It’s been a few years since I decided to take improvement at bridge a lot more seriously. I’ve always wanted to be a good player, but after enough games, I realized that I wanted to be more than this: Eventually, I’d love to be a great player – perhaps even a professional one.

Even players who don’t have professional card playing aspirations might feel the same way about their playing: The feeling of wanting to approach their bidding, play and interaction with other bridge players with more drive this year.

Since this mindset change – the decision to be better – I’ve already noticed a few changes, not just in the way I play bridge, but the way I approach everything else.

Here’s how more serious bridge playing changed things.

1. Serious Playing: Making the Time for Bridge

“I don’t have time to do it!” is one of the most common complaints that I’ve heard from people who want to be writers or journalists, but might be juggling other responsibilities and careers. The same sentence has also come from bridge neophytes learning the game.

This morning, I typed until 4AM and got up at 5:30. Making coffee, I wrapped up some cleaning and then sat down pitching for the week ahead. From there, I took a several-mile walk to the road and back, then typed 4,000 words before 10AM. It’s past midnight as I write this, and I’m still working – likely until the sun rises – and I’ll start again with another coffee.

Somewhere in the middle of this, there was time for a jog, a short shopping trip, a short story, another pitching round and three bridge games for good measure. I might still stop for a game of Reversi, just as a way to test how awake I am in an hour’s time.

If you want to do something – including playing bridge – you’ll make the time.

2. Serious Playing: Learning Better Planning

I’m terrible at remembering dates, and I used to be just as bad at planning ahead for future events.

Serious bridge playing means that I’ve learned how to keep a much closer eye on how I manage my time, and how I plan to manage my time in the future. I’ve learned to set reminders, check calenders and generally stick to deadlines better.

Taking bridge playing more seriously can mean that better planning is a natural consequence of being on time for more games.

3. Serious Playing: Remembering Numbers

As a younger child, I can say that I had a keen capacity for the recall of numbers: Usually strings of them, and ones that adults would ask me for often when they themselves couldn’t remember. Sometimes I’d rattle off these strings just to prove that I had paid attention when nobody else around me was doing it.

I’d tell people the number sequence on the bill I’d just given them, or recall a phone number in a hurry when adults barely realized that I had noticed it. Sometimes I’d do it with registration numbers, too.

As I got older, this ability feels like it wore off for a while.

Bridge is what helped it to come back.

Serious, regular playing can help it to do the same thing for you.

4. Serious Playing: A Better, Clearer Self

It’s hard to keep up appearances. This is a fact of depression that not a lot of people talk about, but that a lot of people with depressive conditions (and those around them) might have noticed.

Depression means that you feel like you’ve had the life sucked out of you; like you’re a yo-yo that’s not coming back up anytime soon. A few hours, days or weeks of this and everything else starts to slip.

I remember getting to a point where I thought, “Why bother?”

It was a few months before I bothered to brush my hair. A simple task, but one that seemed impossible at the time.

Am I proud of this? Certainly not.

Did I get through this period – and finally grab the confidence to decide that I wanted to get back up in the first place? Yup.

Bridge made me realize that coming back up from the dark space I was in was possible, likely and necessary for a better life.