1. A Little Backstory:



I stopped playing Starcraft last year. Life is complicated, so naturally many factors were involved in my departure from the game. Here are, in my opinion, the key reasons I stepped away from the scene and put down my mouse and keyboard:

I had been playing for 3 years almost non-stop, which naturally leads to fatigue. I had achieve my goal of reaching grandmaster and was feeling the pressure to retain my rank within the grandmaster league. On top of that I graduated from university meaning that my life as a student had come to an end. Due to my graduation I decided to take four months off from school/work to relax and recover before entering “the real world.” The easiest way for me to take a much needed vacation was staying at my parent’s condo, that didn’t and currently does not have internet (seriously, who doesn’t have internet?). At the end of the day, I couldn’t keep playing. I dropped out of grandmaster and my skill and momentum were replaced by rust. Three years of work, and an era of my life had truly come to an end.

Over the course of the last year I spent my time working full-time in retail to pay the bills. On the side I spent my time developing my own business, so there wasn’t a lot of time to spend improving my Starcraft abilities. Without the prestige of Grandmaster league I felt like a fallen star - a has been. I had no desire to continue playing. So why return to the game? Being a part of the work force taught me several things: I never want to be an employee ever again, time is the most valuable thing to me, and I’m not going to frame the things I enjoy negatively. Being more or less free of my real world job, I have freed up 40+ hours a week to dedicate to what I want. I’m going to work on my guitar playing, harp playing, painting, composing and of course Starcraft. All of these activities help me grow as a person. They require intense focus, discipline, and the ability to think critically. In short, they produce results; they make me a better person.

However, if I stop to think about my previous experience I can distinctly remember, screaming, throwing my wallet across the room, hitting my keyboard, hitting my desk, and consistently telling specific friends that I hate them, etc. I’m sure anyone who has lived with me can attest to the fact that Starcraft actually makes me a worse person. A much worse person. In a limited sense it might. I might be angry, sad, depressed, or hopeless but the journey through those emotions is what has produced many key realizations in my life. At this point I know that I don’t deal particularly well with stress and pressure. Starcraft is a practicing ground for coping with stress, anxiety, and fear. It’s a trial that can test your skills of organization, optimization, and ability to learn. Perhaps in the past I have failed these trials, perhaps I played too seriously, too casually, or a toxic mix of the two. This article is a summary of the things I’ve been thinking about when planning my return to the game. Here is a short summary of the mechanics I will be putting into place in my life to hopefully avoid the wallet throwing incidents again. Additionally, I’m sure my friend Mike Ross will appreciate not being verbally attacked each time I lose a game (let’s face it, this guy is a better player than I am. He’s also really helpful. Doesn’t deserve the shit I’ve given him.) So I’m ready to fix my previous personal flaws and mistakes. And hopefully, steal a lot of ladder points on the way.

2. Goals:

It makes sense to have something to strive towards right? It pushes you forward and makes you better? Well, goals can be toxic. Goals can be the most profound demotivators. They can cause a complete breakdown in routine and discipline and ruin all attempts to achieve them. “I want to be a professional Starcraft player.” Sounds like you have a goal Deadzerg! Well for the last 14 years that goal has caused me endless personal suffering. Why does this happen? It really is simple. It happens when you set unrealistic, uncontrollable, or easily met goals. If you set yourself up for failure, then failure is what you will achieve. Here’s a few examples:

Type 1: Unrealistic Goals

During my initial time playing Starcraft my primary goal (and singular goal) was to become a pro-gamer. I wanted nothing more than to be competing at the highest level. At the heart of this was the desire to be a part of eSports. It wasn’t about winning tournaments. Let’s face it, this goal was EXTREMELY unrealistic. I had a D- Iccup ranking (the lowest possible) and would stack up a record of 5-500~ each season. Due to my skill level, the life of a pro-gamer was not approaching soon. It’s easy to see how this unrealistic goal created a lot of stress and discomfort. On top of that it distracted me from actually finding concrete ways to improve my play. Instead I was obsessed with my own inadequacy.

Type 2: Uncontrollable Goals

Another classic failure in my goal setting process was setting an uncontrollable goal: become a grandmaster. I can make my play better. I can improve my thinking about the game. I can analyze more deeply. I can workout and improve my health. I can delve into the world of efficient mechanics and practice routines. I can get a coach and pay him to give me advice. You know what I can’t do? Decide how quickly other players around me improve and what their current skill level is. You know what Grandmaster is? The top 200 players in a region. So this goal was actually uncontrollable. I could improve myself, but everyone around me were improving too and I had no control over that. It was this that caused me profound distress during my time playing in university. I remember days just wondering if I was a human being of any value since I put so much effort in but accomplished so little. I had convinced myself that to not be promoted to grandmaster was accomplishing nothing.

Type 3: Easily Met Goals

Easily met goals were the largest cause for wasted time over the course of my last year. On top of this a loss of motivation and eventually mini-depression episodes were sprinkled throughout the year. Here’s how it happened: I decided that I wanted a certain income level at the end of the year. I decided on a monthly income that would allow me to live the lifestyle I wanted. This was in July, when I was unemployed and had no plans to look for employment. Fast forward two months, my vacation had ended. So what was the natural thing to do? Buy a Gibson Les Paul Standard guitar and start playing again. Yep. That’s what I did. Realizing this was not a financially wise decision the next day I applied for a local job and within 3 days I was working full time. And my income was two times what I had set as a goal. If without any effort at all you can achieve your goal, it’s probably not a good goal to have. Now it is easy to predict what came next. I got insanely lazy. For an entire year! You might have looked at the situation and said, “Well, he works full time and has a small business on the side; he’s a very proactive and hardworking person.” Wrong. I had a paycheck that was profoundly underwhelming when you consider that I had sacrificed all self-improvement to get it.

Nearing the end of my full time employment I asked myself a simple question: “Why the fuck am I still here?” I looked around, everyone hated what they were doing. I hated it. We all did together. Yet we all showed up every morning at 6am and did our jobs. Why? Because this was the easiest thing for us. It was hard to quit and have no meaningful income. It was hard to search for jobs in an economic depression where even high paid oil men/women were applying for minimum wage jobs. It was hard to leave behind the illusion of comfort and step into a risky world. Finally, it was hard to step outside of social convention and say, “This is not the way for me.” Easily met goals do not make worthy goals. If it is easy, as Shia Lebouf would say, JUST DO IT.

Reframing Unrealistic and Uncontrollable Goals:

Consider if it is indeed your dream to be a professional Starcraft player. In this case you are exactly like me. We didn’t choose this dream. I simply enjoyed Starcraft, stumbled upon eSports as a child, and was completely blown away by it. I didn’t mechanically sit down and figure out what the most realistic or controllable goal was to set for my life, this dream just came to me. If it is unrealistic or uncontrollable it is a dream. It’s not a goal because you have no way to concretely get there. You may get there, I did when I reached Grandmaster. But the initial dream of becoming a professional gamer still eludes me and always may. But, if I set intelligent goals that may contribute to me achieving my dream I know I’m moving forward. If the dream never becomes reality, then I can still see the growth I have achieved along the way.

Current Goals:

So what are my current goals in Starcraft? First, I should explain my process. I wanted to create many tiers of goals this time to give myself long term goals, as well as short term goals that were more easily obtainable. So I’ve structure it into monthly and long term goals. The long term goals are more wishes or hopes: dreams that I want to see realized. The monthly goals are concrete: things that I can work towards and certainly obtain. Here are a few, for example.

Dream:

Become a professional Starcraft 2 player



Long term goal:

Play consistently over a period of 500 days (5-6 days a week)



Monthly goal:

Have 3 builds with tight execution

Schedule the next day’s practice as the previous days practice ends

3. Expectations:

Expectations are also the generators of toxic mentality. I have personally heard so many players say, “I shouldn’t have lost to that player.” I have personally said this. If we really look at this statement it is clearly logically false. “I shouldn’t have lost.” Why? What factors are involved in winning. You have to destroy all of the opponent’s buildings. Did you do that? If the answer is no, then you shouldn’t have won. The expectation is to be able to play consistently at a certain skill level, what you perceive as your best skill level. But in reality you are a human being who can be tired, make mistakes, or just play sloppy.

My expectations of myself used to be:

I should be a grandmaster player

I should win against all lower league players

I should practice 8 hours a day

Let’s deconstruct a couple of these statements:

3.1 I should be a grandmaster player:

Should I really be a grandmaster player? There is no question that I have developed some very strong Starcraft skills. Mechanically I’m very happy with where I am. My analytical skills are extremely strong and allow me to learn quickly. I think my work ethic is solid within the game. But these factors don’t make a grandmaster player. MMR makes a grandmaster player. So is my MMR grandmaster MMR? No. I shouldn’t be a grandmaster player.

3.2 I should win against all lower league players:

Same argument as above. Did I kill all the buildings? Did they leave the game? No. Then I shouldn’t win. At the start of each game we are equals. Over time we have both accumulated points and promotions, perhaps in the long run I have been more consistent than a gold league player. This does not mean in a single game of starcraft that I should or will win. I can lose. That’s just how competition works.

3.3 I should practice 8 hours a day:

This is what the community seems to think. Or at least what I think the community thinks. Somehow longer practice hours produce better players. So logically, if I play longer hours I will be a better player. Of course, volume is fairly important at the top level. But, a balanced lifestyle can generate many of the same benefits. And if we consider diminishing returns the last 2 hours of an eight hour session will be much less effective than the first two. So ideally you would actually want to practice for shorter periods, more frequently.

3.4 Current Expectations:

These are fairly simple actually.

Maintain good mentality for the majority of my practice time

Focus on what I can control

Recover from tilt as fast as possible

Put in consistent practice (5-6 times a week)

This is what I expect of myself. Stay positive. Focus on what I can control instead of discussing balance issues. Recover from tilt as quickly and efficiently as possible. I don’t want to be stuck in the trap of playing obsessively when I tilt. I’m going to go outside, do a run, and wait to continue my practice until I am in a better mental space. Consistent practice - it’s key to improvement.

4. Planning

I’ve outlined my goals and expectations; now for some planning. Maybe your goals are different than mine, but these planning steps could help you shape the type of engagement you want with Starcraft. Maybe it’s to be promoted from gold to platinum, or finally make it into masters.

4.1 Long Term Goals:

You want to strive for something. Maybe learning a hotkey layout. That’s a good goal since you can control 100% of the outcome. Work incrementally and set strong short term goals and you can make these long term goals a reality.

4.2 Small goals:

Here’s how I’ve decided to plan out my year. I’ve talked about breaking goals up into small manageable ones with a short term focus. These shouldn’t take you more than a month to accomplish. If they do, it’s likely that they could have been split into smaller pieces and managed more effectively that way. We learn the fastest when we isolate elements and learn them perfectly. Relearning is perhaps the #1 time waster in mastering any skill. Go slow at the start with the smallest division of your goal. If the long term goal is learning a new hotkey layout, start with learning how to hotkey a nexus and build a probe. Focus on these two small elements in the larger picture. Then repeat these actions until they are smooth and flawless instead of introducing more complexity. If you introduce complexity too early you will undoubtedly develop bad habits.

4.3 Professionalism:

If you want to improve, treat what you’re doing professionally. You have to have discipline. The easy path is not the path to mastery (#NeuroMightSayThis). There will be days you don’t want to practice. You need to practice on these days. The need to practice on these days is more acute than on days you do want to practice. If you let yourself fall into the trap of taking time off when you are unmotivated you will become every foreign player who gave up when things got hard. Consistency is a key in developing new skills. Without it you will lack the ability to improve.

To combat the desire to play when I want to play I’ve set myself up a simple system. I schedule my Starcraft practice for the next day at the end of the current practice. Yesterday I practiced from 2pm-5pm and tomorrow I will do the same. I treat these scheduled activity like a job. I show up, on time, no matter what else is happening. If my friends want to go out and do something infinitely more fun, I stay home and practice. Because when the day comes that I compromise my scheduling I have lost the discipline to continue. Then each time something comes up that is deemed more interesting the chance that I will sacrifice my Starcraft practice increases. Likely I enjoyed the diverting activity, so there is a strong draw to sacrifice Starcraft time and engage in the alternative activity. Don’t let yourself. Treat it professionally.

4.4 Balance:

Here’s a contrast to that! Everything above is fairly extreme to the casual player. But it is effective.

Balance is important if you want to pursue anything intensely. It has been what I have lacked in the past. If you entire life revolves around Starcraft, then you feel devastated by each loss and lose perspective on reality. Here are some other thing you want to prioritize.

Fitness

Diet

Social activities

Something fun (Another game? I just said that… Play something that isn’t Starcraft.)

Each of these activities can be treated exactly the same way you treat Starcraft if you actively want to improve at them. If you don’t want to improve. Just enjoy the activity for what it is. It gives you a much needed break from the intensity of your primary activity.

What does this come down to? That question is answered by another question: what will you have left if Starcraft disappeared? I will know that I can learn effectively, meet a challenge with optimism, and not back down when things get tough.

Conclusion:

I’m encouraged to continue to create content like this. If you have an idea about a subject you want me to cover, let me know. If it is something I feel matches up well with my ideas and abilities, I’ll write an article, make a video, or dedicate a stream to it. I also welcome constructive criticism! I want to improve my content creation abilities. Help me become a grandmaster content creator. Thanks for reading!