Time management is a very important topic for everyone really and realization of that drops on you very hard and suddenly usually at some point in your life when adulting starts invading your daily routine.
There are already lots of time management long reads, coaches and other things to tell you how to live your life optimally, tbh I’m not very good with that myself being quite lazy, not sure if all those coaches would help me, so I’m trying to help myself. But one thing I have nailed and try to follow pretty strictly and have a bit of philosophy behind it, which might be helpful to someone or at least curious to learn a bit more about what’s in my head and when it comes to what’s in my head – prepare for a lot of text…
As you all guys know, I’m quite consistent with my streaming schedule and right now is like third time I’m taking more than one day off in a row in all my 2 years streaming “career”, which is also part of my paradigm shift in a way and might be happening more frequently when it’s really needed. But I’m still planning my day offs ahead and trying in general to be very transparent with my schedule and what’s behind it, trying to go as far as I can into future to plan and so you all can already know what to expect and when. And as you also know I’m always pretty stable with amount of hours I stream, basically my “minimum” is 8 hours stream and usually around that time I’m calling it, pretty much every time, with some exceptions of course, but that’s the norm.
So what’s behind this? Am I being that 9-to-5 kind of streamer, who’s treating it like regular work and just wants to get to the end of the day asap to get the salary once a month in form of Twitch payout with some random donos in addition? I’d say it’s yes and no in the same time. Yes, because I do treat streaming as my job and I’m very serious with everything regarding it, getting paid is also a very pleasant part of it. No, because everything else is wrong when it’s about me in particular. Main reason I have that 8 hours mark and in general measure my streams and care about hours a lot is that it’s an easy way to put it all into schedule format and plan things. When I know how long I stream I can easily plan rest of my day around it, decide when to do what on my spare time, when to wake up, when to go to bed, plan the week too, because a lot of things I need to place some time during the week, so it might be better to do groceries on the day when I have 8 hours stream not 12 obviously. I’m trying to be responsible with my sleep schedule and daily schedule for my mental and physical health mostly, because going full degenerate is not the same for me anymore as it was when I was 20. That’s the sad part of becoming a boomer, but in the same time it’s a good part, because it teaches you to be more responsible and you actually discover that’s it feels pretty damn good waking up early in the morning, going to the gym regularly and eat less trash, wish I could discover it earlier, but at least maybe my experience will help others to do so. So sometimes I actually wouldn’t mind going above that 8 hours mark and getting quite excited about games I’m playing, like right now for example I’m quite addicted to a couple that I play regularly and could easily go even longer, but I’m trying to call it just to keep my schedule consistent and avoid burnout in the same time from some particular games and streaming in general I guess, especially since this year conventions are gone so there is no way to “recharge” mentally with streaming any time soon.
What if some days you don’t feel like even 8 hours, what then? Well mostly then I still try to get to 8 hours, that is already more about consistency and maintaining routing, forming habit, because as I said, I’m a pretty damn lazy person actually, so it’s pretty easy to slide in degeneracy if I become inconsistent with my schedule, I’d potentially just start slacking more etc, so I rather force myself even when I don’t feel like it, which is actually very rare, usually even when you don’t feel too great about streaming in the beginning of the day you start it and by the end of the day you sometimes don’t even want to stop – power of chat interaction and quality games can do wonders. Never even had “sick leaves” because usually when I’m sick I still play games unless dying, although streaming has that part of talking pretty much non-stop for 8+ hours and you need to keep that in mind, because last summer I had some weird coughing not leaving me for a couple of months after being sick and I think that might be the reason, because of lack of proper rest while sick, need to keep that in mind. But also of course there are days when you just can’t stream long for different reasons, or stream at all, but I usually try to predict those and update beforehand, it’s pretty rare anyway.
That is also a reason why I’m making Saturdays not “mandatory” 12 hours stream anymore, but just long stream and rolling with amount of content I have there without pushing it to reach the plank that I put up there for myself at 12. It’s better to have line lower that limits you sometimes to not overdo, rather than setting it high and being tired and stressed when you push to reach it. So getting done with news, then playing viewer games and peacing out, usually it is still 10-11 hours easy, so not too bad, did 2 years of 12 hours stream every Saturday basically, time to optimize my schedule and make it more comfy for myself too. And currently I’m quite comfy with doing some more hours on regular days, since lockdown continues and I can give it a try while my gym and pool are closed, so I can juggle those hours a bit more freely and doing more streaming with less limitations.