Oh Twitter, you little minx. How I both hate you and love you at the same time.

(Note: this has nothing to do with the least interesting subject in the world; namely, Twitter under its new owner.)

I have done nearly everything I can know to limit my exposure to Twitter on a regular basis. I have put the writers and accounts that I care about into lists so when I need information in certain fields I don’t see anything else. I use helps such as Tweetdeck and third-party Twitter readers so I never see ads or “promoted tweets” or “trending” or any of that crap. I try to keep the window closed. Yet…it ends up open way more often than it should. And when it’s open too much, my life usually gets worse. 

We live in a distractable world. Even worse: we live in a world that has monitized distraction. So many of our hobbies and news sources actively make more money when they get you to think about literally anything other than what you chose to do in the first place. And just as we solve one issue, ten more pop up. We thought that the DVR back in the day would mean that we’d never have to see ads in our television shows again. Then streaming added additional ads, but also added pop-ups to get you to watch OTHER shows, or shows that they’d rather you watch. 

So we gave up on TV and headed to YT. Same problem. We gave up on YT, and headed to IG or maybe (even worse) TikTok, and don’t even get me started on that Chinese Communist Party spyware garbage. 

Therefore, why would be surprised when the same issue happens when we do our hobbies or play our games? There’s a lot of money in distraction, after all. 

I started thinking about this when taking in the most recent “controversy” (which isn’t really a controversy) in the world of Overwatch 2. You see, when Blizzard decided to take OW into a free-to-play format in OW2, they also changed the mode in which players would earn skins for their characters. In the past, you could essentially get almost every skin for every player for free by playing enough. Playing would earn loot boxes, which would eventually earn coins, with which you could buy skins that you didn’t have. But now, because even in a FTP play setting developers like to be able to “eat” and “pay rent”, skins became a key way to make money. One of the new characters, Kiriko, has a skin package that costs the equivalent of $26 (around half of what OW1 cost on launch day). 

Regardless of what you think about the cost of said skin (I don’t have an issue with it), the debate and whingeing has absorbed the online OW2 community. Guess what’s not being talked about a fraction of the amount? 

Gameplay. Improvement. Actually “enjoying playing the game”. Remember those things?

If you’re going to break the grip of distraction, you’re going to have to let go of a lot of the things that are nothing more than distractions. Editorial note: I am TERRIBLE at Overwatch. Always have been. And I still love it, because it’s a really fun game and I’m continually driven to improve. I own most of the OW1 skins that were available and I certainly have opinions on skins when they’re released (the new Kiriko skin mentioned previously is amazing). But I use the same skin in 99+% of all games. 

It’s a first-person game, people. You almost never get to see whatever skin you pick when you play.

Start thinking about your games in the same way you think about your TV use or your social media use. If you don’t control it, it controls you. Don’t get bogged down in skins or card graphics (hello MTG) or buying yet other book or tool for “improvement” when you haven’t finished the other ten on your shelf (hello chess or guitar playing or painting or anything analog like that). 

This goes for more than just acquiring items about or within the game. The games themselves have scores of different game modes and things to click on or try that don’t make you better. MTG Arena has so many formats on it that you can bounce between them all day and not learn anything of note. Overwatch has tons of different heroes, but also lots of game types. While some of those game types can make you a better player (for instance, I firmly believe that FFA deathmatch is crucial for support players because you have to be able to fight off flankers in a 5v5 game), others are just for fun and clicks. Cool every once in a while, but it can swallow hours and not accomplish a thing. 

I’ve been trying to make it a point to have a goal every week with the things that I really want to improve. For instance, this week I’ve decided to play 5 ranked matches on Mercy in Overwatch, 3 ranked BO3 matches on Arena with Standard 5-color Jodah, and 3 games of unranked chess (because I apparently have a phobia of playing chess online but that’s another article). I play for fun at other times, but when I’m accomplishing those things I am fully focused on what I’m trying to accomplish, primarily because I’ve decided at the beginning of the week that it means enough to me to plan that time in advance. 

In the book Deep Work, Cal Newport makes it clear that you have to be able to focus on the things that you truly wish to improve. So many things, he notes, LOOK like work (like scanning your email inbox and checking Slack or Discord) but aren’t moving the needle on your big goals at all. In the same way, skins and card styles, unread books, and unused tools don’t move the needle at all. Focus with a goal in mind, and when you perform you’ll not only get better, I bet you’ll enjoy your hobbies more. You’ll have more self-satisfaction because you’ll see more fruits of your labor than just burning leisure hours. And that’s better than any skin could ever look.