Playing games takes time. Longer games take more time. Games, by design, want to be played and don’t care how long you spend doing it. How do make sure we put in enough time to make progress but not so much time that it is 4am and you have work in a few hours?

Timeboxing

Timeboxing is a basic time management technique often used in Agile project management. Essentially, you assign a maximum amount of time for a task, assign when you will do it, and you don’t break from that.

That’s how I end up with a to-do list for the weekend that includes, “Spend an hour getting further in Final Fantasy VI” somewhere between laundry, vacuuming, and meal prep.

Simple, elegant, and effective (with a high enough willpower score).

Credit to Jason McFadden and Aywren for inspiration.