How to organize my gaming time?

Question

I see all kinds of people (including some of my friends) that simply don't know when to stop playing (for instance, wake up, play WoW, eat , play WoW, eat, play WoW , sleep). Lather, Rinse, Repeat.

I realized that myself spend way to much time on games.

Thus, I'm interested in what are some good ways to organize your time while playing games so this doesn't become a problem for you. There are a lot of more important things (clearly), but after you start playing it gets like: "one more level" or "let me just check that", and it gets on and on and you start wasting a lot of time, and then you realize how much time you lost.

The problem is this gets in the way of many other more important things.

Answer 1

What I consider important in this matter is:

• Try to reduce peer pressure / obligations to other gamers as much as possible. Play with friends instead of joining a clan.
• Try to compete locally instead of globally. Try to beat your brother / friend in some game instead of #1 in world rankings.
• Try to say no. If someone asks you to help him (in an instance) and you don't feel like it or have something to do, just say no. Don't feel ashamed.
• Make fun your focus instead of reaching some arbitrary goal like getting a specific item.
• Stop watching / following pro gamers all the time. Watching replays or streams takes a lot of time.
• Choose social games where you can hang out with your friends while playing and there are huge downtimes where you can talk. Sport games like FIFA, NBA or Football or fighting games like Street Fighter are better than WoW or Starcraft.

If you still want to play competitively:

• Focus on one aspect of the game. e.g.: Starcraft: Instead of playing all races, pick only one and stick to it. Instead of learning all build orders, pick one and try to make it work. Depth beats breath in games.
• Try to optimize your time. Get things done instead hanging around.
• Try to learn the required skill sets (combos, shortcuts build orders, micro, macro etc.) in isolation. e.g.: Starcraft learn all shortcuts and units before you play. Learn a build order against a computer before you play online etc.

Answer 2

I am not a gamer myself, but when I focus really hard on something, it is easy to lose track of time. It is not that I want or have planned to spend all that time, it just happens since I don't look at the clock.

Since you want to cut down on your gaming, you are aware of the situation. In that case, I guess the most simple solution would be to use a timer/alarm (use your mobile phone or what have you). Decide before your start to play how much time you want to spend and set the timer accordingly. When the alarm rings, stop playing immediately. "You snooze, you lose..." - the same way it is easy to turn off the morning alarm and then oversleep, it is easy to turn off the gaming alarm and then immediately loose track of time again, ending up spending an extra unplanned hour. Be disciplined!

Answer 3

The first thing to do is to start keeping a log of your time spent gaming. Do it for a week or a month. Also side by side keep noting the things that you missed out on due to your addictive gaming binges. This will help you get a big picture of the things you are missing out on while gaming.

Once this is done, don't stop gaming immediately. From your normal gaming routine, try to shave off hours. Like lets say you play around 6 hours in a day: shave off an hour every week, till you reach like an hour or two in a day.

Now start doing other things with those extra free hours, and also note the things that you are doing. You will eventually realize the benefits of dedicating more hours to other activities.

Answer 4

One thing that I find helps me govern my time is to set the computer to automagically attempt to shut down at a certain time. You can also set alarms or timers on your cell phone or something else. My computer's upstairs and if I was to set an alarm on the oven downstairs when it went off it would force me to get across the house to shut it off. Once I've done that I'm probably dead in whatever game I'm playing :)

Answer 5

The key question is to ask yourself why you are playing in the first place.

I think that spending 30 minutes per day on Anki gives you most of the rewards that playing farmville does. Both are very monotone processes. In both cases you get a sense of accomplishment when you are finished with your daily load.

Anki however makes you feel like you did something productive.

Dual-n-Back would be a game that you can play where nobody gets addicted and at the same time the player get real life benefits.

In the case you don't want to quit immediately get RescueTime to know how much time you are actually playing.