Time Management

Summary

• Being a smart bettor means keeping track of your time and making sure you take days off from betting and enjoy sports without placing a bet as well.
• The Canadian Lower-Risk Gambling guidelines suggest that you gamble no more than 4 days a month.
• Make rules for yourself that you feel good about and evaluate whether you are sticking to these limits on a regular basis.
• Continuous and fast-paced live betting may increase your risk of losing track of time.

Often advice on how to gamble responsible relates to monetary consumption, such as planning how much you want to spend on gambling. While it is of course important to keep track of your monetary consumption related to gamblers, clever gamblers also keep track of the time.

Why should I bother about my time consumption?

A lot of players bet to experience an extra rush when watching a football game, tennis match or other sporting events, that they enjoy. While this rush can be pleasurable it can also make one loose track of time. Especially if you are betting on live betting or always looking for the best odds.

Loosing track of time can make you end up neglecting other important activities.

How to keep track of the time?

Some operators offer tools such as stop watches and time limits to help player keep track of their gambling. If your preferred operator offers such a tool it can be useful to utilize these tools, because they can help you decide in advance how much time you want to spend on betting and give you feedback when you are reaching your limits.

If your preferred operator doesn’t have an option to help you keep track of time you can create your own simple setup by setting a timer on your phone. Another option is to note down the amount of time you spend on betting each day for a week. It may be a good idea to not only consider the time you spent on actually placing the bet, but also time spent planning and researching various odds.

If you are surprised by the results, it may be signal that you could benefit from cutting down.

How much is too much?

It is very difficult to say exactly how much is to much, as this will vary greatly from one player to another. A good recommendation is to choose an amount that you would feel comfortable about telling others about that you spend on gambling.

The Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction launched their Lower-Risk Gambling Guidelines last month which are based on 5 years of research using both gambling data, survey data from players and expert opinions. The guidelines state that if you want to reduce your risk of gambling related harms you should gamble no more than 4 days a month (among two other guidelines). This does not necessarily mean that you have a problem if you gamble more than four days but that your risk level will increase if you gamble more than 4 days a month.