One of the most common statements given to new players from experienced ones is to “focus on macro” and for good reason. It shows new players that you do not need to do everything perfectly in this very complicated game. Following the mantra “focus on macro” shows new players that it is okay for them to neglect what at first appears to be a very important task ‘microing your units’ and instead focus on macro tasks that result in greater performance: building probes, spending your money, not getting supply blocked etc… What I want to talk about today is an expansion of “focus on macro”, for players who seem to have outgrown this beginner friendly advice. Even very strong players can continue to benefit from the core principle behind the advice “focus on macro” which is: prioritize tasks which have a greater impact on the game than lesser ones. In fact, I believe that some of the strongest Starcraft players of all time were masters of this idea. When you think about both Flash and Serral, they are not necessarily good at any one thing, they just seem to do everything right all the time. They are strong at prioritizing the tasks that are important for winning. That is what I want to talk about today. How you can accomplish more by doing everything badly, as opposed to doing one thing very well; how you can achieve greater overall results in your Starcraft games by neglecting perfection in details of the game that are insignificant. Not necessarily to do everything badly forever, but that doing everything badly should be prioritized before trying to do any one aspect well. 

Your time is very limited

            What everyone realizes right away when they first start playing Starcraft is that there is a lot of stuff to do. There is a lot of stuff to do, and not a lot of time to do it. Early on in learning the game the easiest way to get more of this stuff done is to increase the speed at which you can accomplish tasks. The faster you can do the tasks, the more tasks you can complete. Eventually though, getting faster takes more effort and it takes longer to achieve significant gains in speed. There are also just too many tasks to do even for progamer’s who devote thousands of hours to perfecting their play. Therefore, eventually we need to go beyond the speed at which we complete tasks and focus on how we prioritize the many tasks to be done in the game. What I have told a lot of my students throughout the years is that playing slowly is playing quickly. I suppose I sound like Doc Hudson in the kid’s movie Cars “turn left to go right”. But playing slowly really is very effective at increasing your performance if you use it correctly. Let me give you an example. Let us say you have 9 seconds to accomplish some tasks. In these 9 seconds you have two choices (for simplicity). You are trying to get the most value for your actions as possible within the 9 seconds.

Choice 1:

– 3 tasks that take 3 seconds each

– total screen changes = 9

– total value of your actions = 30

Choice 2:

– 1 task that takes 9 seconds

– total screen changes = 3

– total value of your actions = 50

Which one of these choices would result in more value? Which choice would look like more was accomplished?

            Because choice 1 results in more screen changes, it looks like more is getting done. However, because choice 2 results in greater value after the 9 seconds, you are accomplishing more while looking like you accomplished less. Even more harmful, and very common is when a player does task 1 with 27 screen changes and it takes them 12 seconds when it should have only taken 9 screen changes and 9 seconds. This makes it look like you are doing even more than the players who chose choice 1 & choice 2 while accomplishing significantly less than either. Thus, by playing quickly but inefficiently you are playing slowly and by playing slowly but deliberately being very efficient you are playing quickly.

            To give a more real-world example, one very common task I see being done inefficiently are warp ins by protoss players. One could accomplish a full warp in cycle once every half minute but often protoss players are doing half of their warp ins every 15 seconds which results in doing the same amount of work with twice as much effort. Not exactly an efficient use of one’s time. This extra time could be used for something meaningful instead which would result in greater overall value.

Getting the most value possible for your time

            Knowing that we have very limited time and knowing that doing everything perfectly is impossible, we should try and figure out what tasks are most important for us to accomplish. As was evident from the statement “focus on macro”, we should prioritize this over micro. But what about scouting? Where does this fit into the equation. How much scouting should you be doing as a new player, an intermediate player, an advanced player? Where do you see diminishing returns for your time investment in scouting? And what about dealing with multiple attacks and main engagements. Surely defending your main base from a massive doom drop or microing the main battle that could decide the game takes precedent over macroing at that exact time. It is not an easy question, and as I suggested before this is something that even the strongest players continue to work on and reflect upon. A post GSL level replay analysis might have the player questioning whether focusing on task A was more important than focusing on task B rather than necessarily something they did wrong. Both task A and task B might have been correct, but which was more correct for that moment in time? This can get very complicated as you improve at the game because the game state is constantly changing and what might have been a top priority a second ago is now a third or fourth level priority. You need to constantly adjust your priorities depending on the situation. However, there are some constants and questions you can ask yourself while analyzing your own games:

1)    Was I able to get more value doing this task than another task?

2)    Am I being inefficient in doing this task? (Can I get the same value in less time)

3)    Is there a way I can do this task less perfectly, but more efficiently which will allow me to gain more value overall? (more value by allowing you to do task B which was not possible when you were trying to do task a perfectly)

Task A done perfectly > Task A done imperfectly but…

(Task A done imperfectly + B) > Task A done perfectly