Work Life WoW Balance
There is an organizational concept which is becoming quite common in workplaces these days – work life balance.
This has been on my mind a fair bit lately because while it is a noble concept, the reality is usually quite different.
Now when you add in something like WoW to the mix, the balance can be very difficult to achieve.
I remember doing an exercise once where you work out what is important to you, then work out where you are really spending your time, then work out where you will spend you time in future.
So let’s give it a go.
My basic physical Work Life WoW balance.
OK, so basic breakdown. I spend about 40/57/3 work/life/WoW. I would like it to be less work and more play, but I have to pay the bills and work is demanding at the moment. Remember that a lot of my life time is spent sleeping – a waste of my life time but unfortunately necessary.
My mental work life balance.
20/20/60 work/life/WoW.
Ok, this seems a bit unbalanced.
I am probably spending too much time thinking about WoW at work. More focus on work might mean less time at work!
Definitely not enough time spent on life, once again WoW is cutting into my family life – wife, child, even bills not getting the time they deserve.
60% of my time thinking about WoW, yes even when sleeping!
My life priorities.
Number 1 & 2 are my Wife and Son. I am (want) going to give them 35% each, for a total of 70% time-slice of my life.
I will give 10% to my work…. Ohh this isn’t a reality, but ideally I would devote most of my life to my family (and other pleasurable pursuits).
That leaves me with 20% of my time… well that I want to devote to WoW.. about 3 hours per day.. unrealistic play time, but I guess mental + play time combined, that would be OK.
So what have I learnt?
I guess this is where this blog entry ties into last weeks Casuals, Players and Raiders BA topic.
You see, if you were to look at my play time (average 7 hours per week), you would undoubtedly say that I am a casual player.
However if you look at the mental energy that I put into WoW, you would generously call me hardcore, but more sensibly a mental obsessed player (who needs to get some help).
So what am I going to do about it?
My plan.
I intend to rearrange my priorities, put my Wife and Son in number 1 position, followed by work. If I give these things the attention they deserve, then my physical WoW time will likely increase.
Meanwhile my WoW time is going to decrease.
A bit of this will be physical. I have already arranged with my wife that 1 in every 4 weeks I wont play on a Friday night (I am usually a mess on Saturday – which detracts from my family time).
The bigger changes will come through less mental energy on WoW, which includes this blog.
No I am not going to stop blogging, but I think I am going to relax the pace. A good post every 2-3 days will be better than frazzled posts every day (and better than no posts ever again).
Likewise, I think that my feedreader is going to get a pruning. This is going to be hard, there are so many quality blogs that I have been following. I don’t know how I am going to choose…
Gnomer and Out!
As you will probably remember i went through a similar realisation previously when i was trying to finish painting my house for sale.
I tried cutting down the amount of hours i played. For me this didn’t work. when i was tired or stressed i would procrastinate and play a little wow. Soon a quick log on to check AH became a mat farming session.
For me the answer to stop thinking about the next thing i needed to get, was to just quit playing. It worked for me.
Now i’m back and as bad as ever, but i don’t have any major things on i need to get done in my RL.
That said I wouldn’t be surprised if I stopped again. A 12 month break was great.
Good luck with finding the balance. congrats on realising whats important. I hope it works, however having given up cold turkey I think alot can be said for this technique.
Just don’t do what i did and become a TV slob
Before I decided against using the terms hardcore and casual since they’re kind of meaningless, I thought a bit about you as an example. Playing just one night a week you could call Gnome very casual. But considering the energy and time and skill and knowledge you put into your blog you’re definitly as obsessed with the game as me – or worse. Hardcore that is. If you’re using those terms. Wow can definitly be played a lot outside of the game. In the head.
I’m really glad you intend to keep blogging. 2-3 posts will keep me a bit starved for Gnome posts, but it’s definitly better than nothing. And on the bright side: a bit of apetite really makes the food taste even better. We will really be looking forward to your posts whenever they come.
I always wondered about your blogreader – how you could handle it. The other day I finally made myself to try a blogreader. So far I’ve only got three blogs in it. You’re one of those, of course…. But so far I haven’t understood why I should use it. I want to read Gnome’s posts. I visit Gnomes blog to do that. Why on earth use a filter in between? Not necessary.
Enough of ramblings. Glad you’re still with us and good luck on your future balancing act. Finding balance in life is never easy and you really never get done with it.
I have hugely scaled back my wow-time in the last month or so because it was just eating away at my time for normal things. I’ve let my blog slide, but at least I’m still enjoying the game, and I’m putting a lot more energy into my family in comparison to what I was before.
Good luck! I’m sure you’ll do a better balancing act than I was able to!
The fact that you are aware of your current situation and want to chance it goes to show (in my eyes) that you’ll succeed with what you have set out to do
As stated above, we’ll hunger for your posts, but I’d rather read one post per week from you knowing that you’re content with your family situation, then reading two posts a day not knowing where you might be next week.
Best of luck to you Gnomer!
lol Larisa has already caught me out.. 2nd post today (written a few days ago though).. and yes there is one coming tomorrow… but I wont promise one the day after…
But yeah, I am feeling better for just thinking it through… if work settles, and I get home a bit more under control, then there will be more posts… but with India looming in less that 2 months, priorities must shift.
I like how you broke down your WoW time. Even when I was playing casual hours of WoW per week (which has most of the time since I met my wife), the actual amount of time I spent thinking about WoW, especially at work, was much larger.
Even the times when my account was inactive, I would still continue to visit the blog sites (usually from work) to get my little “WoW-fix” if you can call it that.
It really does help getting into a single player game. One that doesn’t involve looking stuff up on the internet.
I find doing that has helped ween me off spending time thinking about WoW while my account is inactive. I don’t spend more time researching that single player game. Instead I just spend more time productively (when I’m not gaming).
My current single player game is Spore. Prior to that it was half-life 2.
Needless to say my charts are gross exaggerations, verging on figments of my imagination, but I think still reflect the WoW-oriented thought processes that do (or at least have in the past) consumed me.
@ Dave: Yeah I am lucky this holiday has come up. I needed a break from work, and it falls in nicely with a break from WoW. I give you permission to take another 2 months off.. starting Nov 13th. (After all, I am the one that dragged you into this addiction called WoW both the 1st time, and on your return)
@ Larisa: It may be 2 post, it may be 5 posts. Turns out this week the posts are flowing freely… no effort = might as well post.
Re: blog reader. I follow a lot of blogs, the problem I found was that visiting each site to find either:
a) No new posts
b) No posts of interest
This was hard going. As Matticus said last week about your site, the posts he likes are the non-Mage ones. The same thing goes for me. Even with World of Matticus, the priest or healing ones normally have me catching up on much needed sleep. The other general posts gain my rapt attention.
Thus it is with other blogs, and the reason I like the feedreader. I can skim each post. If it isn’t relevant, it is already marked as read. If it is relevant, then it either gets my full attention, or is marked as unread for my return.
Worst part is that there is a fair bit of duplication between wowbloggers.com and individual feeds I subscribe to (but the individual feeds have full posts)
@ Softi: Yeah, it’s the balancing act. I am sure I will be happy if I post nothing… I will still get visits (for a while anyway) from those Warlock twinkers.. so I will still feel loved
@ Aendi: I will keep you hungry… but not starving, at least over the next couple of months. I doubt I will be blogging from India though, so there is going to be a famine for a while.
@ FaceRoll: Yeah a single player game might change my “obsession”. But after playing on Friday night by myself, it really reinforced the fact that i play WoW to be with my mates… without my mates it’s pointless grinding
[...] on the other hand, get to relax, put my plan in action, and look forward to the Wedding I will be attending on arrival in India. I mean picked [...]
Excellent write up. Having a family and a full time job definitely presents a challenge when faced with managing one’s time in a way that benefits everyone.
Moving my blog from self-hosted to WordPress-hosted, although perceived to be a step backwards by some, helped me better manage my time “not playing but thinking about WoW.”
And I definitely have noticed Softi’s absence!
[...] Gnomeaggeddon was talking about real life and WoW balance, and at the time I read his post, I fully agreed: I spend a lot of my time thinking about WoW. But the way things are looking right now, I am so preoccupied with work and studies, that there actually is no time left for me to even think about WoW. [...]