IMO it is a good and healthy thing to balance "hardcore" practice DM and just mindless fun. If you want to improve at the game then you certainly need to put a lot of time towards good, concentrated practice. No distractions, no music, no netflix on the other monitor, just good solid practice. However, at the end of the day, it is a video game...and IMO video games should be fun first and foremost. So for me I absolutely need some time to just go in there and mindlessly click heads, try to see how high of a kill streak I can get in FFA, etc. Sure, it might not be "good" practice...but damn is it fun, and sometimes I need that break.

Last night was a good example. Football is back, even if it is just the preseason, so on one monitor I had the Cowboys/Steelers game on and on the other I was FFAing/KZing/etc. 3 hours and several hundred kills later I'm still DMing. Sure, it wasn't "good" practice...but it was so much fun and a nice break from the grind of try-harding.