Intro- Spend Less Time On Sports and Focus More On Your Career
In this article I will discuss why you should spend less time on sports and focus more on your career. Just to be straight forward, I have nothing against being a fan of sports. Even until this day I keep up with my favorite teams. I think sports in general has several positives such as bringing people together and providing entertainment value. But like anything, too much of it can become an addiction and detrimental to personal progress. While I’m not anti-sports I realize that if you make it a bad habit it can interfere with more important things in life. I’m speaking from the perspective of someone who spent many years doing nothing other than following sports. If you find yourself investing more time in a team than you do building a career that’s a problem. Here I’ll touch on reasons why sports addiction can be a problem.
Reasons Sports Addiction Can Be a Problem
1. Sports is a distraction from reality
It is common knowledge that following a sports team can be a form of escapism from the real world. When I became a basketball fanatic very early on in life I created this imaginary world. I would be sitting in school day dreaming about what my team had accomplished the previous night. From the second I’d wake up the first thing I’d do was flip on ESPN and begin watching Sportscenter. Reality was too boring and mundane for me to care about much. I was not the only one who thought this way regarding life: Many of my friends could memorize the entire back of a baseball card, but got poor grades each marking period. In my early 20’s I did not have any interests outside of watching sports. While other people my age were launching their career I was sitting at home reading Sports Illustrated.
2. Sports can be time consuming
Any passionate and diehard fan can tell you how much time they allocate to their favorite teams. From watching the games to listening to post-games to browsing sports websites being a fan is a full time job. If you do not find a way to discipline your sports urge it can interfere with everything else in life. When I started posting on sports forums hours of the day would go by without me realizing it. Instead of using my time more productively I wasted it discussing things on the internet that served no personal purpose. I look back and regret it till this very day. The time that I could have been building a successful career I squandered away. Unless you are getting paid to write sports articles or create video content I’d recommend limiting your time with sports. You do not want to spend years doing frivolous things.
3. Sports can effect your overall mood
Nothing would set the tone of my inner emotions the way that sports did. If my team won a game it meant that I’d be in a positive mood for at least a couple days. But if my team loss I’d feel miserable about life. It was difficult for me to focus on getting tasks done whenever I was going through a negative mood swing. There would be time periods in which I would go on a sports fast. I’d spend a couple of weeks not watching games or reading anything sports related. During these periods I would function much better and accomplish certain goals. But because of my sports addiction those moments were very short lived. The desire to watch my teams succeed far outweighed any desire to be a productive human being. I thought that exchanging short term pleasure with long term productivity was the better choice.
4. Sports brings no reward
In my lifetime I watched my teams win a combined 7 championships and it did nothing for my career. All the years, months and weeks of my life investing in following 4 major sports teams did not earn me a dime. I did not even get my rent paid from any of the athletes that I idolized. The only ones who were financially prospering were the players, coaches and owners of these teams. Surely I got some temporary happiness from my teams winning a championship, but within a couple days I was miserable. After all these years I feel 50x better doing something that brings me long term reward. You’ll never experience the sense of gratification from sports the way you would from succeeding in a career. Even writing this blog makes me feel like a better person than watching the NY Giants win the Super Bowl.
Solution To Your Problem
Allocate More Time To Building Your Career
If you find yourself spending too much time on sports and it is interfering with your career goals; stop. You need to prioritize and eliminate this bad habit until it is too late. If your problem is really unbearable then I advise you to seek professional help. But if you can manage to overcome it on your own then more power to you. Investing time on building a career will pay off in the long run if you’re 100 percent committed to it. Consistency and diligence are keys to moving forward with anything that will bring you benefits. I did not begin to progress in my career until I set my values in order. Had I continued spending hours upon hours on sports I would have probably been homeless. Some people never learn their lesson and then wonder why they are where they’re at in life.
Conclusion
I hope that you got a few things regarding why you should spend less time on sports and focus more on your career. The purpose of this article was not for me to demonize sports or tell people to quit watching them altogether. I just believe that there must be balance in life and that people should prioritize what will help them. When I first got the idea for this post I had the sports addict in mind. I considered the person who like me a few years ago, spends the majority of their day on sports. The first step that I did in transitioning from being hooked on sports to focusing on my career was acknowledging my problem. In my opinion, that is the key to breaking away from any bad habit. Once you can do that you’ll have a long career of success.
Thank you for reading this article on why you should Spend Less Time On Sports and Focus More On Your Career. If you’d like to add anything please comment below.