Value

It's a Hearthstone concept, and it's applicable to real life! Isn't that awful?!

Hearthstone is a digital representation of one of THOSE card games, the ones that have cards with lots of text and numbers and are only ever played by the three people at your local game store. In this game and games like it, each card has a different effect or set of effects, in addition to a cost associated with it. As you might assume in a game with standardized card text like this, it stands to reason that cards will fit into categories, and will inevitably draw comparisons. As such, certain cards will simply be categorically better than others, and figuring out the best cards is actually a major part of the game.

This is a concept called value. Some cards are extremely effective for their cost, some require a massive investment of resources to get rid of, and so on. I won't go into actual game mechanics (because that's not the point for this post), but the essential idea is that if one of your cards takes two of your opponent's, it was valuable, and so on. Hearthstone's a complicated card game, but boiled down, as long as your pluses ad up to a greater number than your minuses, you're on track to win.

The same principle can be applied to a lot of things in real life. You're a person, with all the potential and limits that implies. You have a significant (but finite) amount of resources available to you inherently, and it's up to you to decide how they're going to be distributed.

Consider the concept of Hearthstone's trading, modified to fit real life. Both my opponent and I have a set of cards, none of which are known to the other player. My opponent plays a card, and I have to make an assessment about what I want to do; do I use one of my own cards to eliminate it, effectively resetting the board? If so, which? Do I let it persist and draw more cards to have more options later, taking the risk of it becoming part of a combination?

The whole idea of this is, basically: how bad is the situation? That established, how much of my hand do I want to invest in order to resolve it? Also, which solution do I want to use?

For real life, I think it would be a gross understatement to say the math is a little more complex than a "do I want to use my whole turn to kill that" sort of scenario. For one thing, your hand is not composed of clearly labeled cards, and your own resources might be substantially greater or lesser than you initially think. Also, you don't usually have a single opponent, and sometimes it seems like everything is your opponent. The principle, however, is valid. Take careful stock of your resources at any given juncture and consciously decide how you want to allocate them.

Say, for instance, you're a member of a club that's having an event on Saturday. You also have a midterm on Monday, and all the other usual necessaries of life in addition to these two. Now, if you're like me, you go promptly to mental pieces thinking about everything at once and manage to do full justice to absolutely nothing in your scatter-plot. Effectively, I focus on everything at once and wind up focusing on nothing at all.

A healthier response, in my opinion, is the exact reverse. Focus on one thing to the exclusion of all else. It doesn't even matter which one, just pick something off the list of things and do it. Do nothing else during this time. Food in the microwave? It's not going anywhere, certainly not after you've cooked it. Boys blowin' up yo phone? Don't worry, they'll still be walking around in the same daze in ten minutes. Whichever thing you choose to do, do only that. Listening to music? Rock out for a while. Studying? Permit no other thoughts. Cleaning your desk? Cleanse it with fire.

The short version goes like this: pick a single opponent, observe its play, and play one of your cards in response. Go turn by turn until it's done. With a little practice at this, I think you'll discover the wonderful arithmetic of everyday life. Taken out of their overwhelming number and dealt with fully and singly, each problem is never as bad as it was with all its friends. That's the thing about life trying to swamp you with cards to deal with; all the opponents have to try and overwhelm you with numbers, because one-on-one your cards are incredibly overpowered.

TL;DR Your hand rocks; just take situations one at a time and try to go plus in each one.