Alright, here is the week 3 summary!
WEEK 3 SUMMARY (JUNE 6-JUNE 12/22)
[
X] Play at least 40 hours of live poker per week
(19) OR Play at least 7,000 hands of online poker per week
(300)
[
X] Study for at least 7 hours per week
(0.5)
Let's see how we did:
This was the first week in the red. And I'll be honest, quite a bit of our losses are due to bad play/mentality. In fact, the last few days were mentally difficult. My sleep schedule had been later and later so on Saturday, I couldn't play a proper session of poker due to other commitments. During the night, I had trouble falling asleep. Consequently, I wanted to keep myself occupied with something so I decided to grind online. I had played nearly no online poker over the past 10 or so days, but I wanted to get some volume in. I had played and beaten 50z before, so I wanted to play higher so I went for 200z, despite not meeting my goal at 100nl regular tables that I made before I could jump in 200nl. Right away after loading the tables, I realized I made a mistake. Not only was I playing 200z laying down in my bed at 5am, but I was too attached to the money. I just could not accept a losing session. After losing a couple significant pots, I decided to play one table of 500z just to make a mountain out of a molehill. The 500z table was 3-handed initially and then became heads up soon after due to a tiny 5am pool. I still continued to play, despite almost certainly having a negative win-rate in the game (I am not very good heads up whatsoever). Following a big losing hand, I felt disgusted with myself and decided to stop playing. Good decision! It ended in a loss of around $550.
At the end of the day, that's not an insane amount of money, but it is significant to my bankroll. This is not the first time I have made a very ill-advised decision to play higher than I should, but I want to make it the last.
I am travelling to Las Vegas for the first time in less than a month and I want to set myself on the right track for this experience. I think I should put additional effort into cutting out bad habits which are setting me back from reaching my goals. In order to achieve such, I think I need to more clearly define my goals, priorities, and daily schedule. So, I just recorded this information in my journal and I am looking to execute it.
After a bout of consideration, I have decided to lower the study target from 7 hours per week to 5 hours per week. Some nights, I just don't have the energy to get a 30 minute study session in so even if I was very disciplined, I would still have quite some difficulty reaching 7 hours per week of study time and I believe it could lead to some "junk" study volume.
If I'm being honest, my self-esteem poker wise has diminished a bit, since when I made this thread I was hoping I would improve upon my bad habits, but it doesn't seem like that has happened.
If I just keep approaching the right direction, I am bound to improve.