Two weeks ago I started a new job. Not a big deal… except it’s my first 9 to 5 (6, actually) job, and that’s been messing with my WoW schedule.

Until now, all my jobs had been very flexible – I regularly played in the morning and then worked from noon until raid time. This had a few very obvious advantages: farming when no one was online, less lag in Dalaran and so on. And, of course, much more time to play.

When you leave home at 8.30 and come back in the evening at 7… things change fast. My first and most important problem was raid times: we raid until 12 server time, and that means 1 a.m. for me. Sadly, I’ve discovered that going to bed at 1.30 and waking up at 7.30 every day doesn’t really work – I’m a zombie both at work and in raids.

Work or WoW?

So what can I do? I’ve found a few solutions:
1. Sleep. Simple but effective. I skipped a raid a few days ago and I slept. A lot. The next day I felt much better at work and I was still rested for the next raid.

2. Use work downtime. Seriously, you don’t work all the time. I’ve started using lunch breaks and free time to read raid strategies and even theorycraft. (Note: I hate theorycrafting, but when I’m at work it’s quite entertaining.) I even wrote this post while waiting for a co-worker to come back with some info.

3. Use the mornings. This might not work for everyone, but I need at least half an hour of doing nothing before I go to work. My “morning coffee” is my morning blog reading. Recently I’ve started doing my short dailies in the morning (like Jewelcrafting), using my long cooldowns (Titansteel, Icy Prisms) or maybe a bit of farming. It gives me something to do until my body wakes up completely and I don’t have to worry about them before raid time! If you’ve got more time, you can even try a quick heroic.

4. Schedule your play time. This sounds a bit like a job, but I don’t mean keeping timesheets. Assuming you’re in a raiding guild, most of your evenings will be busy with raiding (main runs, alt runs, ‘let’s go crush the Horde’ runs..). For the non-raiding time, a list of goals would be useful.

For example, what I want to do this weekend:
- farm titanium ores/lots of saronite for the last Titansteel Bar I need for my new wrists
- get a bunch of mats for Icy Prisms and some Eternal Fire for transmuting gems
- get at least 50 more Emblems of Triumph for a new piece of gear on my pally
- do the daily random every day on my druid
- boost/find groups and boost my boyfriend’s shammy

Not very much to do, but knowing what I want to accomplish will be useful.

This is all I’ve tried so far, but I want to hear any ideas you have about it. I’m sure there’s tricks more experienced people use – after all, I’ve only been doing this for a couple of weeks.