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Recently several players have approached me asking about issues with them raging at the game, playing worse than usual, going on tilt for long periods and in general having trouble progressing and finding where to improve. I myself had a horrible ladder session yesterday on stream where I went through some of these same symptoms. I thought I'd grab a few of my responses to my students and throw them together into a mini article. Hopefully this will help some of you with your progression as a Starcraft player.


Focus and Mindset

When we don't perform to our expectations things can get quite frustrating. Part of this is mindset and focus. Remember to analyse your replays. Preferably at the end of a day or half a day of practice you can sit there and watch most of your losses with a notepad writing down the key turning points in the game, things you can improve in your macro and so on. Basically looking for ways to improve. You need to do this at least once every 2-3 days or you will get in the mode of just massing games. Don’t become a player that plays 10x as much as anyone else and yet their results never improve.

Staying Positive - Keeping Your Ego in Check

Also make sure you're in a positive mindset. Depending on your lifestyle and how serious you are with Starcraft there are a lot of things that can benefit your life as a whole that will also help you be faster and smarter at starcraft. Make sure you're exercising regularly, it doesn't need to be much just a long walk or a light jog a few times a week will do wonders for your average gamer-nerd.

Force yourself to gg every game, and be very critical and aware of your own mindset. Ego is the enemy. We always need to keep a careful eye on this. With each level you climb you will hit new obstacles that will reveal your weaknesses. Remember that if you ever let your ego feed on your achievements and grow bloated and fat, it will be twice as shocking when you run into a new barrier. And your ego will prefer you take breaks, run away, or even if you keep playing, it will make you irrational and blame games on all-ins, cheese, random shit, luck, accidents and your opponent being "so dumb that he didnt react to what I did". You will stop learning from your losses and go on tilt much faster. This negative focus will make Starcraft a very sour experience for you. Work on avoiding it at all costs.

Distractions

Also when you play. Please do yourself a favour and don't have any second monitor turned on, any streams in the background, or anything like that. AND do not browse the web in between games. It is SO important for you to process how you're playing, why you're losing/winning in between games and to keep your focus. Do not distract yourself with all this other stuff.

P.S. If you want to play in a more relaxed way, hop onto a different server, unranked or a different account and play funner, cheesier or more relaxed strategies if you're going to have distractions present.

Not as easy as it sounds - putting in the extra effort

Of course things sound simple written like I have above. But this is a complex game where there are many, many factors surrounding every win and loss. If you want to get the most out of coaching/ladder/progress I want you to re-write out your entire builds e.g. vs ZvP 3-base blink or wherever your problems may lie, pointing out what you react to, where you choose to do what and transition how.

If you write all this out in detail you might solve some of the problems yourself before you even get into game. Application of focus and effort is not easy, but it is rewarding.

Gl hf,