Become A Fair-Weather Fan

I’d like to share a new concept I came across while reading Make Time, and that is to become a fair-weather fan.

How much time does it take to be a sports fan? Well, how much have you got? These days you can watch every game your favorite team plays in the preseason, regular season, and playoffs as well as every game every other team plays, all from the comfort of your living room. There is a year-round limitless supply of news, rumors, trades, draft picks, blogs, and projections. It doesn’t stop. You probably could spend twenty-four hours a day staying up to date and still not be up to date.

Sports fandom doesn’t just take time; it takes emotional energy. When your team loses, it sucks—it might bum you out and lower your energy for hours or even days.10 Even when your team wins, the euphoria creates a time crater (#30) as you get sucked into watching highlights and reading follow-up analysis.

If we want to improve our focus and attention to doing work that really matters to us, we should become a fair-weather fan. Watch games only on special occasions, and stop reading the news when the team wins or lose. You can still love your team yet spend your time working on our priorities.

Now that the Premier League season is coming to a conclusion, I found myself getting more distracted with sports news lately. I constantly refresh whenever Chelsea and Leicester are playing, hoping they’d lose so that United gets a chance to play in Champions League next season.

I’ve had a habit of reading football news as well, but only now did I realise that it creates a big time crater that could be spent on doing other things I enjoy.

Just because I don’t watch the highlights for the tenth time, it doesn’t mean I love my team less.

I think this also applies to anything that you’re a fan of, be it a music band, a TV series or movies.

As usual, I’d like to end with a question: Is there anything in your life that you love that creates a time sink?

Thanks for reading,

Haikal