I work about 70 hours a week. I am used to it but won’t do it forever. One day I hope to simply work a bout 20-30 hours a week and not have people be able to tell I am even working at all. For now I am still in the grind, so I need to be efficient with my time. I eat in the car, sleep about 5 hours a night with the help of tiny day naps, and I watch very little TV. Now that football season is back on the big screens of America, I have to fit in more TV time.
I’ve been a football fan since age five. I prefer the NFL to college ball but I enjoy both. Being super busy, I have found ways to make sure I see as much NFL action as possible, in the least amount of time. Since becoming a full fledged adult, I have already culled a few sports off my platter. I just don’t have the free time that I did as a kid or teenager. I have not given up on staying on top of NFL action and do not plan on it. Here I will share a few ways for you all to keep up with as many NFL games as possible, in the most efficient ways I know about. The 2014 season has kicked off and a full set of Sunday games is at hand. Enjoy the action and save some time with the options below.
The NFL RedZone is a great deal at about $11 a month. If you are a scoring junkie, this is the place to watch. You can see tons of points put on the board and see all the teams slated for a particular day. I prefer a game in its entirety, but you will get a bigger overall picture of the happenings from each Sunday with the RedZone channel.
The NFL Network replays condensed games during the week after the live games. You can watch a full game in about 30 minutes, believe it or not. That is a big time savings compared to a three and a half hour live game. The issue with this option is getting spoiled with the game results since you are catching the games days after they have been finished. I can enjoy a game even when I know the outcome, but some people would not care to watch at that point. If you can keep away from media you can hide results from yourself until you see the condensed versions. This is hard, especially with people in your daily life discussing games all the time. NFL fans are all around you obviously.
You can still watch the games almost live and save some hours of your Sunday. This is my go to move when watching NFL games on Sundays when I don’t have plans to go anywhere. You should have a DVR at this point in history, if not please get one asap. I usually record the games I want to see and simply wait until about one hour, maybe two, to start watching. I can then easily flip past not only the commercials, but penalty delays and huddle time. There is only about 11 minutes of actual game play in an NFL football game. Seems crazy I know, but it is a fact. I prefer to watch a full game without flipping past huddle time and such, because you do miss a lot of details without seeing each minute of airtime along with the commentary. But the time savings are more important to me currently. So I do my fast forwarding with the 30 second skip feature on my Dish remote. That is a perfect amount of time for commercials and also the 40 second play clock in the NFL. My timing is impeccable with this remote feature! As soon as a play ends, I am on to the next one.
The DVR method above can be used to record the games and watch at your convenience. You still must make sure you don’t get spoiled with the score before watching. That’s why I prefer to record, then start watching while the game is still going on. I am less likely to find out scores too soon that way.
Most any cable or satellite service allows you to watch TV on the go now. So if you have to watch NFL games on your phone or tablet, so be it. A big screen TV is the best way to watch football, but you have to do what you have to do to get your NFL fix. I once watched an entire season of Game Of Thrones on a laptop, so I am not too good to use a small screen when I have to do it.
I hope that helps you be more time efficient while you let NFL football wash over you each week. The fact that I had to give these tips out for busy people like myself, tells me many of us are way too busy anyway. Maybe we need to cut back on work somewhat so we can relax and enjoy the simpler things in life….like a safety blitz or a screen pass that goes for about 60 yards.
