie clicker is a very odd game. It's made of patiently waiting for the various means of producing cookies to eventually bump you up to the number that you need to grab a new upgrade or to buy some more ways of producing cookies.

And if you're not careful, cookie clicker can really consume your life. You'll spend tons of time working on it and not writing that paper or reading that book for class. I speak from experience.

But don't worry, I overcame my problems with cookie clicker not by quitting the game altogether, but bringing it into my study schedule.

Instead of just working on something for three hours straight, I would work for thirty minutes, check on my cookies and do whatever I could there, and then I would move on to the next thing I wanted to do. This continued until I eventually dropped the game because it just didn't interest me anymore. Or maybe I had gathered up all the achievements that were physically possible. There are some that require you to hack the game to get, and I didn't ever feel like attempting to break the game.

But this is how I deal with clicker games now. I have a couple on my phone, one about cats and one involving dragons, and while they both have no achievements or real purpose for clicking on things or buying upgrades, I use them as breaks from working on homework, or just to fill the few minutes I have before I start class.

In a way, these games are helping me stay focused on the things I need to be focused on instead of distracting from the important things in life. They're just another way for me to alleviate the stress and pressure of being a student/adult/functioning person in the real world.