... states! cards! things to focus on!



I enjoyed a couple of days of really great sessions, coupled with very productive work. Great sessions in what sense? Well, in the sense of winning money, this time. And productive as in focused and goal-orientated, learning things that I can apply in game.



So I am going to do... nothing special, like most of you probably would, too. We poker players are a weird bunch sometimes... we know what's worth celebrating and what isn't!



Keep grinding, we tell each other, and we mean it. It's great to see when somebody's play is beginning to pay off, and that's when you really want them to keep playing, to keep learning and to keep enjoying it as long as it lasts!



So I tell you the same: Keep playing and keep learning. Don't forget to enjoy it, and if you have already forgotten it, then remember to enjoy it! Cause that's really all it takes.

This week was great. I managed to...

[x] play 20.5 hours of poker
[x] do 5 hours and 15 minutes of writing
[x] work on my game for a little less than 2.5 hours
[x] get almost 2.5 hours of coaching
[x] do >5 times of Wim Hof breathing
[x] get up an hour earlier 1/5 days

and that's it. Not too shabby, but the main thing that was great was the way the sessions felt, the way I played, the way I improve, and the way I was able to present it today. Jeez am I unsure about some spots... but I am working through it spot by spot, and I am not stopping, and things are beginning to click big time.

Next week, I'll amp it up by 10 percent, so 2 hours more poker and an hour more writing. Am I gonna post hand histories one day? Yea. Am I gonna post results one day? Hell yea.

How are you guys doing? What do you manage to get done in an average week? And most interestingly: What do you do better than me, from what you've gathered? I wanna know!

Have a great weekend folks!

I am way ahead of pace for poker this week, and today was really intense. Man, those sessions when you barely stay afloat mentally because you're really not sure anymore what's what... I guess I kinda missed those.

"What a challenge!", says a part of me.
"**** me..." says another part.
"I wish I ran better..." says somebody in here...

and all the while I focus as best as I can, I guess, which means that I am paying very close attention to what I might learn, which presupposes that there is a lot to learn. I second that! Have a great week!

Steps taken this week:

[x] 24 hours of poker
[x] 3 hours of writing
[x] 5 sessions (30 minutes each) of working on my game
[x] 2 hours of coaching
[x] 3 times of Wim Hof breathing

And results-wise, this has been the best week so far!
Also, related to creating a business, which is the goal, I figured out where to get royalty-free music and audio files, so that's good.



Plans for next week:
[ ] Do a goal setting session, now that I've sort of achieved the goal that I had set
[ ] Play >20 hours of poker
[ ] Do > 3 hours of writing
[ ] Work on my game 5 times, for at least 25 minutes each

Have a great weekend y'all!

...which is a good reminder. For me that means that I am looking to find game-theoretically sound plays that make me uncomfortable, two of which I pulled off today.

This week is going well, I've been focusing on poker and it's paying off, which feels exceedingly great and exciting. Now I am in the zone.

What does your daily schedule look like, dear silent reader? Do you have rituals, like I do?

Talk to y'all on friday!

[x] 19 hrs of poker
[x] 3 hrs of writing
[x] working on my game 5 times of around 30 minutes each
[x] have 5 fire-up conversations each morning
[x] get 2 hrs of coaching

So after a pretty hot start I got less done this week than I'd like, mainly because I needed to go to the dentist today and I decided that sacrificing some work time was what I was gonna do.

Next week, I'll aim for playing at least 20 hours of poker and doing at least 4 hours of writing while keeping the other things on my to-do list the same, which means that I'll work on my game for roughly 2.5 hours and have a couple of those crazy productive conversations that I love.

Don't have a great weekend quite yet...

There is something called NLP, or neuro-linguistic programming, which has ties to hypnosis and has a lot to do with accessing a great state when it's right for you. NLP is based on a set of presuppositions, which I decided to write about and post here, so I'll start today with this:

People have all the resources they need to succeed and to achieve their desired outcomes. (There are no unresourceful people, only unresourceful states.)

"People have all the resources they need", I was once told in a bar pretty late at night. So I looked around and I wondered whether these people around me, like that drunk guy over there, who looks spent and jaded, boasting to his drunk friends, and listening more closely you realize that he boasts of times long gone and deeds long done that maybe aren’t even true… they don’t look like the’ve got all the resources they need. Like that woman over there staring at her phone with a sour look on her face, fidgeting nervously without even realizing it. So she’s got all the re… give me a break!

So let’s pause there for a second and ask ourselves: "What exactly does it mean to be resourceful?" Have you ever felt (like I have) that you had exactly the resource that you needed? Like you were totally prepared without actually preparing? That's what people call a state of being resourceful, but they mistakenly take of resourceful people instead of resourceful states. What if they were wrong? Like you’re at a random party and somebody who you don’t know suddenly starts talking about this thing that you love and know a lot about, like a hobby of yours that you’ve spent hundreds or even thousands of hours on or something connected to your job that you wish you’d get the chance to do more of and he apparently knows absolutely nothing about it but he really needs to learn because it’s important! At that point somebody spills some beer on him which really isn’t an issue… wasn’t much at all… "Where was I…", he continues… "Right… I really wish that somebody could help me… but it really isn’t easy to find somebody!" and he smiles. You look at him more closely: You see his hair and his open face and you realize that you already like him. The tone of his voice, the way he talks, the way he holds his body, he just seems like a really cool guy! So that’s when you walk over there as if your moves were saying: "Move aside people… I got this!" with that sort of grace that you get when you know what you’re doing, a jedi master approaching a padawan with that calm confidence… "in the right place you are… worry you shall not…"

Or you’re tackling an issue and maybe you knew it right from the start or you realize it while doing it, but you’re really good at this! You’re the right person for the job! Because you’re resourceful and this is when you’ve practiced to get into that state of resourcefulness. It always takes a moment as if there were a couple of steps that you took to really get yourself into that state of excellence (and maybe that's exactly what you do!)

so when I looked again at that drunk guy I imagined him talking to a different crowd and I had no doubt that his face could be sincere, his posture could be attentive, his words could be carefully chosen, that he could be excited… that there was something, some time and some place, where he knew how to be resourceful….

To be continued!

As a midweek update, I'll continue that sort of meditation on nlp-presupposition #1... Here we go!



so if you picture that drunk guy first sobering up… then watch his state change as a time lapse. See him visibly change now that he’s open minded, spot the subtle difference in and around his eyes and if his posture has changed then that’s because he’s beginning to be self-assured. Keep watching as he looks around in a calm way with that sort of intelligence that can be described as imaginative and then watch him spring into action proactively as he persistently keeps solving the issue at hand with that calm and open mind. Taking a step back you realize that all this is possible if you see a challenge where others see a problem which means that you’re automatically hopeful about dealing with it well.

Experts are often resourceful in their field of expertise, which means that in one of three cases knowledge has something to do with it. Let’s look at at the other two because reaching a state of resourcefulness in a situation where you don’t have much knowledge and where you’re surprised, where it’s all about your mind clicking into the right gear for the situation (to be spontaneous and creative!) is something that you get great at with practice and that you can use when you are in a situation that you didn’t see coming which especially happens with people who you love or with things that you really care about. It happens when you’re passionate and frisky as if the ultimate test that life throws you was to get tested in a really good moment… where you feel amazing cause that’s when you’ve got the most to lose. And in order to be resourceful you need to keep your head on your shoulders once you’ve identified that action is called for.
So in that second type of situation where you can be resourceful on demand the gear that you click into is that of presence and of taking the situation in intelligently and sort of relaxed behind the tension that is going to be there too. The third situation requires a bit of background knowledge…

So once upon a time there was a guy called Tim Urban who decided to write about procrastination in his blog and he drew some stick figures, too. Because as we all know there’s a little monkey in our brains and when that monkey takes over you end up watching 43 youtube videos about people scamming scammers instead of working on your game and that’s just the beginning of that storyline which has a rational decision maker in it - thank god! - who’s got a nice steering wheel behind your eyes and a guardian angel of sorts who can scare the monkey called the panic monster. So as you can probably tell (or maybe not at all, in which case make sure to check out Tim Urban's ted talk!) these blog posts became very popular. So popular in fact that Tim Urban went on to make on of the most popular TED talks of all time and as we zoom in on one of the final things he said in that TED talk I want you to realize that your life isn’t just a series of emergencies (surprise!) there’s also these subtle pressures that can slowly build up in situations where you may need to act one day but you really don’t know when, so some people keep putting that off and the panic monster never scares away the procrastination monkey with a jolt cause there’s no emergency! Which brings us back to that state of resourcefulness that you’ve got a good grip on by now...



...and that’s especially useful when you can sit down and close your eyes and remember moments in which you were really open minded which may take some time in the beginning especially when you’re already a little bit older which is the time that it takes to begin to remember moments when you were a child going right back through the memories that you haven’t forgotten (and don’t be surprised if those memories feel very close) because as you’ve forgotten so many moments of your own life you’re actually pretty close to the memories that you’ve got as if it’s not years that passed since then but it’s just days… maybe it’s weeks… at most it’s months… so you can remember it really well, that former self of yours, that knows perfectly well how to be open minded and how to be hopeful that you are going to deal with this well. That version of you knows to be self-assured, so whether you’ve got a memory where you’re all those things, which means that that’s exactly that state of resourcefulness that you’re looking for, or different memories where a single quality is really intense that you can remember so that there begin to be connections between spontaneity and creativity, so that when you know what it feels like to be spontaneous and creative you are automatically open minded now so that you can choose to be resourceful especially when you need to deal with an important issue that’s not urgent…. and take action now!

Great stuff again... WaitButWhy blog is one of my favourite things to read online.

This blog is amazing. What is your physical surroundings/environment/state like when playing?

Short but sweet this time:

[x] 23.25 hours of poker
[x] 6.25 hours of writing
[x] 1 (plus what I post today, I guess) blog post
[x] worked on my game five times for 25-30 minutes each
[x] 3 amazing morning conversations
[x] did one interval of Wim Hof breathing

Which is a good week in terms of volume, this is pretty much the max that I can do if I don't want to work more hours.

I'll aim for 22 hrs of poker and 5 hours of writing next week. All the other stuff can stay the same.

Thank you!

Good question! I am sitting in front of a pretty new and very quiet computer, looking at a 34 inch screen. I am in a room that I call my office, which is a sanctuary of sorts, because all I do in here is work, write and meditate. Which is also what I use this computer for. Generally it's warm in here and somewhat quiet, and many of the sounds that I do hear are sounds that I love, or at least that are made by loved ones...

I'd say that I am in the zone when things are going well, which generally means that I win most of the pots that I am a favorite in and that I don't encounter too many tough spots. When things aren't going well I am struggling with the intensity of it, like yesterday and today, for example. Now that this stuff is out in the open it may become somewhat of a recurring theme, you'll read more on it on Tuesday.

So have a nice weekend y'all!

Recently I stumbled into a hand with some resources that I would be able to use in order to play that hand well. Now I am going to create some more, so that I can play high intensity spots even better in the future. First let’s look at the hand, and let’s look at the resources that I had. Let’s also find out which resources I would have liked to have had.

The game is plo and the hand goes as follows:
I am in the big blind, and a reg from the small blind open raises. I call with QJ53 with five high clubs...

FLOP A94

...and the flop comes A94 with two clubs, the ace being one of them. I got a weak flush draw and a gut shot to the nuts, and the ace of clubs is on the board, which reduces the number of flush draws he has got. He bets, I raise, he calls.

TURN K

The turn is the king of clubs and he quickly leads into me for pot and I call.

RIVER blank

The river is a blank and he goes all in for about a third of the pot. I call and he shows AQxx with the nut flush (so Qcxc, just to be clear). I lose.

Resources that I had:

• Knowing that he’s some kind of reg
• A blueprint of how he probably plays
• Poker theory framework in my head about my own range and play
• A weak draw with no relevant blockers to good hands

Let’s take a moment to meditate on something that’s eye-opening for me right now:
If you think that a certain player is annoying, then beware! Because you’ll probably unconsciously orchestrate things so that he turns out to annoy you (See, you were right!). It’s good to realize that being right about what you believe the world to be is very important. It’s as if you were an intensely social creature, and being able to accurately put people into buckets (like a safe bucket and a danger bucket) and get a sense of their behavior is a very important skill for one such as you. Oh wait… you are! And it is!

Resources that I was lacking:

• Calm and focused mindset going into the hand
• Abundance mindset (a spot like this is going to come up thousands of times, and I can afford to pick the perfect hand to raise)
• A great hand (A99)
• A great hand to bluff raise with (89TT with the ten of clubs)
• A clear and enjoyable plan for the turn and river
• Confidence that I would play this hand well

(Everybody has all the resources that they need, or they can create them…)

(There are no unresourceful people, only unresourceful states…)

In order to outline what it would look like to have those six resources, let’s begin by looking at potential obstacles:

• Getting re-raised
• Bad turn card
• Bad river card
• Getting lead into
• He doesn’t fit into the bucket = He does something I didn’t expect

So now we’ve got a map. There’s a clear path from flop to showdown, and there are obstacles in the way. The map advises you what to pack, so that’s great. I don’t wanna be like Bilbo who forgot even his handkerchiefs!

So let’s outline what I was going to do when faced with an obstacle:

• If I get re-raised I am going to fold and feel owned.
• If a bad turn card hits I am going to give up and be mad.
• If a bad river card hits I am going to give up and be madder.
• If I get lead into I am going to fold on a blank turn and be angry.
• (there’s more ways of getting lead into, one of which ended up happening. I was angry and beating myself up as it turned out).
• If he doesn’t fit into the bucket then I am going to beat myself up.

Maybe now you can take a short moment and appreciate my honesty, cause this kind of hurts… maybe leave me a nice comment, too

Let’s take a moment to meditate on another eye-opener (for me, anyway):
Bluffing can be a high stress scenario, and it can be a scenario where you’re looking to pay close attention to your opponent’s timing and keep thinking about what exactly his range is, how he might view you and what you expect him to do based on all that. In short, bluffing well is a situation where you’re processing a LOT of information quickly. Plant a flag here.
Bluffing is like calling… and calling is like playing a sort of high stakes game… and playing a sort of high stakes game means that you feel pressure, because the stakes matter to you… and that’s like building something that you want to be solid, and making sure to build it well. It’s that kind of pressure.

So what does the state look like that I will begin to look for in order to be well prepared for future plays that require intense focus? Looks to me like it’s what I get when I stack four sorts of states on top of each other, and here they are:



Humility
My model of this situation is shaky at best, and I am likely missing tons of things. I can’t pick a random hand against somebody who I don’t know much about and build a pot. Can even I, flawed as I am, begin to make a play here? I need to be careful.

Patience
I can wait for a better spot. Do I have all the resources that I need right now? Am I sure? There’s no need to rock the boat.

Support
I need things that help me not screw up here. Am I that sure about this specific player, and does my hand help me make decent decisions? I also need help from the board.

Confidence
With all the things I’ve got going for me, there’s really not much to this. This isn’t rocket science. I can make a little play here and see what happens. You never know...

Let me know whether you guys (and gals) liked this type of post, it certainly was very eye-opening for me (). Have a great rest of the day folks!

When a hand really pisses you off, it means that you’re finally ready to look at that part of your game and come up with a new and improved strategy. That can be a strategy for your mental game and your state while playing, or a strategy for clicking the right buttons.
When John Wick was really pissed off, that’s when he was the most dangerous.

I got JT87 double suited in the SB. CO (reg, 100BB stack) opens, BU (fish, 1050BB stack) three bets, I ("reg", 350BB stack) four bet. CO folds, fish calls. We’re heads up.

Flop 4J4
(pot 85 BB’s)
...I cbet half pot, fish calls.

Turn 6
(pot 170 BB’s)
...I bet half pot, fish calls.

River 7
(pot 340 BB’s)
...I check, fish bets half pot, I call. I lose.

So, which resources did I have in this hand:

• A very good hand preflop
• Info: My opponent three bets something like 25% here and never folds to my four bet
• A good idea that he’d be somewhat sticky and probably randomly spazzy postflop
• A moment of clarity preflop: This is a hand I’ll go to war with

Which potential obstacles were there, and how was I going to deal with them?
(and which ones wasn't I aware of)

• A tricky flop (didn’t even cross my mind). Enter a maelstrom of cognitive overload.

(Aha-moment): There need to be some, if only just 2, really good turn cards. Otherwise my hand sucks. You fall back on a certain scenario like you fall back on a clean sheet. You don’t fall back into a pile of garbage, or maybe you do, but it won’t make you feel better. So you need that clean sheet. “Don’t worry, you can always fall back on this pile of trash in the dumpster! Make you feel any better?” Forget the dumpster full of garbage! Falling back on that clean sheet, it’s like that perfect moment of relaxation when you fall into a freshly made bed... with your eyes closed… cause you are relaxed and comfortable…

• A bad turn (or any turn pretty much, like in this case) once he calls my cbet. Stay in that crazy storm of being overwhelmed and click bet cause that’s what you do when you can identify one good outcome: Him folding, the pot being shipped to me!
• A mediocre/bad river once all that happened. Intensity amps up...
• Losing a big pot, especially once I played it loosely (as I did). Shame! Would need quite a while to recover now.
• Getting it in good or at least decent and losing the pot. Be very sad.
• Getting it in bad even though I didn’t make a mistake and losing the pot. Be very sad.
• Getting it in bad and winning the pot. Be very sad but kinda giddy and giggly.

Does this look like the ramblings of an unstable person? Kinda does, doesn’t it? During that pot, once the flop hit, it was like… a bad psychedelic experience with that sort of self fulfilling prophecy that you always feared was true looming over it all like Sauron’s eye. The intensity of it was like a bad trip.
I was in that sort of mental psychedelic experience… tense, pressured, unfocused, giddy, cognitively challenged. Struggling with the spot and with my mental state.


What else would I like to have:

• Clarity on the flop
• 10 minutes to calm down and play that flop well

(What would I do if I had those 10 minutes?):

1. Curse for 30 seconds or so
2. Consider my options: check and face a bet? Sucks. Check and get a free turn? Kinda sucks, but is better. Cbet half pot? Sucks. Cbet smaller? Sucks, but probably better.
3. Ramble: What on earth could his 25% 3bet range look like, once he didn’t 4bet?
   Some random AA, all good KK, all good QQ, many good JJ. many good Ax. random connected hands all over the place: 4567, 68TJ, 8TKQ,...
   He’ll fold the hands that didn’t hit anything. There’s probably a tiny bet that I can make that catches those hands, and whether he calls or raises his continuing range? Couldn’t care less. Kinda....

• An insight on the flop : My hand is trash here. Go ahead and try winning the biscuit with trash, but don’t complain if it backfires. You better be sharp, you better be on point.
• A moment of celebration: I built a huge pot with a big hand and a pretty bad flop hit. First I want to fistpump, then I want to do a little victory dance, then I want to laugh uncontrollably (and quietly).
• A perspective, like a tool, for me to use if I want to: How can I make him sweat? Can I put him into overload? Probably can’t, but I’d like that to be there, just in case.

I got stuff done:

[x] 16.25 hrs of poker = 74%
[x] 4.5 hrs of writing = 90%
[x] 3 intervals of working on my game + 2 coaching sessions
[x] 3 hrs of mental game sessions

which means that it was a week that was more focused on non-poker stuff than I anticipated, which probably won't happen again for a couple of weeks.
So let's aim for 22 hrs of poker and 5 hrs of writing again next week.
Have a good weekend y'all!

"... little bit cranky, might be getting a cold. I still put in a good amount of hours of poker, both working on my game and playing."

said the little victim in my head.

Have a great week!

You can probably tell by now that I am pretty thorough about this idea of having resources (or being able to create them). And you are right!
So today I figured I'd share the kind of thing that I might record and listen to before a session. I hope you find it useful.

To some of you, the following may be a bit weird to read, because it mechanically describes a way of perceiving poker. But make no mistake: What exactly does it mean to be engrossed in playing? And what's it like to be totally focused on one spot? What are the spots that capture your focus? Is it the facebook-type distractions that only serve to keep you stuck in your old ways, or is it scrolls of wisdom, scrolls of intelligence and massive experience that really get your attention?

Maybe it’s not important that you’re in a good state, maybe it’s much simpler than that. Maybe it’s a visual thing…
like you see a spot appear in the foreground where your attention can be used productively, which is what I call a hidden treasure because those spots come up all the time, but people look the other way which means that there’s a sort of edge to these spots. You may have to put in some work on them in order to make them beautiful and if you don’t then they’re just missed opportunities and you get a long list of them with each session where you could have followed your instinct, you could have done what you thought was right.
So this time you see it magnify to the perfect size and dial up the intensity of the colors and the brightness while everything else sort of fades into the background and time slows down… you focus, you pour your attention into this spot as if you poured water on a plant to see that it has grown the next day. This type of focus makes you feel good. It’s as if on your personal computer all of facebook was greyed out and everything part of a dark background but that one group where people actually schedule meetings and they actually show up to meditate or to do yoga or simply to go for a nice walk around a beautiful lake. So that when you open that facebook page that’s what you see… highlighted, the only thing in color… not the only thing that’s worth noticing but you’re worth it to notice just that. Ask yourself: Who would you be in a month if you used facebook that way, or twitter, or youtube? Who would you be in six months if you just took up one of the opportunities that would come to your attention that way per month, continuously developing your focus…

it’s not a piece of software that can do this for you that you can run on a computer. But you can develop this software in your own mind.

Maybe it’s an auditory thing so that when one of those spots that's just a distraction captures your attention like a black hole it gets hard to concentrate because it’s so loud in here inside your own head… but when that magnified spot that you can actually use your attention to focus on to your own benefit captures your focus then things grow quiet and once you’ve practised paying attention to a series of five of these spots and then six… and then seven… and then ten… suddenly something changes and you can hear it: There’s a lot of space right here. Right now it’s so quiet. That's what people call having space to think.

Maybe it’s a matter of motion because when you feel the tension and follow your gut and when it turns out that you’re wrong then you erupt out of your seat and you fistpump and then you do a little victory dance as if you celebrate that you faced a tough spot head on and that you did what you believed was right and you’ve gained something already: Because now that you played the spot according to your own judgement you’ve got a resource as if each failure that you achieved in this manner was like a scroll of wisdom in a computer game that’s added to your inventory for you to use and each failure gave you experience, or XP so that you can level up if you simply keep going. So if your successes make you money and your failures gain you XP then all the computer games got it wrong. So maybe most people get it totally wrong cause somebody created the computer games maybe not the average guy but somebody pretty average.

Maybe it’s a matter of feelings because you may feel some tension especially when you’re out of your comfort zone but it’s not all a 10. Sometimes the tension is a 5 or a 6, which means that you’re sort of with one foot outside of your comfort zone which is where psychologists say you can experience flow.

So go into the session knowing that you can identify the next step that’s neither too big nor too small but just right for you and that it’s that process that you can decide to use to put yourself in the zone and be rewarded by getting exactly the session that’s right for you whether you know it or not.

Good luck!

I'll post my bankroll status from now on, so that there's even more info to track and stuff to measure. I started at 100% a couple of months ago.

Bankroll: 150%
[x] 25 1/4 hours of poker +15%
[x] 2 3/4 hours of writing -45% (yea I know, slightly different maths. Suck it.)
[x] 4 Intervals of working on my game, <30 min each -25%
[x] two mental game convo's and a large coaching session (immeasurably priceless)

...and a week off now! Expect no new posts from me next week. Coming next: Some thoughts on goal setting, because that's what I'll do before the 1st of january.

Have a great and relaxing christmas folks! Make it count!

Everyone is doing the best they can with the resources they have available.
Behaviour is geared for adaptation, and present behavior is the best choice available. Every behaviour is motivated by a positive intent.


I’ve got Frank. Let me explain: When you play poker sometimes a part of you runs the show that’s subtly tilted or not so subtly tilted often in the same way or in a similar way, so you know that part well. In my case that part is a pretty impatient guy, let’s call him Frank. Frank is both impatient and a bit paranoid in a blunt way. He really HATES being bluffed! In between hands he tries to relax but when he can’t help but remember having to fold in a medium pot or in a big pot there's an inner dialogue that goes something like this: “Why did I end up in that spot? I should have called.” and in the background as if said in a whisper “he probably bluffed me...” and louder “He has enough bluffs in his range!” and then there’s that terrible feeling in my gut that I can’t quite let go. Frank is a bit obsessive that way... So recently I thought: "This isn't working. I've got to change something." So I sat Frank down in a comfortable chair and I said to him “Frank” cause that’s his name “when did you start running the show?” and he said “right from the beginning. I even started running the show earlier.” and that’s when I remember: Frank isn’t new! He didn’t begin showing up when I started playing poker! So I ask him “Frank, how old are you?” and he says “I don’t know. Never thought about it before.” “so Frank, relax. If you had to guess how old would you say you are?” And he visibly relaxes just a bit cause he’s a tense guy and he says: “25” so I look at him and I say “Frank, how many hours would you say have you been taking over in the last years?” and he thinks for a bit and says “couple of hours a day?” and I go “How do you feel about that?” and with a stony expression he’s like “It’s necessary. you’re weak.” this is when I swallow and I go deep inside cause I’ve never had to deal with something like this before. This is new. So finally I say:
“Frank were you always needed?” and he looks sort of surprised
and he says “No” “So what was it like before you had to take over for hours a day” and he looks puzzled “I can’t remember been a long time now”. So I feel that I gotta try differently and I remember things about Frank: He’s impatient. He’s obsessive. In a way, he’s merciless when it comes to protecting... something... and I go “Frank what’s your purpose?” and he doesn’t answer quite yet. “What are you after? if you were after anything” and he goes “Well when there’s weakness I jump in. I am tough. I make sure that things are solid and that nobody ****s with us. I make sure that we get respect” respect... I ponder... that made me realize something “So are you a sort of bodyguard” and he lights up and the room that we’re in lights up. The atmosphere changes...




“So Frank, you take over for hours every day and there’s a reason for that and if I could help you figure that out and maybe find a great way of meeting your needs while we’re talking then things can begin to make sense in a new way, and all of us” cause that’s when I sort of remember that I am in the same boat as Frank (literally) “can have a much better time” and I remember somebody saying “when you’re much happier, which means that you’re in a great state more often, then you begin to shine with a certain aura that is going to have an impact: first on the people you know well, on your family and close friends, then on your community and then on your whole world! So would you be willing to find a new way of meeting a need and make some decisions” and I wonder: "Would I?"

Hello. This is Frank. I’ll tell you about Simon’s goals, cause he said he was going to post something about goal setting, and he didn’t. To be frank (*wink*), he isn’t particularly good at it. And he keeps going on about adjusting his goals depending on what happens. Well, I say toughen up and make sure that nothing happens. Stick to your damn goals. Anyway, here we go:

Get the bankroll to 930% by the end of the year (It’s at 166% now)

That’s his goal. Thought there’d be more? Well, here’s more:

Simon spent most of his time writing and thinking about potential obstacles, and he sucks at that too. I can prove it by sharing one obstacle with you: Doing too well. He calls that an obstacle… I guess the point is to adjust the goal upwards in that case, which I am all for, even though it isn’t tidy at all. Why not set a more ambitious goal right away? Anyway… another obstacle is to have mediocre results for a month, which is when he wants to adjust his goal. We’ll see, cause I am in here, too, and I got something to say about adjusting any goal to be less ambitious like a little *****.

I’ll tell you how he’ll achieve his goals in my estimation:

1. Stop being a whiny pushover
2. Stop being a whiny pushover
3. Stop being a whiny pushover
4. Get up at 5am every day

Regards,

Frank

First week of work in 2020, and it was a pretty good one.

Bankroll @166%

[x] found a new, goal-orientated way of warming up
[x] 17.75 hrs of poker
[x] 8.5 hrs of writing
[x] worked on my game 4 times a 30 minutes, make that 5 (once I've finished writing this!)

In addition, I've come up with a new system that tracks how productive I was through the day by doing complicated and mysterious calculations involving white marbles (for having done certain productive things) versus black marbles (for having failed to do those).

Score for last week: 8 (whites) to 3 (blacks)
This actually isn't easy, so I'll aim for 8:3 again next week.

Goals for next week:

• 20 hrs of poker
• 6 hrs of writing
• work on my game 5 times a 30 minutes
• get a score of 8:3 or better

Have a great weekend y'all!

"Well, you can tell when somebody comes in who has set a goal for himself. He's just in a totally different state. I don’t usually ask what it is, whether having a clear goal makes you be more focused or be more motivated and curious, or maybe something that really varies a lot depending who you are. So if I asked you now whether you have a goal, then you might realize for the first time that you rarely set goals, or you may have a habit of setting goals, especially when it comes to learning something that’s really useful for you. Which one is it?"

Take aim, even badly. - Jordan Peterson

Bankroll @ 195 %

[x] 19.25 hrs of poker (96%)
[x] 3.5 hrs of writing (65ish %)
[x] worked on my game 4 times a 30 minutes (80%)

Score for last week: 6 to 5 (Much worse than I was aiming for)
Pretty bad... let's aim for 7 to 5 next week.

Goals for next week:

• 20 hrs of poker
• 6 hrs of writing
• work on my game 5 times a 30 minutes
• get a score of 7:5 or better

Have a great weekend y'all!

Every behavior has a positive intent… how about steelmanning what you do, not what you think you should do?



You set a plan to get up early at 7 o’clock and you find yourself getting up at 9 o’clock. And then again the next day. And then again on the third day. And then again on the fourth day. After that, you sit yourself down to make sense of this. What’s going on?

“I’ve got no discipline” is what you may tell yourself, or “I am lazy” (I say you may be too used to being too comfortable for your own good). You’re certainly good at achieving your goal: To be frustrated with yourself. To be out of balance. To be out of your comfort zone in a way. Setting an achievable goal and then not making it for four days in a row is a sure way to be out of your comfort zone. It’s even better if you’ve decided, consciously or unconsciously, that getting up early was only going to achieve that anyway: To get you out of your comfort zone! Make it 10 days and your inner voice will have grown considerably. Make it 30 and you’ve probably grown pretty numb to it. How many days have you avoided achieving your goal since that day when you made it? Some people say it’s been 10,000 days and I tell them: You probably knew that there was a rule with a 10,000 in it and that it was about something good, but you’re getting it all wrong!

That said, we’re only scratching the surface: What reason could there be for making a goal that’s much harder on you than you are ready to admit and then to keep not achieving it and not adjusting the goal?

To get frustrated. Frustration can be pretty useful, as it’s a way of saying: What I am doing isn’t working. What other mechanism would you want? I think it would be nice to get big letters in red right on my retina: “Your plan for getting up early? It’s ****!” And the longer I ignore them the bigger they get, until I can see little else. Then they start flashing. Then the beeping starts...

You can make an argument for frustration being useful, what about ignoring frustration? How is that useful?

I don’t know about you, but I experience frustration as a sort of pressure. And why would I ignore pressure? Because it’s not unpleasant enough. Or because I am pretty strong and this pressure is nothing. I may even be able to withstand it for years. Where do you get your pressure from? What do you test yourself against in order to test your metal? How much frustration can you deal with? Probably a lot! How do you know that it’s not your goal to find out?

“I don’t care enough about this” is a way of saying that you’ve got no real concept of what you’re doing. What would it mean to get up early? It would mean to force yourself out of bed in the beginning and to get an hour or two more work done each day. It may mean that you get to work out every day. That you meditate every morning. Big ducking feal!

Let’s close with this: The economy of what you’re achieving in the smartest and easiest way possible is breathtaking. Your unconscious mind immediately identifies what you’re really shooting for, and it usually comes up with a solution that is

much easier
and
time-tested

than what you had planned consciously.

Bankroll @ 201 %

[x] 20 hrs of poker
[x] 3,25 hrs of writing
[x] worked on my game 3 times a 30 minutes (60%)

Score for last week: 6 to 4
Let's aim for 6:3 or 7:4 next week!

Goals for next week:
20 hrs of poker
6 hrs of writing
work on my game 5 times a 30 minutes
get a score of 6:3 or 7:4 or better

Have a great weekend y'all!