I also play on Xbox. I plan the flight in advance, according to the weather arrival airports from the Internet and manually type the flight plan in MFC. Very often, when I fly up at the arrival airport, the ATC gives me a different lane. Then I change the approach lane to FMC. After that, I evaluate the new route plan and if the flight point is not on the way, then I use DIR to set the next point so that it is on the way. That way I don’t have to fly in circles.
You can practice doing this, for example, flying in circles taking off and landing at the airport using Navigraph maps and changing the point of the route.
In the picture, the normal path is drawn in “red”, which is automatically shown when planning a flight into FMC in an airplane. And “blue” is the way to shorten the arrival can choose by DIR. I’ve personally trained like this dozens of times.