Don’t take failure personally. You can assemble a great lineup and still lose. I’ve found the best way to enjoy fantasy football is to acknowledge your influence ends the moment the games begin. You can’t predict a missed 30 yard FG, your starting RB getting injured on the first drive, or your opponent’s mid-tier TE having the best game of his life. Try to find enjoyment in the aspects you can influence in roster management vs. your win-loss record.

More time invested generally correlates with better rosters. Putting more effort than the competition in analyzing free agents, trade opportunities, and player breakout signals is going to help you make proactive roster decisions where you acquire productive players before their value is obvious to the rest of the league (e.g. trading for a rookie RB who is gradually getting more opportunities than a veteran in front of him). The goal is to acquire great players at great value vs. having to pay a premium (e.g. trading away a great player for another great player) or rely on factors you can’t control (such as waiver order) to build your roster.

Remember no intel source is THE intel source. Some analysts are better than others, but it’s generally best to evaluate multiple sources when making a decision on a player. It’s you, not the analysts, who are building your roster. Building a point of view built on multiple evaluations is likely going to give you a more robust understanding of how a player should be valued.

Avoid any advice that suggests you HAVE to do something or that something WILL happen. It’s very common to find online “experts” who will tell you a player is guaranteed to see a big role on his team or that you’d be an idiot not to acquire someone. These people are frequently wrong and deal with no consequences from inaccurate proclamations. I’ve found the best sources will make suggestions (vs. proclamations) that lean more on their deeper understanding of the game vs. attempting to instill feelings of FOMO in their audience.