Playblasting is a huge waste of time

Calm down, dont freak out yet! Of course theres no replacement for watching your animation at real-time speed, and you absolutely must watch your animation this way to be productive. However, hours are lost every week waiting for previews and playblasts to render. Reclaim your productive time by creating a layer or a button to hide everything in the scene except the character and proxy-resolution sets, so you can simply hit Play to watch the animation. If youre working with a rig thats too heavy to do this, request a proxy version from your TD or supervisor. Most film-level rigs have a version created from tin-can geometry parented to bones to make this possible. If this is impossible, at least take notes while watching your playblasts to avoid re-rendering constantly.