The announcer yells Finish Him! You end a tense set with Mileena’s Fatality and reach God rank in Kombat League. While the grind took weeks, the satisfaction doesn’t last long.

Recklessly striving to improve at your own expense lowers motivation until losing feels less like a lesson and more of a reminder that you're neither having fun nor making enough progress. If that sounds relatable, then you’re familiar with gaming fatigue.

Gaming fatigue is a result of exhaustion, overexertion, and stress. Esports pros, Twitch streamers, YouTube content creators, and amateurs all experience it. Fortunately, burnout isn’t inevitable. Here are six tips to prevent fatigue and spend more time doing what you love.

1. Set realistic personal goals to reduce physical and emotional stress
2. Get enough sleep for ample energy
3. Take breaks away from your house, games, and electronics
4. Find a second hobby
5. Eat a healthy diet
6. Temporarily (or permanently) stop playing video games

Set realistic personal goals to reduce physical and emotional stress

Pros and streamers often showcase the highest level of gameplay. However, most of their time and effort was put into the game well before they became successful. The first step to preventing fatigue is accepting that success is a slow process.

Becoming the next Karma, Ninja, or SonicFox starts with mentality and expectations. Prepare to put countless hours into your favorite title and realize progress might not happen as fast as you’d like.

Start with simple daily goals to make the experience more gratifying. If you’re into fighting games, practice combo consistency, patience against zoners, and specific matchups. Want to boost your KD or score per minute in shooters? Work on switching to your secondary instead of reloading and effectively using everything in your inventory like grenades. Even if you lose, you’ll steadily improve which is more important than any victory outside of a tournament.

Don’t Expect to Win Your First Tournament

Victory might take more than a year. Focus on consistency and treat the competition the same as any online public lobby. PlayStation’s Open Series is a great choice for players looking to improve at any level because it provides free tournament experience and prizes simply for participating. Enter as many as you can to lessen nerves and become more comfortable at esports events.

Advance to more difficult personal goals like win/loss ratio and streaks after finding the daily, weekly, or monthly routine that works best for you. Maybe that’s one hour a day or five a week. Everyone has different schedules and other factors to consider such as school, career, and family. No matter your plan, always set aside enough time for sleep.

Get enough sleep for ample energy

Playing Call of Duty until 3 AM on weekends with friends is a common habit that starts in middle school. Keep it up and your energy might drop faster than you can defuse the bomb in Search and Destroy.

Sleep is more than just a way to recharge. Quality rest time varies from person to person based on age, but the consequences remain consistent:

• Sleep improves learning and problem-solving skills
• Quality sleep helps you maintain focus, make decisions, and be creative
• Lack of sleep is linked to depression, anger, and a lack of motivation
• More sleep equals more productivity, fewer mistakes, and faster reaction times

All of these impact your performance, especially when it comes to practice and competitions. Getting good is supposed to be the only challenge, so don’t make rest another obstacle when it should come naturally.

How to Improve Sleep

Struggling to shut your eyes? Here are a few suggestions from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute:

• Get into the habit of sleeping and waking at the same time every day to establish a routine. Your body will thank you later.
• Avoid intense workouts or bright artificial light from phone screens and other tech in the hour prior to sleeping. Otherwise, your brain might believe it is time to wake up, get up, get out there.
• Try not to eat meals too close to bedtime, although light snacks are okay.
• Napping for more than 20 minutes might cause trouble sleeping.
• Exercise more often and spend more time outside when possible.

Take Breaks Away From Your House, Games, and Electronics

Devote too much time and attention to your favorite title and parts of it might just seep into your subconsciousness. If you imagine Tetris blocks sealing your hallway or Fortnite walls filling your living room, you aren’t crazy. You’re experiencing the Tetris effect.

The Tetris effect is when people only focus on one activity to the point where it infiltrates their thoughts and dreams. There’s a thin line between passion and obsession. Games affecting other aspects of your life definitely steps over it, so step away from time to time for your own well-being.

Routines help players take breaks from their aspirations to relax and recharge. Sleep isn’t the only type of break you need. Going outside is good for you and your aspirations, according to research compiled by Business Insider.

Benefits of Going Outside

• Improves short-term memory: Helps read opponents moves and decipher strategies.
• Restores mental energy: Increase productivity and better analyze games to improve.
• Relieves stress: Building up stress is a disaster waiting to happen.
• Improves vision: Spot enemies from further away in-game.
• Boosts concentration: Better focus during tense moments and long events.
• Bolsters sharper thinking and creativity: Thinking on your feet is required to succeed.
• Improves mental health: Helps strengthen resolve to stay positive and push forward.

Find a Second Hobby

Hobbies are another great way to distance yourself from gaming and unwind. They can be as simple as playing sports or something more complex like an artistic endeavor. Both solo and group activities share similar benefits regardless of the scale based on research analyzed by the Australian Department of Health.

• Recreational and relaxation activities reduce stress
• Creative hobbies can make you feel better the next day
• Creative collaborations improve self-esteem and social connections
• Physical activity reduces depression, anxiety, and stress

Even though going outside provides many of these benefits, adding the second hobby is like gaining a multiplier to earn more bonuses that will further improve your life.

Eat a Healthy Diet

Eating healthy is more about improving the overall quality of your life in the long-term thanks to a plethora of benefits like weight loss, reduced risk of cancer, and strong bones. However, some benefits cited by Medical News Today directly tie into gaming.

• Better mood: Research shows the better you eat, the better you feel.
• Improved memory: Memory is crucial to excelling in increasingly advanced titles.
• Higher quality sleep: Eat right and you’ll rest easy.

What is a Healthy Diet

Medical News Today also shared some quick tips to help you find a healthier diet:

• Drink water instead of soda and energy drinks.
• Try to eat less meat, even if you avoid it for at least one day every week.
• Eat more vegetables. The more colorful your dinner, the better.
• Experiment with alternative milk like coconut, almond, banana, and oat.
• Consume more fiber from real fruit and not juices.
• Avoid processed meats and eat more lean protein

Temporarily or Permanently Stop Playing Video Games

If all else fails, then maybe you need a real break from that game. Spend more time with friends, family, school, another hobby, or your career. When you feel like it is the right time to come back, you can always hit the power button again.

There’s a chance you might never want to play that game again, which is fine. Either transition to another title or stick to more casual gaming. The decision that makes you the happiest is probably the right one.