If you feel your missions have been lagging lately, you may not be in need of a new graphics card; you might just be sleep deprived. This tends to happen when you spend night after night playing various online games with your friends.
When the time doesn’t seem to be enough, we tend to forget that sleep is an essential process for tissue regeneration and recovery. So, before you start blaming your gaming rig, read the benefits a good night’s sleep may bring to your gaming life.
Improved Visual Acuity
The eyes get tired during the day, but our modern lifestyle has us in front of all sorts of screens, which can be harmful in time. So, if you spend eight hours in front of a computer at work, and then come home only to spend eight more in front of your PC, playing video games, there’s no wonder you look like a vampire lately.
The usual symptoms of too much gaming and too little sleep are red eyes, blurred vision, and that sting sensation that makes you think you have about 1,000 tiny pointy needles in your eyeballs. If you continue ignoring your sleep needs, the situation will only go down from here, leading to permanent eye lesion.
All the symptoms mentioned above will go away (in most cases) if you decide to take sleep more seriously. You’ll also notice improved visual acuity as it will be easier to find the enemy without having to constantly zoom in.
Better Decision-Making Skills
Just like in life, games want us to make decisions and support the consequences. But, if in life you usually have time to think about your choices, games will pressure you into thinking fast and making decisions under pressure.
While this can become one of the best skills in your portfolio (for both gaming and the real life), if you’re sleep deprived, things will go haywire. Studies have shown that a sleep-deprived brain is foggy and has a very difficult time focusing on the task at hand.
In this case, you might end up leading your team into a ditch somewhere and no one will be happy!
Hand to Eye Coordination
It doesn’t matter if you have a high-end gaming mouse; when you can’t coordinate your hand movements with what you see on the screen, you’ll most likely miss the shot! Gaming hardware is designed to detect even the smallest movements, so the experience would be as realistic as possible. So, if you flinch, you’ll lose the aim and maybe even get killed in the process.
The lack of coordination comes from fatigue (in most cases), therefore, a good night’s sleep should do the trick. But, depending on how tired you are and your age, you may need more than just one night to recover.
You should also make sure there are no other reasons why you lose sleep (like a bad mattress). After all, fatigue doesn’t come just from playing video games! If you feel you shouldn’t lose focus but your mind is still foggy, check your sleeping conditions. Both the atmosphere in the room and the mattress can reduce sleep quality (get more mattress information here).
In Conclusion
Gaming is a lot of fun and it can be a tool to develop new skills (regardless of your age). But, if you lose sleep to have more time for video games, this behavior will turn on you rather fast. Increased fatigue will have a negative impact on both your virtual and real life, so make sure to keep a healthy sleeping routine.
