I use notecards in the following ways, though I am sure there are other good ways in which they can be used.
The first use of notecards, is as flash cards to help you memorize something new, like a build order. This is the main way I used notecards in college, I would fill out a ton of notecards, take them with me everywhere. Whenever I had a little time, I would pull them out and shuffle through them, I could do this while grabbing some food between classes, or while on shuttle bus between campuses, or even at some jobs.
You could even get away with using them in class, since as long as you wrote something on them once in a while, the Prof would just think you were taking notes on his lecture, though you might be studying for another class entirely, or working on a D&D character ^-^
I covered in an earlier post, some of the ways to deal with the problems of Fear/Stress that Babytoss so accurately, and Bravely, described on her blog. I also covered some other aspects of that in my Mindset post.
Some elements of Stress can be compensated for (to an extent) in a Tournament, while Laddering, or even during practice sessions, by using notecards.
Stress makes it hard to think or remember things, I don't know if the rules for most LANS allow you to have notes in front of you while your playing (you could not in Chess tournaments), but you can certainly use them between matches to help anchor your plan for the next match in place. If you do that, you are much more likely to remember your plan and follow through with it.
Notecards tend to work better for this than notebooks or electronic devices, because you can shuffle through them faster and more accurately, and when you get the one(s) you want you can pull it out and put the rest away.
At the minimum you should have one build per matchup, but as you advance to higher levels, somewhere around High Diamond/Masters, you will need to add more builds to your repertoire. In either case, having a notecard(s) with the basic build order and certain key notes, like "if they are going Muta I need to switch to Stalkers" can only help.
You might think it is silly, until you actually compete in a big tournament, but the Stress can get so high you forget everything or panic. Having a plan gives you a greater sense of control, that will lower your stress right there. Having the plan on a notecard means you don't have to worry about being to stressed to remember it.
Also at higher levels of competition, you will start to know most of the people you will be facing, so you can develop a specific plan for each of them, but you may only face 1 or 2 at any given tournament. Having the notecards prepared means you can focus on the plan you need based on actual pairings in the tournament.
See Day9's "My Life of Starcraft Day9 Daily #100" for Day9's description of Tournament stress and a whole lot more, note that sometimes beating a really good player in one game can mess you up more than losing.
Another use of notecards, because they are truly RAM (Random Access Memory), not linear or sequential memory, is they help you see new combinations. That is very useful when you are trying to discover something new, to find a new pattern, because you can shuffle the cards just like you would Magic the Gathering cards or regular playing cards. You will get a random shuffle of units, buildings, or strategies, that can give you a totally new insight into the game.
This is similar to the serious side of Funday Mondays, in addition to the fun side of Funday Mondays. Day9 has mentioned this more than once IIRC.
I will talk more about Notecards in future posts. I will close with some examples of my notecards, click on them to enlarge.
GL HF
 |
| Simple Basic |
 |
| Fancy & Colorful for contrast |
 |
| Color Coded Mineral/Gas/Time |
No comments:
Post a Comment