hi rumnchess
1. Natural Talent - 17%
B I truly believe most people estimate themselves higher then what they probably should, similar to how an average let's say 5/10 looking person would rate himself/herself at least a 7/10 usually. I think, this was first brought to my attention in a documentary with umm "TRaehoe" Alec Torelli in it.
2. Work Ethic - 25%
F I have twice in my career, literally stopped playing poker for periods of over 10 months, to play ... sigh... computer games. I have an extremely addictive personality, and have always loved competitive video games. To this day, I am still addicted to Warcraft(WoW) and probably play 20ish hours a week. (during the periods of no poker, i would play 80+ hours a week) I've actually considered going to AA to talk about addictions and learn how to deal with them better. I'd probably try to not mention my computer game addiction the first few sessions as people who have/had alcohol/drug addictions most likely won't take me serious. Honestly, I was addicted to marijuana for 3 years, and I think WoW may be a worse addiction, I know for me specifically it is... It has been my escape, and obsession for way too long now, and I believe is the single handedly biggest thing that has held me back. With pot, i would usually play 4-6 hours in the morning, then get blazed out of my mind with friends and enjoy the night, possibly playing an hour or two after they left but never really harming my self too bad as i'd quit if I we're losing a bi or two.. with WoW I'll go weeks without playing a single hand, and not even think about it, the only thought will be when I can get back into the game faster..
3. Professionalism - 40%
B+ I think I'm very professional when I actually do grind. I've always been able to take great shots at higher limits, and been able to jump down if I failed quite easily. I rarely gamble more then I can afford at casinos on degening and a lot of the times I just watch my friends go off. My biggest leak in this pillar is spending habits.. when I'm winning big, i blow money stupidly. I can't tell you how many times I've had to basically create BR's from nearly scratch because my combined poor work ethics and spending habits...
4. Life Balance & Confidence - 18%
C I have similar issues to OP, I can't go to sleep without being exhausted. I actually believe I have like 28 hours days where the rest of the world works on 24. It seems i wake up 2 3 or 4 hours later each day then the previous one. My solution to this is, to pull an "all nighter" which basically means just stay up all frigging day until my eyes are practically bleeding so that when I do go to bed it's closer to a "normal" hour. Even as I write this, it's 6:30 am and I haven't slept yet... pathetic. I think to correct this I have to start using an alarm, so I don't oversleep so much. I think this is the problem but after about 8 years of not having to use an alarm clock it sure is hard to get back into the habit.
Great post in general rumnchess and I just want to say I feel you on the whole thing, we still got a lot of **** to figure out, especially if we ever want to look back at our poker careers and be proud. If anything this has been an eye opener for me, and I'm sure the same for many others. It's time to start to "give poker the respect it deserves". I believe if I try to fix everything overnight I'll get simply overwhelmed, so I'll try to clear my mind and figure out how I'm going to quit WoW, this time.. hopefully for good.