Congrats on what appear to be massive mental game achievements. I need to get to where I quit when tilted, and more so, don't tilt when stuck.

Haha, not exactly, but that mental image just made my day. Thanks, bob!

Thanks, pokerodox, it felt really empowering to feel like I could keep playing well and relatively carefree despite being stuck huge and having run way below expectation over a few days in really good games. In the past, it had been a major struggle to not let that kind of runbad affect my attitude and quality of play. Tbh, I could feel myself starting to crack a bit early into Saturday's session but then I was fortunate to godrun for a few hours.

I still have plenty of room for improvement, I just need to keep heading in the right direction.

I’ve had a really good last few weeks on the felt and so far have had an excellent 2016 in poker. Over my last ~800 hours of play, my results have been phenomenal in both PLO and NL (especially PLO), a welcome relief after the big downswing that preceded that stretch. I’ve been happy with my volume and hope to keep maintaining a pace that will get me to 1200+ hours of live cash on the year.

Life-wise, despite not really having done much new lately, I'm feeling more self-assured and comfortable with where I'm at in life. My self-understanding and self-acceptance have been enhanced thanks to a renewed interest in the MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator), something I've had a lifelong interest in but hadn't researched too deeply until recently.

An Introduction to MBTI Theory

To provide a brief overview about the MBTI, it's a personality typing system with a foundation based on concepts articulated by Carl Jung many decades ago. Individuals fall into one of 16 different personality types based on four different sets of preferences: Introverted (I) v. Extroverted (E), Sensing (S) v. Intuitive (N), Feeling (F) v. Thinking (T), Judging (J) v. Perceiving (P). IvE refers to where an individual tends to prefer directing his energy (inwards or outwards), SvN refers to one's preferred method of perception (relying either on the five senses or on something beyond), FvT refers to one's process for making judgments and decisions (values-based or impersonal/objective-based), JvP refers to one's attitude towards structure and flexibility (closed or open-ended).

A preference is just that: a preference. We are all capable of being both intuitive and sensing, introverted and extroverted, etc., but each of us has a preference towards one or the other, similar to how a right-handed person will generally rely on their right hand but still need to use their left hand a bunch. Sometimes these preferences are hard-wired as being very strong in an individual. Other times they’re more moderate.

Less well-known about the MBTI but critically important, each of the 16 types has its own fixed “functional stack” of four functions. The functions are essentially how an individual is wired to operate (e.g., think, act, process, etc.). In each functional stack the four functions are broken down such that there is a dominant function (strongest), an auxiliary function, a tertiary function, and an inferior function (weakest). There are eight different functions altogether (though each individual uses only four) and they are all either “perceiving” functions (N or S) or “judging” functions (T or F). Thus, each individual has an N function, an S function, a T function, and an F function, and, again, depending on their personality type (e.g., INTJ), some of those functions are highly developed while others are more weakly developed. Furthermore, these functions are expressed in either an introverted or extroverted fashion.

So, as a quick recap, there are sixteen types based on each possible combination of the four preferences (i.e., ENFP, INTP, ESFJ, etc.). In operating through life, an individual will utilize a certain hierarchy of N/S/T/F functions (always one of each) in some kind of hierarchical order based on type where there’s a dominant function (very highly developed), an auxiliary function (also strong, but not as strong as the dominant function), a tertiary function (tends to start getting stronger as an individual settles into adult-hood), and an inferior function (an Achilles heel that will be quite under-developed compared to many other types).

I am an INFJ, which means I have a preference for introversion over extroversion, intuition over sensory data, feeling over thinking (sometimes characterized as a preference for personal values versus impersonal values), and judging over perceiving (i.e., closure over open-endedness). According to the results of my last test, I have a very strong preference for introversion, a decently strong preference for intuition, and moderate preferences for feeling and judging. As far as my process for living as an INFJ goes, under mbti theory my dominant function (strongest) is introverted intuition, my auxiliary function is extraverted feeling, my tertiary function is introverted thinking, and my inferior function (weakest) is extraverted sensing. Right now, on their face those concepts might not mean much, but after doing a lot of reading over the last couple of weeks they’ve been illuminating to me and I will explain what they mean in greater detail in the future itt.

If this sounds like psychobabble, maybe it is. The MBTI is not without its skeptics, and its credibility isn’t rock-solid, especially given the number of misguided MBTI sites lurking out there. However, a lot of MBTI detractors judge it against a presumed level of accuracy and specificity that it can’t provide. A better way to look at it is like this: Consider that there are many breeds of dogs. We use certain adjectives when talking about the characteristics of breeds (jack russell terriors are stubborn, yippy, etc., golden retrievers are loyal, patient, etc. rottweilers are aggressive, protective, etc.). Not all jack russells or golden retrievers or rottweilers are always going to perfectly fit the mold prescribed for their breed, but most are going to act fairly predictably by breed, and we're better off knowing how to best care for them through general knowledge about their breed. So it is with MBTI types. An ESFJ is more likely to behave like an ESFJ than another type. An ESFJ is more likely to be very strong in skills associated with extraverted feeling (its dominant function) than other types and not as strong compared to other types when it comes to introverted thinking, an ESFJ’s inferior function. In knowing more about the ESFJ type we can better understand an individual typed as an ESFJ.

I believe we live in a world where individuals often feel misunderstood and are in fact often misunderstood. The MBTI, while far from perfect, is a promising instrument for understanding the general experiences of others. It’s also a great instrument for enhancing one’s own understanding of himself/herself.

The above description is simply the nuts and bolts underlying the system. It might be boring reading or difficult to understand without context, but if I want to write seriously about the MBTI itt than I can’t do it without establishing such a framework. The really interesting stuff will come later.

I plan on writing a lot more about the MBTI but I’ll leave it at this introductory overview for the time being. If you read this and find yourself already intrigued about your own type or the MBTI in general, I recommend the site “personality junkie” above all other sites and, if you’re especially interested, I recommend the book “My True Type” by A.J. Drenth (owner of that same site). Special thanks to 2p2 poster cwar, an expert on MBTI theory, for generously helping lead me to these sources as well as offering encouragement in learning more about personality theory.

MBTI: Introversion versus Extraversion

Unbeknownst to many people only loosely familiar with the MBTI, a preference for introversion versus extraversion revolves primarily around how certain types of activities affect an individual's energy. In popular culture, introverts are typically characterized as quiet/shy and reluctant to engage in social activities whereas extraverts are characterized as being more socially adept and more socially active. While this characterization is generally accurate, under MBTI theory it's more a correlation of the E/I divide rather than indicative of whether one is an introvert or extravert. The actual crux of the E/I preference is how certain types of activities will either consume energy from an individual or produce energy for an individual. Energy is the key to understanding E/I.

An introvert's attention is inwardly directed, primarily concerned with the self and inner experience. An introvert tends to care less about external circumstances and more about self-understanding. As A.J. Drenth writes, an introvert is preoccupied with what he/she has to offer the world and an introvert is naturally drawn to pursuing activities that address that question. These activities tend to be of a solitary nature. Alone time generates energy for an introvert.

Providing the introvert with energy, the world of inner experience is the true natural environment of the introvert. Relatedly, the introvert tends to trust himself/herself more than the outside world, a more alien environment that places energy burdens on the introvert.

Activities that take an introvert out of his/her inner world tend to be taxing on an introvert, draining an introvert of energy. This is especially the case if an introvert finds himself/herself in an unfamiliar social environment or feels pressure that requires an introvert to act in a way the introvert wouldn’t find authentic, such as engaging in small talk or having to feign interest in a conversation topic where it is socially inappropriate to do otherwise.

When it comes to subjects of interest, an introvert chooses them rather selectively but will tend to approach them with great depth and intensity.

Extraverts are more concerned with the outside world. Rather than be preoccupied with their place in the world, they’re more interested in the world itself and what it has to offer them. They pursue a breadth of activities and they strive for new and different experiences. Spending time around others or in new or different kinds of environments energizes them. As Drenth writes, extraverts prioritize quantity over quality and breadth rather than depth.

Spending time alone drains extraverts. Moreover, they have a tendency to trust the world more than they trust themselves, according to Drenth.

Introverts are fixated on self-understanding and living a life authentic to that understanding. Extraverts are fixated on what’s going on in the outside world and enjoying novel experiences exploring that world. They tend to tie their identity to external matters. While introverts tend to be careful planners, extraverts prefer to act quickly and deal with the consequences later.

Interestingly, according to sources explored in Drenth’s book, introverts’ distaste for the outside world isn’t a matter of a lack of sensitivity to that world. In fact, introverts’ aversion to it may be to a large extent because introverts can be especially sensitive to external stimuli. I'm meh about quoting David Foster Wallace, but I like this quote too much: “Lonely people tend, rather, to be lonely because they decline to bear the psychic costs of being around other humans. They are allergic to people. People affect them too strongly.”

It has been estimated that 33-50% of Americans are introverts. In other countries, on the other hand, introverts represent a majority of the population.

Being Introverted

As I wrote in my previous post, among all of my four preferences the strongest preference I have is for introversion. This isn’t to say that I consciously prefer to be introverted or that I very strongly prefer to be introverted. Rather, it’s simply how I’m wired. That’s not to suggest, however, that the extent of this preference may not be diminished (or even become strengthened further) over time.

I’m so introverted that I’m worried I didn’t give a fair shake to extraverts above, as it’s truly difficult for me to understand how an extravert experiences life. One of the reasons I’m so intrigued by the MBTI is that I believe it gives me a better glimpse into dramatically different life experiences/perspectives than mine.

I remember for many years that I greatly struggled being able to pay attention to what was going on in the classroom. I spent much more time in my own head. I was a classic daydreamer. I remember being made to feel guilty many times when I was caught not paying attention in class, but the reality was I was just doing what was natural to me. I cared much more about my own thoughts than thoughts being presented to me by the outside world, and although I didn’t quite realize it then I trusted myself and my own learning process and educational interests more, too.

I had a great appetite for knowledge that I satisfied on my own with constant trips to the library and through subscribing to a ton of magazines, like Disney Adventures and Sports Illustrated for Kids. School just wasn’t that interesting. I read my magazines over and over again. One of my sisters was always amazed I could usually remember exactly which issue and which page to find just about any article in any of them. If I wanted to learn something, I did it on my own. It was totally engrossing and I loved it. Not long after my family bought a PC when I was in seventh grade (one of the most exciting days of my childhood) I learned HTML and created a couple of web sites, including an X-Files fan site that I was proud to watch get a decent amount of traffic. I was obsessed with that show. I had a couple of books that were basically episode guides that I read cover to cover infinite times.

Later on, I chose to go to a high school that was far away from where I lived. The high school had a great academic reputation and I fell in love with it when we visited and begged my parents to let me go despite the higher tuition than the school my sisters went. To my delight they said yes even though it was a decent financial strain on our family.

Almost all of my friends lived on the other, more affluent side of town and most lived about forty minutes away from me. I was plenty interested in girls, but they were nowhere to be found, as my high school was all-male, and doing anything to pursue them on my own seemed impossible. Moreover, very few of my friends owned cars, and I never owned one. As a result of all that, during high school I spent most weekends at home watching movies, reading books, and playing video games. I really enjoyed spending time with my friends while at school, but the truth is, I absolutely loved my weekends of spending time to myself or with my immediate family and I rarely felt much of a need to be doing anything else. At the time, heaven to me seemed like having infinite time to myself to do whatever I wanted, mostly solitary stuff.

Honestly, such a conception of adulthood heaven probably greatly resembled my life right now, ironically a lifestyle that I now find rather unfulfilling as chronicled in here.

Much to my chagrin, my parents told me I had to get a job when I was 15. It wasn’t about the money. They were worried I was spending too much time at home and that I was lazy. They told me they wanted me to learn responsibility and that it was time to start growing up. I wasn’t comfortable enough in my own skin to rebel and decided I’d just have to go to work somewhere. I signed up for caddy training at a golf course. I didn’t know anything about golf. Nothing whatsoever. Nor did I have any interest in golf. I happened to have a buddy who was doing the training and I couldn’t come up with anything more appealing.

Going through the caddy training I was constantly embarrassed talking to the other kids going through the course. I persisted in pretending like I knew golf basics when it was obvious I was totally clueless about the sport. After completing the training, I never actually ended up caddying. To actually get a caddying gig where I was approved to caddy, a caddy had to show up early. I don’t remember the exact time, but I remember showing up at 10:30 on a Sunday morning once only to be told the last caddy who’d been put to work had shown up much earlier. Yeah, no thanks, I was already a night person who struggled to get up early.

My Mom then set up an interview with the restaurant where one of my sisters worked for me to work as a busboy. All I remember about that interview was dressing up in nice clothes my Mom bought me that I had never worn in my life that my Mom had always pleaded with me to wear. It must have been a lousy interview because my sister was an all-star at the restaurant and I should have been a lock but wasn’t offered the job. I was secretly relieved.

My parents kept pushing for me to get a job and finally I ended up at McDonald’s, where my other sister had worked and had a really good experience. At first I felt like an outcast. Growing up I was surrounded entirely by Catholics in my neighborhood, at school, at church. My neighborhood was heavily ethnically and religiously concentrated, as most neighborhoods in Cleveland are to this day. Everyone was Slovenian, Italian, or Irish.

Suddenly I was working with public school kids (who were always a source of fascination for me and my friends at our Catholic school) and interacting meaningfully with kids of a different skin color than mine. I was also working with actual adults who were doing the same things I was doing. Increasingly, though, I felt comfortable on the job. I was meeting people different than anyone I had known before and enjoying it. I also enjoyed some parts of the work experience. I often got the shift that started at 5 am on Saturday (my Dad would wake up early and drive me there), and that was brutal. So too was any time I was assigned to do janitorial work, as I’d always found a way not to do any chores at home and was clueless when it came to knowing how to clean, something I now feel guilty about. But I noticed I was becoming talented at talking to customers at my standard spot, the cashier, and I enjoyed the exhilaration that would come sometimes when we got really busy and I had to stay on top of a bunch of things at once. It actually felt good to work and to be aware I was doing good work. It was a neat experience training new employees, too; I had never trained anyone to do anything before. It made me feel helpful and somewhat accomplished.

For one of the first times ever I was also starting to get some attention from the opposite sex. There was this girl who worked with me who was always dressed up in goth clothes and was the exact opposite of anyone I regularly interacted with but for reasons I didn’t yet understand we clicked immediately and had a really nice rapport. One day she bent down and picked up a tiny slip of paper. It had a phone number on it. She handed it to me and said a girl had given it to her a couple of minutes earlier when I was in the back, the girl had said I was cute and asked her to give it to me. I was confused. I started to ask questions and her answers didn’t make any sense. Then panic set in as I realized what was going on. It was her number; she was too embarrassed to ask me out directly. I threw out the slip and said I was weirded out by the situation, feeling a mixture of emotions, some conscious others not. I liked her but I wasn’t ready to admit to myself that I liked her. I didn’t think she’d be accepted by my family. I’m not sure I was ready to accept her, either. She was a little cold towards me from that day on and started dating someone else a couple weeks later.

Well, that was one hell of a long tangent. I’ve been inspired a bit by the LLApex stories in his PGC (check it out) and I’ve found I’ve been interested in telling some of my own stories. I guess I thought of all that in this context because the McDonald’s job is the first time I can remember stepping out of my shell significantly and being better off for it. That job was the first of many like jobs and experiences that ended up being huge for my development as a person. The experience never would have happened if I hadn’t been forced to venture outside of my inner world, a world where I felt alive and that was totally natural to me but held me back from experiencing life in a fuller way. That job taught me the enjoyment of hard work, the satisfaction of getting a paycheck (all I ever bought were video game systems and video games and books), it exposed me to people I had never met before and helped me realize what awaited me outside of our small, crazily homogenous neighborhood, it really helped me start growing up, like my parents had wanted. I resented it all at the time but the more I think back the more grateful I am they pushed me to start working.

I think a decent amount of my dissatisfaction with my life right now rests upon indulging my introverted side too much. Ever since leaving the firm, I’ve been living the dream introverted lifestyle, the kind of life I dreamt about as a kid. My interaction with the outside world is as voluntary as anyone could wish. I spend a ton of time reading, watching TV, working out, doing stuff that I greatly enjoy, but it’s becoming increasingly clear it’s all far short of what a fulfilling life looks like for me. A few years ago, I realized I had a hunger for social connection and fun that had been hidden from conscious view for a very long time. The times I do something different, I tend to really enjoy myself. Moreover, interacting with people is often a pleasure, especially amazing one-on-one conversations where both parties open up and speak freely. Yet too often I decline opportunities to get out into the world and I instead tend to stay with what’s safe and what’s guaranteed to provide at least a little contentment rather than something that might be rough or be a major energy drain. That’s something I could write about but am now finding I don’t have the time to write about, the million times I’ve experienced some degree of social anxiety or experienced a large energy drain courtesy of the outside world. The truth is, I’ve had a lot of positive reinforcement for being introverted and a lot of negative reinforcement for being extraverted, but I know that if I truly want to grow as a person I need to open up more to the extraverted perspective.

Anyways, I could write ad nauseum about my experiences as an introvert but the gist is, like any introvert, I tend to be self-focused, I’m most comfortable in my own world, the interests I have I tend to get very deeply into, I distrust the world to some extent, I shy away from new experiences, I’m energized by time alone but a lot of social situations eat away at my energy, I care more about being authentic to myself than what’s out there in the world, etc. Despite being so introverted, I find extraverts fascinating. As biased as I likely am towards the introverted perspective, I don’t judge extraverts negatively but stare at them from far away with a lot of interest and with respect. All of my reading about the MBTI has helped me understand them better.

I think your write-ups are INCREDIBLY intresting and I recognize so much of it.
It is like you are writing about me.

I'm currently in kind of a similar situation you once were. I have a "good job" at a prestigious company, but I genuinely can't motivate myself for it whatsoever. Either I'm obsessively intrested by something (e.g. Poker), or I just do not care for it. I had the same feeling about my last job and I can't imagine working for someone else full time without having those feelings.

My current plan which, because of the control freak (and introvert?) that I am, scares me a lot, is to get a (boring?) part time job and play poker for the remainder of my time.
Do you have any advice or comments for me?

A response would be greatly appreciated.

Kind regards,
Arnotronic

Whenever I read about extroverts they just sound kinda like idiots to me...not thinking things through, prioritizing quantity over quality. It sounds like fun, but not very efficient if you actually want to accomplish things.

MBTI: Sensing (S) vs. Intuition (N)

At its core, the S/N divide relates to to how we process and prioritize information. S and N refer to different processes of perception but both processes are primarily passive in nature, being largely automatic and subconscious. It’s worth a reminder that everyone engages in both S and N activities but individuals have a preference for one system or another.

According to Drenth, “the S-N dimension can be seen as corresponding to philosophical notions of material (S) and immaterial (N), seen (S) and unseen (N), empirical (S) and theoretical (N), matter (S) and mind (N), physics (S) and metaphysics (N).”

Types which have an S, sensing, preference place greater value on information collected via the senses. They’re preoccupied what what is actual, physical, experiential, concrete, definite, etc. They examine information that is currently available. They live largely in the present moment and place a lot of weight on details and facts. It has been said that sensing types are more likely to see the individual trees rather than the forest.

At its core, N, intuition, is preoccupied with the bigger picture. While S types fixate on individual pieces of information one-by-one, N types are preoccupied with underlying patterns and connections. They have a tendency to fixate on impressions rather than the details underlying those impressions and are more likely to remember that general impression than the details underlying it. As Drenth writes, “intuition is a synthesizing and associating function. It is concerned with how things connect and relate to each other. It is particularly interested in relationships among ideas, in seeing connections between one abstraction and another. Intuitives are more interested in the connections between things than they are in the things themselves.” In other words, if the S type is more likely to fixate on the individual trees rather than the forest, the N type is more likely to see the forest rather than the individual trees.

S types tend to have superior bodily/kinesthetic intelligence and awareness. A great athlete is much more likely to be an S type than an N type. In contrast, N types are more likely to feel some degree of estrangement from their bodies. They have a weaker connection to the physical world in general. This is because, as Drenth writes, in a sense, the “metaphysical realm” is in many ways the “primary reality” for the N type rather than the actual physical world. Going through the day the N experience is more dream-like as the distinction between the physical realm and metaphysical realm is more blurred. This is also in part because the N type has a “greater kinship” with the subconscious.

To illustrate the different creative advantages of the S or N approach, Drenth points to music. S musicians are more likely to excel in musical performance. N musicians are more likely to excel in composition. Generally speaking, intuitives are “idea people” and more likely to generate creative ideas while sensors are “performance people” and more likely to attend to the physical realization of these ideas.

N types can struggle when it comes to attending to concrete details. It’s easier for them to forget to pay bills, forget to put a belt on, lose track of time, etc. S types do a better job at attending to such details but relative to N types they struggle at generating novel ideas and insights.

This excerpt I just found sums up the S/N divide well:
<< Sensing and intuition are the information-gathering (perceiving) functions. They describe how new information is understood and interpreted. Individuals who prefer sensing are more likely to trust information that is in the present, tangible and concrete: that is, information that can be understood by the five senses. They tend to distrust hunches, which seem to come "out of nowhere." They prefer to look for details and facts. For them, the meaning is in the data.

On the other hand, those who prefer intuition tend to trust information that is more abstract or theoretical, that can be associated with other information (either remembered or discovered by seeking a wider context or pattern). They may be more interested in future possibilities. They tend to trust those flashes of insight that seem to bubble up from the unconscious mind. The meaning is in how the data relates to the pattern or theory.>>

S and N functions comprise four of the possible eight functions that may be included in a type’s “functional stack” discussed in my MBTI overview post: introverted sensing, extraverted sensing, introverted intuition, extraverted intuition. As a quick recap, everyone has both an N and an S function and depending on type it can be a stronger function or a weaker function. As I’ll explain in a future post, as an INFJ my dominant (strongest) function is in fact introverted intuition. My inferior (weakest) function is extraverted sensing. These functional hierarchies are probably more important to understanding how a type experiences the world than the preferences associated with each type.

Sensing (S) types dominate the U.S. population, comprising approximately 75% of Americans. Of all the sets of preferences, this is easily the largest population discrepancy. I believe it’s likely a worldwide discrepancy, but I haven’t done the research to know for sure.

Of all the sets of preferences, the S/N divide is considered by far the most indicative of high intelligence, with N types dominating the high intelligence population.

Thanks a lot for the kind words. To see that you can identify with what I've written is especially rewarding, as lately I've become very interested in human connectedness and the idea that we're all grappling with a lot of the same general issues in life. These sorts of realizations make me more compassionate as I understand my suffering has also been the suffering of other people and, really, has probably been the timeless suffering of the human race. <hyperbole alert>

I think taking a reliable MBTI test (try personality junkie's) and then learning more about your type might be helpful for your situation. When I started to get interested in this stuff again a few years ago while at the firm, it was very striking to me in reading about my type how far my situation was from what was a comfortable situation for my type. A lot of things suddenly made a lot of sense and I felt reassured I wasn't defective in some way because of how much of a daily struggle work was for me when it seemed much easier for other people.

MBTI aside, I say if your heart isn't it then take the risk and do something else you think might be a better fit. It has been said that the risk not taken ends up being the bigger regret than the failed risk taken. That being said, I wonder sometimes if that runs contrary to the philosophy espoused by Cal Newport, summarized nicely by his book So Good They Can't Ignore You (basically, don't follow your passion; create your passion through mastery at your current job, unless XYZ applies, in which case leave your job after you've developed ABC skills) that is starting to get a lot of attention. Consider reading that book before you make a big decision.

In any case, I've never regretted taking my big risk.

I think this is an easy trap to fall into given the general descriptions applied to introverts and extraverts. The stereotypical introvert "sounds" more intelligent than an extravert because of how we tend to stereotype intelligent people. Tbh, I probably fell into the trap in the past. In reality, though, while it has been suggested introverts have a slight advantage when it comes to intelligence (in the sense that a high IQ person will probably be slightly more likely to be an introvert, population size considerations aside), any difference is probably minimal. As I wrote above, the S/N type is a better predictor of high intelligence.

As far as productivity goes, I guess it depends on how one conceptualizes productivity. I don't do many different kinds of activities at all relative to the average person but the few things I like to do I tend to do very well because I tend to get very absorbed in them and commit a lot of time and effort towards them. Extraverts are more likely to commit themselves to doing a ton of different things and are at a bit of a handicap at doing them well b/c of time and focus limitations but can still excel at any given thing.

For example, in looking through the 2p2 personality types of poker pros thread, WCGRider lists his own type as ENTP. Dude is obviously on the extreme high end of intelligence and also ridiculously good at poker, both online and live. I also recall seeing tmckendry, author of one of my favorite PGCs, also has typed himself as an ENTP and the same applies. From reading his thread it's also clear he's very productive when it comes to accomplishing his goals.

I'll be exploring my thoughts on the MBTI and poker in future posts.

I've really been enjoying the last few posts. Thanks for the great information! I've always had an interest in MBTI and have been re-taking the test over several years. I tend to score ENTJ most of the time, with E/N being ~100%/0% and the J-P seems to consistently be 40-60% range.

Thanks for the shoutout! I find it interesting that I got lumped in the same paragraph as WCGRider. We were in the same warcraft 3 clan for a couple months(in ~2005?). We spent a lot of time talking on ventrillo. I'm not surprised to see we have similar MBTI types.

I'm excited to see more content on MTBI. I'd be really interested to know if there is any information regarding individuals changing types/dominant functions over time. My hunch is that the vast majority of people operate with the same functions for life, but that some people can/do change over time, and that changes are far more common earlier in life.

If possible, "re-wiring" the brain to function as alternative types for extended periods of time would be a great way to explore and understand how other types operate. Anyways, I could be way off the mark here, as this is speculation based on limited personal experience. I'd like to read your thoughts on this..

Thanks! It's a pleasure to see you post in here as I've enjoyed your PGC for a long time.

I haven't done much reading yet on the malleability of MBTI types, but so far everything that I've come across touching upon that subject has suggested that one's type is closer to immutable than mutable. While it might appear sometimes that significant deviation is possible such that one could "become" another type, usually that's an illusion which reflects some kind of tension or rebalancing playing out in one's functional stack. This is discussed in Drenth's other book, The 16 Personality Types: Profiles, Theory, and Type Development.

Under MBTI theory, everyone experiences the same general evolution in the development of their functional stack. From an early age, one demonstrates strong proficiency in one's dominant function. Around adolescence through age 20, the auxiliary function asserts itself more and becomes a solid source of support for the dominant function and another powerful tool for the individual. From 20-35, the tertiary function starts to become stronger. From age 35 to age 50, the individual takes more of an interest in developing the inferior function and begins to use it more effectively. Each of these leaps can have corresponding personality changes that individuals can sometimes interpret as their type changing or being different than it actually it is when in reality their functional stack is just undergoing some sort of rebalancing. Under MBTI theory "mid-life crises" are often explained as the result of the emergence of the development of the inferior function.

My own functional stack as an INFJ is: dominant- introverted intuition, auxiliary- extraverted feeling, tertiary- introverted thinking, inferior- extraverted sensing. I'll explain what all of these mean in more detail in future posts. For now, suffice to say my own developmental track has followed the above model just about perfectly. I'm in my early thirties. Over the last decade, as I went through law school and then started to become very interested in poker, I became much more logical and objective in how I approached things. At the time, I was aware of my historical MBTI results where I always typed as "F" and wondered if I had been mistyped as "F" all along and was in reality a "T" type. In reality, it was simply the case that my tertiary function as an INFJ, introverted thinking, had been emerging more and more as a more powerful tool in my functional stack.

Further on the subject of malleability, when I took the test for the first time around the age of 12-13, I typed as an INFP. A year or so later, INFP again. After that, as I took the every year or so for several years, my type alternated between INFP and INFJ. The last several times I've taken it, I've come out as an INFJ.

Now that I've done a lot of reading about functional stacks, I'm confident that I'm an INFJ and always have been. In reading about the INFJ functional stack I recognize the way I function and have developed lines up perfectly with an INFJ's experience whereas I don't recognize my own experience much at all in the INFP stack (which is completely different despite the shared three letters). I see this as a good illustration of why the concept of the functional stack is so important in understanding the MBTI.

My True Type helped me realize why I had typed as an INFP early on in its discussion of the J/P divide. In the early MBTI tests I took on sites I now consider not very credible I remember constantly ticking boxes to confirm I was disorganized, messy, untidy, had a tendency to be late, etc., which were all designed to lean my results in favor of being P rather than J. My True Type makes a point of attacking the dichotomy of "P types are messy, disorganized, procrastinators, and chronically late" (all things that were true as I was growing up, and not true now) and "J types are neat, tidy, organized, and uptight." According to the book, that's far too narrow a view of the J/P divide and focusing on those kinds of distinctions/words is dangerously misguided when it comes to sorting out an individual's J/P preference. According to the book, it's a major problem underlying many MBTI sites' tests to this day.

Finally, also on the subject of malleability of type, here's an article on the subject by the co-author of My True Type: http://personalityjunkie.com/can-my-...nge-over-time/ .

So my current view, based on not as much research as I would like, is that, in a sense, one could re-wire one's brain to appear to resemble another type upon command. However, this would take the form of alternating more competently between different functions available in one's functional stack. It's something that should become increasingly easy with age as one develops mastery over each of one's four functions.

MBTI: My Functional Stack, part 1

As I’ve written previously, every type (e.g., INFJ) has an associated functional stack consisting of four functions, an intuition function (N), a sensing function (S), a thinking function (T), and a feeling function (F). An individual’s four functions in the stack follow a hierarchy of: 1) dominant (strongest), 2) auxiliary, 3) tertiary, 4) inferior (weakest). The older an individual gets, the more developed the weaker functions become. Each function is either of an introverted or extraverted character. If someone’s functional stack includes introverted intuition, it doesn’t include extraverted intuition; if it includes extraverted feeling, it doesn’t include introverted feeling.

Rather than lead with a discussion of my dominant function, I think starting with an overview of my inferior function will work better towards better explaining how my own functional stack works and how my functional stack has affected my life.

The inferior function is the most difficult for an individual to develop. It’s elusive, distant, repressed, less consciously available, less familiar. It’s an Achilles heel of sorts and often finds itself at work when the dominant function fails, with the typical end result being childish or immature behavior. Yet it’s also a source of exhilaration and intrigue and, when indulged, it can be a blissful yet dangerous experience. According to mbti theory many of our hidden motivations revolve around desires to conquer the inferior function.

My inferior function as an INFJ is a sensing function: extraverted sensing.

Drenth defines extraverted sensing as follows:
Primary roles: “to perceive and mediate prompt responses to external details and events; to seek a breadth of novel sensory experiences; to physically interact with the world.”

Associated with: “sensation-seeking, kinesthetic intelligence, an ‘eye for detail,’ attunement to style and appearances, hands-on activities, effortless performance”

Individuals with a dominant function of extraverted sensing tend to have great physical awareness of both themselves and the physical nature of the environment surrounding them. Their sensory awareness and attention to small sensory details is effortless. They’re also skilled athletes and have an abundance of physical energy; they hate to sit still. Furthermore, they’re very stylistic and style-conscious.

Yeah, that's not me. At all. And it’s been a problem area for me ever since I was a kid.

(Warning: What follows below is quite tl;dr and might be very uninteresting. Lately I’ve been wanting to write more about my life experience as I understand how I got to where I am now and writing about it in this thread under the greater context of MBTI analysis has been a welcome outlet. Admittedly it’s a bit of a selfish endeavor. I completely understand if anyone chooses not to read this kind of stuff. )

From as early as I can remember, I struggled with my motor skill development. Because of how my elementary school sorted incoming classes by birth month I either could have been one of the oldest kids in a class or one of the youngest kids in a class. At kindergarten screening, I remember having to perform a battery of physical tests. The tests revealed I was very weak in my left (non-dominant) hand. My right hand motor skills were also weak, as I struggled both to throw and to catch objects. My handwriting was also very poor. According to my Mom, the teachers said they would have considered holding me back if I hadn’t demonstrated such high intelligence for my age. After that, I started up kindergarten as one of the youngest kids in the class.

From the beginning of kindergarten through the end of eighth grade (same school the entire time), I was consistently the last or second last kid selected for any sports team any time we formed two teams on the playground. And it was for good reason: I sucked when it came to nearly everything athletic. It was a constant source of embarrassment. I felt humiliated every time I was picked last, and this was an almost every day occurrence, but I enjoyed playing sports so much and being around my friends so much I kept playing rather than keeping to myself and doing something else.

I struggled just as much with anything artistic that involved prominent use of the hands, like crafts or drawing. To this day I remember the sheer feeling of impossibility I had when it came to completing any art projects in a respectable manner. It was another constant source of embarrassment and stress. In seventh grade, we were assigned an art project where every student made a campaign poster for the presidential candidate they supported. Every time we did an art project the teacher posted every piece of art on the school’s walls, no exceptions. I remember looking around after we had all submitted our posters and not seeing my poster. A friend of mine told me the next day he had seen the teacher throw it in the trash. By that time at least I already had started to take things with a sense of humor when it came to my total lack of artistic talent with anything involving physical labor. I knew I could never be a great artist in the traditional sense and accepted it.

I played basketball on my school’s team fourth through seventh grade. I scored one point total during those four seasons, a converted free throw in fourth grade. My seventh grade basketball coach was an old, cranky dude who cared about winning. Early into the season, maybe even the first game, I didn’t see a single minute of playing time. After that game he must have felt bad. He approached me and he promised me I’d get to play “half the game” next game. The next game came and again I didn’t play a minute. By the end of the season, I had played very little and he owed me six games.

In fourth grade my parents signed me up to play football for another school’s team, as my school was too small to offer a football team. I don’t remember much of that experience, other than demonstrating the one athletic skill I had to offer a football team: running faster than other kids. I remember being the first kid to complete five laps around the field during practice one day and being proud of myself. However, I sucked at everything else and ended up being a very mediocre contributor on the field.

In sixth grade I decided to try football again and it ended up being the worst experience of my young life. This time I was playing for another school’s program as the team I had played for before no longer existed. I only knew one other kid on this new team, a friend of mine from my school. Every other kid was a stranger. Even though at my own school I was known as one of the least athletic kids, I was also popular and well-respected. I was a nerd but somehow I was also one of very few kids, maybe the only kid, who could bounce back and forth between all of the different social cliques without anyone raising an eyebrow. I got along well with everyone and I had a lot of friends.

On the sixth grade football team amongst all these new kids, as soon as it became clear I sucked hard at football, I got branded as a loser. Kids bullied me relentlessly and I could tell quickly I was someone it wasn’t cool to be seen with. If kids didn’t make fun of me, they avoided me so as not to be seen with me. One day I remember someone I was beginning to think could actually become a friend motioning me over for me to come talk to him. We talked for a few seconds when, all of a sudden, he shoved me hard with both hands. I felt my legs collide with something behind me and I tripped to the ground. I looked to see what the hell I had tripped over: another kid had stooped behind me on the ground as I was talking; it was a set-up. They laughed at me and I watched them tell a bunch of other kids what they had done, everyone laughing. I can’t remember how I responded but I can remember the anger I felt, both with this kid and with myself as I had let myself think someone was actually trying to be friends with me. I felt stupid. The next day, the same exact sequence played out with a different tandem of kids. Again, I felt stupid; I stopped trusting anyone on the team. As a kid I was especially naïve, trusting, and innocent, but that moment started changing things. It was a turning point for me in learning more about the darker side of human nature. Other kids tried the same routine after that but I never fell for it again. Once I even quickly moved out of the way and shoved the kid who was about to shove me over his accomplice.

This football team happened to be the top team in the division and the coaches worked us very hard. If practices weren’t grueling dealing with a bunch of kids from another school who bullied me, they were grueling physically as the drills were very intense. I came home exhausted after every practice. It didn’t take long before I absolutely dreaded going to practice; I hated the other kids and practices were physically demanding to a level I had never dealt with before. I told my parents I wanted to quit, I hated it, but my parents insisted I stick with it. Years later, my Dad told me he always felt guilty every time he picked me up from practice. He said I always had a very long look on my face and looked miserable.

Even though the other kids on the team didn’t like me, the coaches did. The head coach had me relay plays to the first unit, so I was constantly running back and forth between the coach and quarterback. I enjoyed this kind of stuff as I felt I was contributing something. This was similar to baseball where one day I got bored sitting on the sidelines, started watching the other team, figured out their signaling system, told the coach who noticed I was right, and he had me spy on every team thereafter. The football coaches nicknamed me “Deacon Jones” after the famous defensive end (I played on the d-line as a nose tackle) because as unskilled as I was and despite how much I struggled I also showed a lot of grit and toughness and I didn’t back down or give up while at practice. Our team ended up winning the championship and I got to play decent minutes in the championship game. At the end of the year the team had an awards ceremony and the coaches handed me the “Most Determined” award.

That same year, I started eating way more intensely than I had ever eaten before. I had always been a skinny kid. By the end of sixth grade, I had gained a lot of weight. Not long thereafter, and for many years I was overweight. Weight issues would plaque me for the next 15 years.

I played multiple years of football, baseball, soccer, and basketball, and I mostly sucked on each of those teams and was usually the least talented kid on the team or close. It could have been positive variance, but, one year in baseball, for some reason I had a really good year and ended up being one of the best players on the team. I hit for a high average and the coach put me at shortstop for a few games, which was always where they put the best player. The next year, I sucked again. Outside of basketball, most of my teammates were kids from other schools who I never interacted with outside of the sports context. I got made fun of a lot but usually by the end of the year, with the exception of that football team, I had made a decent amount of friends and had earned respect. Still, all of those experiences being one of the worst players on the team were rough psychologically, as I constantly felt inferior and it was difficult to earn respect as the major currency of respect was being good at the game.

The one sport I showed any promise in was tennis, where I was actually pretty talented. I couldn’t serve very well but I was skilled at defending against serves and outsmarting opponents. One year, maybe when I was 11 or so, I played in a small field kids’ tournament and finished second, losing a close-fought championship match. My parents were excited about my tennis potential and we agreed I could try out for a weekend tennis training program designed to groom players who could excel at the high school level. At the time I really enjoyed tennis and desperately wanted to get into this program. When my audition came I ended up playing the worst I had ever played in my life, way overhitting and underhitting the ball. It was a disaster. I had gotten major performance anxiety. I didn’t get into the program.

While I sucked at sports and hands-based art, I had started to show a lot of talent in other areas. To be continued…

I played my first tournament since December yesterday, a $550 NL tournament at my local casino. Busted pre-ITM 50th out of 141 and felt quite rusty, though I'm generally satisfied with how I played.

I've historically felt a decent amount of nervous energy just about every live tournament I've played, regardless of the buyin or prestige, but yesterday I felt almost none. It seemed like just another day of playing poker and trying to make some dough. In a way, that mindset shift is welcome, as I think I'd been playing tournaments with too much adrenaline and emotional attachment. Busting tended to be quite painful emotionally, especially for tournaments I'd really been looking forward to playing. That being said, yesterday I also found it was difficult for me to play my very best without that adrenaline boost.

It feels like a prior need for validation of my own poker success through tournament results is gone. I had always hoped to point to a big score to family members and friends who don't understand poker as such validation, but now that I've been playing professionally for almost three years and everyone is satisfied I've been doing well and has faith that I'm not crazy, I don't need that validation anymore (not to suggest I ever should have felt liked I needed it in the first place).

In looking through last year's records, I played 32 live tournaments, the most I've ever played in a year, ranging from a freeroll for high volume players at my local poker room to the $10k Main Event. 21/32 of those tournaments were NL tournaments. I cashed in 7/32 tournaments (2/8 WSOP tournaments) and ended up a small loser in live tournaments on the year (though it's worth noting I finished w/ a decent profit and strong ROI in bovada tourneys played on the year including a scoop of an 1100 player tourney). A few of those tournaments, I had a huge stack with ~20-33% of the field left only for some unlucky or absurdly unlucky sequence of events to derail things and end up with me busting pre-ITM. I felt like I had a pretty big edge in almost every tournament I played, especially in the non-NL tournaments, but ultimately I didn't have any profit to show for it.

Considering the fact that in 2015 I played roughly 235 hours of live tournaments and didn't make any $ despite feeling like I generally played very well, the opportunity costs of what my WR expectation would have been of playing in 235 hours of cash games (I know this isn't 100% logically fair), the non-insignificant transaction costs necessary to play a lot of those tournaments, less of a personal need for validation through tournaments, and the greater potential of getting emotionally soul crushed by tournaments relative to playing in cash games (bubbling the ME was probably the most emotionally painful moment I had last year), I find myself less and less attracted to tournaments. It also doesn't help that I now have a gigantic sample of doing very well in cash games and a non-trivial sample of not doing much in tournaments.

All of this leaves me unsure what to do this summer. More and more, I'm feeling like I don't want to spend the whole summer in Vegas again. The only tournament I currently feel like I don't want to miss is the $1500 Eight Game Mix, and I'm less enthusiastic about that than I would have been otherwise given I haven't played most of those games in months. Sadly, the tournament I've historically most wanted to play every year, the $1500 Six Max, I'm not even sure I'll play this year. Despite cashing it last year despite a pretty mediocre run of cards and stone bubbling it the year before that, I've played so little nl over the last year that I'm not confident I'd walk into that tournament with much of an edge this year.

Also making me reluctant to commit a whole summer to the WSOP, cash games have gotten worse every summer and I think tend to be overrated. That being said, the 24/7 availability is pretty awesome, especially when action locally is likely to be very slow.

I plan on taking a trip pre-WSOP where, in addition to playing a lot of cash, I'll probably fire a few tournaments. I'll proceed as to WSOP plans from there.

Spent the last week grinding in the Baltimore area. My life was feeling rather groundhog day-ish and unsinspired at home in Ohio, so I decided it was time to shake things up a bit. I also wanted to play a few of the WSOPC tournaments at Horseshoe Baltimore.

The trip started well when I booked a modest winner my first afternoon in town playing in a big 5-5-10 PLO game at Maryland Live then headed over to the Horseshoe Baltimore and won pretty big playing my first ever session of five card PLO (hi only) at the 5-5 stake. I was fortunate to run pretty well in the 5-5 5PLO, holding with the nuts allin twice in a couple big pots.

The next day, I busted a single bullet in the opening $365 $1M gty WSOPC event w/ about 45% of the field remaining. I thought I played well despite feeling a tad rusty in my nl tournament game. I won almost every hand I played postflop, including a hero call for a sizable pot with ace hi. What doomed me was losing a big chunk of my stack on an ambitious play preflop. Loose older player minraises UTG+1 at 300-600-75 w/ about 11k total. MP player flats (22k). Folded to me on the CO, and I have KQo (16.5k stack). Given 1) I thought UTG+1 had a wide range and would be folding a decent amount of it to a shove (welcome to live poker), 2) I thought the MP flatter would fold to a shove nearly 100% of the time based on player reads, and 3) the players in the blinds were tight and short-stacked, I decided to jam w/ the hopes that it would get through and an expectation that even if it didn't I probably wouldn't be in too bad shape. Unfortunately, UTG+1 ended up calling and showed up near the top of his range and w/ one of the hands I least wanted to see, AKo, and I lost. MP said he had pocket deuces. I couldn't overcome getting crippled and I busted shortly thereafter.

A couple days later, I played the WSOPC PLO tournament and was as card dead as I've ever been during the first few hours of a tournament. The quality of the play was amazingly bad, but I couldn't land a playable hand nor did I ever flop well. It was frustrating. With around 1/3 of the field left, after playing very patiently for almost four hours, I finally started to crack at the lack of any good spots, got impatient and doubled up a limp/shoving short stack who had AA where I had QQ77ss and should have just folded. A couple hands later, now short-stacked myself, I ended up busting on a pretty unnecessary 3bet isolation shove w/ T985ss where I needed 44% equity against the opener for a shove to be neutral EV. Despite the play being pretty close to neutral EV it was not a good spot and it was a borderline punt. I had plenty of time to wait for a better spot; T985ss is not a hand I'm looking to go to war with aipf even if I only need 44% equity. I'm not happy at all with my lack of patience towards the end. I'm more than willing to admit when I play poorly and these last 10 mins of this tournament featured two of my worst played hands in a long time.

Cash game-wise, I continued doing well and booking winners until yesterday, when I had my biggest losing session in almost two months, playing in a 5-5-10 PLO game at Maryland Live. Simply put it was one of those nightmarish sessions where almost nothing goes right. I whiffed the nfd or nfd + str8 draw multiple times, got coolered in a big pot w/ a bizarre runout, couldn't fade villains' draws when I got it in with the nuts, ran into the top of ranges repeatedly, etc. These kinds of sessions are, of course, unavoidable. I've noticed they occur about once/month for me, so it is what it is, nothing I can do but shrug and hope the next brutal session isn't for a long time. I left that session stuck a few buyins and steaming, but after an hour and a half of detilting and relaxing I decided to make another go of it in a smaller PLO game and ended up booking a decent win playing well having put the previous session behind me to salvage the day a bit.

Finally, today, I stone bubbled the WSOPC Big O tournament a couple hours ago, finishing 15th out of 125 players. I'm getting too tired to type up many of the details, but cliff notes: 1) field was soft, 2) I played very similarly to how I played this past summer's Venetian Big O tourney where I cashed and imo played slightly better on average than I did that tourney, 3) w/ about 1/3 of the field left I got lucky in several allin pots as a slight dog including once when my tournament life was at risk, 4) I tried a huge bluff that blew up in my face and cost me half my stack but was able to recover the chips quickly; still not sure whether the bluff was optimal, 5) I went from 100k (10x starting) and a very healthy, median-ish stack at H4H to 36k to 0 after ending up in some really unfortunate spots on the bubble where I made at least one mistake, probably two mistakes. I ran poorly on the bubble for sure, but that doesn't excuse mistakes. I ultimately busted in a pretty unlucky spot, AA67Q double suited < AKKJJ single suited (I'm a 70% favorite) for 16bb against a guy who's supposed to be folding preflop given I'm going to have an AA hand a huge % of the time as it played out. Truth be told, after 7 hours of play on a light stomach (my fault) in a variant I haven't played in months I started to feel rather drained and mentally foggy and got a little too gambly when it was probably time to play more conservatively. Overall, though, I think I played pretty well and strong enough to put myself in a position to win it all. I left pretty upset given this is one of many bubbles I've had over the last year or two playing live tournaments, after going in thinking this tournament was my best shot at winning one. I kept notes about a lot of hands, so I'll be happy to consult those the next time I play Big O.

So, ultimately, it was a disappointing trip results-wise, interrupting the nice, prolonged heater I had been on at home. Went 0/3 in tournaments including a stone bubble where I began hand for hand with a very healthy stack, I'm not happy w/ how I played several hands in said tournaments, and I ended up losing some $ in cash as well thanks to one very rough session. The experience makes me even less interested in spending the whole summer in Vegas.

Thanks for the update. Enjoying following your journey.

I have to comment on your mental game. Impressive, having that massive loss and then taking the right break and then coming back that day for a small second session win.

Regarding bubbling and ICM, based on your history of bubbling, I wonder if you're playing too much too win and not paying enough attention to ICM. Just a thought.

Thanks, pokerodox. Returning to the casino after that rough session to grind out a few hours of a smaller game and then managing to play my A game w/o any tilt or shame is definitely something I regard as a sign of growth and for that reason I consider that feat the highlight of the trip.

Re: the bolded, that's probably true. I've always been very interested in how to best exploit the "bubble dynamic." I've found that I tend to play more aggressively than most players. Whether that approach is correct or not, I've probably been going overboard and suspect I have been applying that approach too indiscriminately w/o regard to stack size relative to the field. Most players almost certainly would have finished ITM had they been dealt the same hands/situations after my stack hit 100k. I took some risks to try to accumulate a big stack and they didn't work out. I indeed had winning the tourney on my brain and was trying to play a lot of hands while still seated at what I guessed to be the softest of the three remaining tables before we hit ITM and converged down to two tables.

It's actually pretty absurd how many tournaments I've busted either 1) very close to the bubble or 2) with about 30-40% the field remaining. If I had to guess I have a disproportionately large amount of bustouts relative to the field in both those tournament situations. I also noticed I almost never mincash and tend to finish either in the middle of the $ or make the FT. Not having thought nearly as much about tournament strategy as I have cash strategy, if I keep playing tournaments I'm going to have to figure out what all that means and any areas of improvement.

Given your results with regards to tournaments i think its likely that your approach to stack building and often busting or making FT's is an extremley strong indication that you are taking an optimal approach and have just run into lol live tournament variance. In actuality how many tourneys have you played the last 3 years? Seems to me your focus on results are being weighted way too much.

That said i dont know/ see all the hands, nor am i tournament expert. However the fact that you are playing highly aggressive on the bubble and trying to bulld stacks in my mind indicates a solid approach. That said, this approach yields more variance, thus looking at results of a small sampling of live tourneys is likey counter productive

I've played 87 live tournaments since becoming pro around mid-2013, which is actually a slightly larger number than I would have guessed. That being said, under the greater context of tournament variance it's probably a pretty trivial sample. Thanks for your thoughts.

Again I find myself contemplating moving. Nothing special has occurred to make me more interested in making a move, other than learning the other week that a fellow local poker pro/good friend has decided to move to greener poker pastures. More and more over the last year I've been asked "why I haven't moved yet," as everyone is aware there are stronger poker markets out there. I've been resisting thoughts about moving but it's time to consider the question seriously again. Examining my life at this moment, I can identify a lot of compelling reasons to move.

As far as poker is concerned, I continue to think the poker scene here is on a slow but steady decline and that if I continue to rely on poker for a substantial or exclusive portion of my income then it'd be better to move sooner rather than later. There's no question that my poker income ceiling is much higher in a lot of other poker markets. Moreover, the sad truth is that I'm getting bored with the local poker scene, which I've now put over 6,000 hours in(!). Always the same games, always the same people. There are a lot of advantages to this, as I feel like I know the scene and players inside out, and just as importantly I love how friendly and tight-knit this poker community is. I can't think of anywhere I'm more socially comfortable than the poker room. All that being said, the intellectual challenge that drew me to poker in the first place is diminishing more and more as the poker scene here has been very static. My brain has been craving some new intellectual challenges and new experiences.

Life-wise, I continue to be frustrated with the dating scene here and can't help but think there are much better places to live as a single lowthirtysomething. Also, it's increasingly irrelevant that I can practice law in Ohio and almost all of my legal world contacts reside here as I continue to doubt that I'll ever return to the practice of law. And, while my family is in Ohio, they're still over a two hour drive away. Compared to other people, moving wouldn't be much of a hassle for me as I rent an apartment and don't own a lot of stuff. And as far as the crushing life saga is concerned, I'm not sure how much of an advantage or disadvantage I am being here versus somewhere else. So, there really isn't much keeping me here other than inertia and knowledge that I enjoy living here.

I just took a look at this post from a little over a year ago when I was dogsitting in LA that sums up pretty well what I like and don't like about living in Ohio:

The truth is that some part of me is eager to shake things up in my life. The idea of a fresh start appeals to me. It might be time to take a risk again and just go ahead and do it.

Besides Los Angeles, other cities I'm considering are San Diego, Phoenix, Tampa, and the Baltimore/DC area. The main factors I care about right now are: strength of the poker market now and into the future, city cultural vibe, strength of the dating market, weather, cost of living, opportunities beyond poker, and potential for longterm settling down.

karamazonk book recommendation #3: Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, by Cal Newport

Recently, I mentioned Cal Newport's So Good They Can't Ignore You, a book whose thesis is that following your passion is bad advice. I was intrigued when I learned the other week that Newport had recently published another book, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. Having followed Newport's blog for the last few years, I was already familiar with the concept of "deep work," which he has written about extensively, but I figured the book would be a valuable read. As it turns out, Deep Work might be one of the most important and most +EV books I've ever read.

Newport establishes a dichotomy of two kinds of mental efforts: deep work and shallow work.

Newport defines deep work as "professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate." Imagine a self-employed programmer who needs to meet an urgent deadline and can't afford distraction. The programmer locks himself and his computer away in a small office, silences his smartphone and email, and works deeply engaged for a couple of hours with a laser focus on getting code written, ignoring everything else. After reaching a state of cognitive exhaustion after two hours of intense, focused work, the programmer finally checks his phone and email and allows his brain to relax a bit. This is an example of deep work.

Newport defines shallow work as "noncognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. These efforts tend to not create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate." Imagine a programmer for facebook who works in an open office environment. A couple minutes into writing code, an email pops up on the programmer's screen inquiring about his availability for an important meeting on Tuesday. As he minimizes the code and starts typing a response to the email, a colleague approaches and asks if he'd like to buy any of the colleague's daughter's girl scout cookies. After chatting with the colleague a couple minutes, the programmer returns to the email, checks his schedule, sends a response, and then returns his attention to the code, with some part of his attention now concerned about the upcoming meeting. As the facebook programmer continues to work on the code, a string of emails of variable importance arrive in his inbox. Afraid he'll miss something important, the programmer takes at least a quick look at all of them. This is an example of an environment where it is difficult to engage in deep work and most work will tend to be shallow work.

According to Newport, we're increasingly living in a world which discourages deep work and encourages shallow work. The rise of the smartphone, email, a workplace culture that prioritizes frequent meetings and status updates, the greater remote work capabilities of individuals, the rise of social media, etc., are all developments that proliferate distractions and interfere with an individual's ability to concentrate w/ 100% focus for long uninterrupted batches of time. This constant "switching" of attention forced upon the brain by all of these distractions depletes the brain of energy and makes it increasingly difficult for an individual to engage in long periods of intense focus. These cultural developments are problematic, as deep work tends to be drastically more productive than shallow work. According to Newport, many of humanity's greatest intellectual feats simply wouldn't be possible without deep work. Deep work is necessary for us to be at our best.

Deep Work resonates especially strong with me after my 3.5 years of work experience at the firm. The bulk of my practice involved writing legal briefs (i.e., persuasive written documents submitted to a court) that presented a comprehensive array of arguments and case law supporting a given position. A longer brief (i.e., twenty-five pages) would typically entail dozens of hours of case law research to familiarize myself fully with the legal lay of the land and to find the cases most helpful for our position. It would then take another significant chunk of time to draft the brief and tie everything together in a persuasive and easy-to-read package. Often, the issues involved were highly complex. Reaching a solid understanding of them required a significant expenditure of mental energy and would be very difficult without the ability to devote 100% of my focus to the task. A case could also involve voluminous factual details such that I would sometimes need to have an extremely nuanced understanding of all of the facts at play, which required great attention to little details which might elude me if 100% of my attention wasn't available. Thus, the work I did tended to be quite intellectually rigorous, requiring deep work rather than shallow work.

Unfortunately, my work environment made it very difficult to engage in deep work. I'd be involved in some capacity on sometimes up to thirty different cases simultaneously and in a normal day could do billable work towards as many as twenty cases. I'd find myself mentally transitioning constantly from one case to another and engaging in the kind of mental "switching" studies have shown greatly interfere with cognitive efficiency. On especially rough days, some crisis (what we referred to as "fires") would emerge out of nowhere that required immediate action (sometimes drafting a whole brief and doing all of the supporting research in less than 24 hours) when I felt like I already couldn't give sufficient time to the tasks already on my plate, most of them already having some level of urgency. On any given day, I also probably received close to one hundred emails, including a large number of emails where an immediate response was expected or required. In addition, the number of things I was expected to keep on top of on a regular basis, i.e., upcoming deadlines, dates/times of office meetings, keeping my billing up to date, etc. was massive. Moreover, my office was in the middle of a long, sometimes loud hallway. Thus, there were constantly little things requiring at least an iota of my attention.

For all these reasons, during a normal workday, long periods of uninterrupted focus on one larger task were very difficult to come by despite being necessary to do a lot of the work that I needed to do. As a result, I became highly dependent on doing work during weekends, when far less people were in the building, there was about 2% of the email traffic, and there was a much smaller chance of some emergency popping up. The vast majority of my best work was done on weekdays past 6 pm or during weekends. These were the periods where the different, less distracting and externally demanding circumstances made it much easier for me to engage in deep work. Deep Work explained perfectly why my work habits shifted this way. It simply would have been impossible to do everything expected of me under the constraints of the normal workday.

I could write infinitely more about the book and have hardly done its substance justice in the little I've written above, but suffice to say the substance of the book is excellent. The book is first preoccupied with convincing the reader to prioritize depth over shallowness and then with recommending strategies to make it easier to embrace deep work. It's clear that Newport did a ton of research and the book is chalk full of references to fascinating studies as well as solid pieces of advice.

The book has inspired me to do some thinking about how to increase the amount of deep work in my life and how to make better use of my time.

I highly recommend Deep Work.

Great insight, and it sounds like a very interesting book that I'll be picking up from Amazon shortly.

Just a quick thought about shallow work...it seems to me that this shift might be by design, although not necessarily incredibly overt. Because there is and has been a shift away from company loyalty, keeping people in a state of 'shallow work' allows for easier turnover and cheaper labor since it's less involved.

The relationship between employers and their workforce seems much different than in years past, with a surplus of employees, especially college graduates. More than ever before since there are very few who see manual labor as a career goal these days. By turning a lot of these employees that would have been doing menial tasks into college graduates, you dilute the pool of those that "deserve" deep work perhaps?

Regardless, it's a very interesting problem, and sadly I find myself in the shallow end more often than not these days.

I remember that LA post. I'm sure wherever you move man you'll continue to do well.

Thanks for mentioning that you plan on buying the book. That makes me feel good. Other than a bit of self-interest in wanting to write these book recommendations to help me retain information, my primary motivation is to recommend books that have enriched my life and I am confident can have the same effect on others.

Some interesting thoughts there. There's a lot of content in the book about the shifting nature of work and the labor market from the Industrial Revolution and beyond. Especially interesting to me right now is the idea that we're in the "early throes of a Great Restructuring" where "our technologies are racing ahead but many of our skills and organizations are lagging behind." For an individual laborer, figuring out how to personally narrow this gap can be hugely +EV and the book proposes lots of ideas for how to accomplish that.

FWIW, deep work as conceptualized by Newport can apply to all kinds of tasks, including tasks less traditionally associated with requiring cognitive toughness. There's a lengthy section in the book about the craftsman mentality that discusses, for example, the deep work habits of a swordsmith. The book has some overlap with my first book recommendation, Drive by Daniel Pink, in that it assumes that the best kind of life is one where an individual finds great intrinsic motivation in his or her work. When exercising mastery in a deep work state we will often experience a "flow" state, a concept I think I've discussed previously itt. According to the book, and what I have found to be true in my personal experience, achieving a "flow" state when engaging in meaningful labor is one of the best kinds of experiences a human could have and, in a sense, something "sacred."


Thanks for the kind words, Stuntman. GL on the bovada grind.

I really liked Drive too. Autonomy, mastery and purpose really sums it up well. I'll check out Deep Work. I seem to be more of a fan of single tasking, turning outlook "toast" off, no laptops in meetings than most others I've worked with.

LA sounds like a good idea too.