Time Management and 40K

Posted by gbprime on 13. April 2009 13:26

Long time readers of this blog might have noticed that there are actually TWO people on the author side of this site.  To the rest of you... hello.  While Ranillon may have me out-posted by over 80 posts, and while his available time with the hobby has allowed him to surpass my armies in both quantity and quality, I have... uh... I have three kids in diapers. 

Warning... PICTURE OF KIDS ... 

Yes, life happens to every avid gamer in this genre and we find our priorities suddenly change.  A move, a killer job schedule, a busy school schedule, a new relationship, or even having kids.  All this and more can turn your gaming schedule on it's ear and leave you with precious little time to enjoy the hobby.  You either know this already or you know it's coming.  The trick is... what to do about it?

There are several key things you can do to maximize your remaining time and stay involved in the hobby.

• Personal Time - No matter what events in your life are eating away your precious free time, you have to set aside SOMETHING for yourself.  Raising 3 kids makes this tough, but if the wife and I don't reserve "me" time, we'd go mad.  Mad I tell you, mad.  I get saturday evenings to myself (which is my reserved gaming time) as well as weeknights between 10 and midnight (which is when I paint and convert minis).  Your schedule may be less demanding than this, but the principle is the same.  Set aside the time, make a routine out of it, or you'll never get anything done.
• Deadlines - I'm one of those people who works best on a deadline.  If I have two months left until that tournament, i can whip out an entire army in that time.  But without a deadline, I never seem to get anything done.  (Just ask Ranillon, he pokes fun at me for it.)  If life is taking away your time, consider setting goals and deadlines for yourself.  Give yourself so many weeks to finish that unit and schedule a game with friends to debut it in so you force yourself to paint it up on time.
• Discipline - When you're short on time, maximizing use of that time is key.  With only two hours a night of personal time, it's easy to have too many things to spend it on.  This is my biggest failing.  I lost a lot of 2008 to Neverwinter Nights 2 and Civilization 4, and that killed my productivity in the hobby.  If you're one of those gamers who can paint up one army and feel comfortable using it over and over again for years with your local crowd, then losing your time to video games or other things isn't so bad.  But the true fanatic is one who wants to expand their collection, constantly adding new squads, new vehicles, new armies.  And to do that, you need to avoid giving in to other hobbies until your army is done or until you reach the stopping point you set out to hit.
• Focus - Yes, stopping points.  You have to focus on what you're working on.  Painting up a unit of Kroot Mercenaries followed by an Orc warlord conversion followed by several test paints of High Elf Spearmen does you no good as a gamer.  Those kroot should have been followed up by an Ethereal conversion and then a newly painted Sniper Drone team.  THAT would have done you some good, and would have allowed you to field a better force.  Stay focused.  You can work on the elf army next.

With these things in mind, even a gamer with limited time such as myself can make decent contributions to his collection.  In the next month or two, I'll be focused on producing terrain for Origins.  Specifically, woods and trees for use in the Rogue Trader rounds.  Stay tuned, and see if I can practice what I preach.