Before my daughters were born, it was much easier to grab a controller and dive into gaming. I had so much more free time I could waste away in Rapture, the wasteland or Hyrule. But kids take up a lot of your time (and resources). Don’t get me wrong, I love my daughters more than Michael Bay loves explosions, but their existence has made it a lot harder finding the time to play.

So what does a relatively new mom or dad need to do to find the time needed to get some gaming time? Its not easy, but there’s some solutions.

Sacrifice sleep

Yes, I do this. Not only to get more gaming in, but to also take care of household chores, watch TV shows and movies that aren’t kid-appropriate, work on side projects (like Steem, for example) Though this is not a rookie move. You need to know how much sleep you need and don’t push yourself past that. Running on 3 hours of sleep because you were trying to finish a dungeon in Zelda or were in the zone in Overwatch is not worth it when you fall asleep at work the next day and drive a forklift into a pallet of Sunny D.

Buy a Switch

This has been a life-saver since I can grab the Switch and be in an out of games in seconds. Games are suspended when you power down, so you only need to flip on your console and you’re literally playing in just a few seconds.

Add the portability of the system that allows you to take your game to the toilet, on your commute, on lunch break, or to bed and you’ve got a system that can easily fit itself into your life in 5 minute spurts, and those little breaks can add up to an hour a day pretty quickly.

And Skyrim is coming to the Switch very soon.

Game with your significant other

When the kids are in bed, it becomes couple-time. Finding games that you both love to play is not only a great way to scratch that gaming itch, but it can be a great couples activity. We recently started playing Overcooked and its an absolute blast. In addition, it requires a lot of back-and-forth planning and teamwork, which is a great thing to practice in your relationship.

Avoid online games

MMOs and competitive online games are problematic because you can’t pause them. If you need to drop everything to dislodge crayon from your kids nose, you’re going to be a sitting duck. Its simply not feasible, unless you play these games when you should be sleeping (see rule #1)

Thanks for reading. As always, upvotes, resteems and comments are appreciated!