While gaming is a relaxing activity it is also building crucial skills within most. The following gaming habits can certainly help to improve your life.
How Gaming Habits Can Help Improve Your Life
Video games are often seen as a source of entertainment and leisure. While this is undoubtedly true, gaming can also foster several habits that have a positive impact on our daily lives. Keep reading to discover how gaming can be a valuable tool for developing essential life skills, such as time management, prioritizing tasks, and planning ahead.
- Time Management
Effective time management is a skill that many gamer players develop as they balance their gaming activities with other responsibilities. Not only are most games able to assist with this, but there are also time management games that aim to do this as the game objective. Some time management skills that are developed when gaming include:
- Set Time Limits: In most games, you have a very limited amount of time to complete various objectives, missions, or finish levels. This encourages players to allocate their time wisely in order to achieve these objectives. This helps teach them to set time limits for tasks in everyday real-life situations.
- Learning to Schedules: Competitive and online games will often have set schedules that are adhered to for tournaments and in-game events. Gamers who participate in these events learn to plan their time effectively and to be available when these events happen. This translates to planning and prioritizing real-life events as well, so balance can be achieved.
- Prioritizing Tasks
Prioritizing tasks is a crucial skill in both gaming and daily life. To advance in gameplay, knowing which tasks or objectives are most important is necessary, whether you’re playing an MMO or spinning the reels of an online pokies game. The following skills are learned within the gaming environment:
- Quest Objectives: In RPGs (role-playing games), players are presented with numerous quests and objectives. To progress, you must prioritize which tasks to tackle first based on their importance and rank of the rewards offered. Resource management falls under this too, choosing what to save for later and what to use now. In real life, this can assist with decision-making skills and prioritizing home and other commitments.
- Multiplayer Coordination: In team-based games, players need to work together on assigned tasks in order to up their chances of success. This experience can enhance teamwork and delegation skills in real-life scenarios and assist gamers in becoming good mediators and strategists.
- Planning Ahead
The ability to plan ahead is a valuable skill that can be cultivated through online gaming. After all, modern life is a series of challenges to be met which require pre-planning (i.e.: route to work, what to do on weekends, etc.). Gaming helps this by building:
- Strategic Thinking: Many games require strategic planning to outwit opponents or solve puzzles. This type of critical thinking translates into better problem-solving abilities in everyday life.
- Adaptability: Games are usually packed full of unexpected challenges. Gamers learn to adapt their strategies and plans when confronted with unforeseen obstacles. This helps in fostering flexibility in real-life situations and can lead to better ‘thinking on your feet’ skills.
While the prevalent stereotype is that most gamers are timewasters, the opposite is almost always true. Gamers tend to tap into valuable skill sets earlier than peers using simulated online activities to teach them necessary management skills for life. These ingrained habits learned from gaming can positively impact daily life, making gamers more efficient and organized individuals overall.