What’s your daily gaming routine?

The “daily routine” is a fairly popular content genre among lifestyle influencers — but you don’t usually see Twitch streamers light a candle for intention and check their bullet journal before they start their daily grind, headshotting plebs in artfully composed shallow depth of field. Nevertheless, with the advent of the daily quest — and weekly quest, and seasonal goals, and Battle Passes, and short-term special events — a lot of gamers do tend to have a de facto daily gaming routine.

Since both my kids are in school, I have a blessed few hours where I can knock out all my gaming goals for the day. After I put both of them on the bus with the help of several cups of coffee, I make myself a smoothie with frozen fruit, a fistful of greens, and Greek yogurt, and have that plus half a bagel for breakfast while I do Duolingo. After I clean up from everyone’s breakfast and start a load of laundry, I usually mosey over to the site dashboard and see what my workload is going to look like for the day, then I start up Overwatch 2 to see what my dailies are. I play a match of Mystery Heroes or two as a warm up, for both gaming and just general brain activity.

I also usually have about a half an hour in the evening to myself, which I’ve been using to unwind with a game or two of Hearthstone Battlegrounds. I don’t always keep current on the main Tavern Track, but I definitely finish out the Battlegrounds Pass well before the end of the season. Even though I may sometimes pester Red to write about the Battlegrounds meta so I can destroy my competition, I do tend to keep it as an unwinding sort of game. As long as I don’t luck into APM Pirates, I usually have time between rounds to do a little light tidying around the house as I play, which is an excellent before-bed habit to adopt.

However, my routine meta is about to get a huge shakeup. Summer vacation is hanging over my head, sword of Damocles style. Keeping current and informed with games is literally a part of my job, so I’ll have to find new ways to keep current before things get back to normal in the fall.

Do you have a daily gaming routine? Is it intentional, or just formed out of habit? Do you make time for gaming every single day, or do you just try to binge through things on a more weekly basis? Do you use gaming to form other healthy habits in your life? How do you deal when the new hotness comes along, whether that’s something like a highly anticipated new game, or just literal hotness, as in summer vacation? If you want to cover all your bases, technically Diablo 4 counts as both types.