I am starting my next school semester so this post is two-fold: a disclaimer for when I get stupid busy writing a ton of content for school stuff as well as a blog about time management. See what I did there? ;-)
Life is one huge balancing act. We have 24 hours per day to use which, considering the majority of adults spend 16 hours of that between sleep and work, only leaves 8 more hours to spend on other stuff…like eating and driving and gaming. If you have kids you have to spread your time out to include their needs as well. Most of us need 6 to 8 hours of sleep and have no choice about working, so that means the other 8 hours of our day are very precious to us. We find ways to work our schedule out to meet the needs of both our bodies and our sanity. For most of us that means prioritizing our gaming time to fit what we find acceptable.
Previously I wrote about how being a raider requires a time investment, this time investment is how much time you are willing to spend in game doing things besides raiding, in order to be able to raid. If you are a casual player, perhaps this isn’t as important, as you can play on your own terms the majority of the time. However as the guild leader and one of the main healers in our guild, I have a commitment to be online most nights of the week. This means that I have to prioritize the time I spend in game to get all of the things I need to finish done, as well as help others and take care of my guild commitments (including the guild site and facebook group).
How I deal with this, is a priority system. In game, I decide ahead of time what day I will do my farming I need to do in order to be ready to raid..usually it is Saturday mornings (even when I’m not taking classes) as that’s a quiet part of the day. On non-raid nights I do things that I find fun or things I need to do that aren’t vital to raiding (like leveling professions on alternate characters). But most importantly I prioritize Health, Family and School above those things. I’ve bowed out of raid time to finish an exam or paper that needed to be turned in at midnight, even if it meant I missed a night of progression raiding.
Now that I’m going to school full time again, I’ve also already planned out a couple blog posts that can be put into the calendar if I’m super busy with school. What things do you do to ensure you have time to do all the things?
Pretty much what you do. I plan ahead of time what need to be done regarding school and family. Since I not working right now, I have day times in which to study for my national licensure exam for nursing so my state board will grant me a license. Along with that, I am still in school, but this time, it is for Registered Nursing. The professional transitions course is way more in depth than my LPN school was. Add to that the ridiculous quizzes we have to do for it every week, and it’s crazy.
Adding even more, I have to take a dosage calculations class starting tomorrow for a month. I have to make a 90 or better on the final, and I get two chances to pass. If I don’t pass, it’s an automatic failure for the entire thing. The reasons why I have to do this are easily understandable. One miscalculation and I could kill someone.
As far as gaming goes, I play 2 characters. I play my hunter on wow, and I play my republic trooper on swtor. I actually have 4 characters on wow, but I don’t have time to play them all.
It is a huge balancing act. If anyone is like me, our precious time does not like to be wasted. When people waste it, I tend to get a little pissy. I try to plan it all in advance so everyone knows what is going on.