Hey,

Interesting blog. I definitely struggle with low-key internet addiction myself. I don't really go on long binges, it's always just half an hour here, there, but over the course of the day, when working for yourself and at PC a lot, it adds up to 2-3 hours.

IMO it's really difficult to live alone, play poker, and not have many other activities/social life.
Time management for work is so much easier when you have some other life obligations to base your time around, "Ok I know I have to play 2-3 hour session now because I have X social obligation at Y hours".
When your days are totally open ended, it's really easy to waste a lot of time, bc you feel like you have all the time in the world.
Why don't you get a part time job or a roommate? It might change things up. Poker is very one dimensional, boredom is inevitable, and when you have nothing to keep you in check (a friend, roommate, gf, whatever), it's easy recipe for wasting lots of time.

Day 17

Played 4 hours
Studied 30 minutes

The first day of the experiment. Started playing right after getting up. Underslept, slightly tired. The game definitely wasn't A+, but solid A-B. The mind was in some slightly altered state, when it's easy to sit down and waste a lot of time on websurfing, or binge watch a new tv show. For this reason it was really easy to play, to get and to stay in the zone.

It challenges all my previous assumptions about optimal state for best productivity. I used to think that it's always better to be fresh and sharp. But it looks like there're activities that seem to benefit from some tiredness and sleepiness.

I'll continue the experiment.

It also splits a day nicely into two parts. First part is devoted to playing poker. It is then followed by lunch and nap. The mind becomes fresh and sharp, just optimal for studying programming, building the portfolio.

Oh, I'm so familiar with this. I have time tracker on my PC for years. It counted literally thousands of hours browsing. So much time has been wasted. But if I wouldn't have the tracker, I'm not sure that I would be even aware of the problem.

For me the best solution is to not really fight this, but move it to the evening, when I'm finished with tasks for the day, and it's ok to spend 30-40 minutes to check a couple of forums/blogs/channels. And on some days go for a complete digital sabbatical. I'm in the process of developing these habits. Still stumble often, but it becomes easier.

btw, 2-3 hours a day doesn't sound like a lot. But you should add productivity loss from task switching and a need to refocus.

Yeah, it would be really nice to have some additional kick from outside world But mentioned options are mostly not available here in Russia.

I'm trying to have fixed routine. To play and study at the same time. After several days of doing something at specific time, it's much easier to continue doing it and not be disturbed by some sudden urges to check Youtube.

Day 18

Playing 4 hours (3 x 80 minutes)
Studying 30 minutes

Keeping momentum. But not happy with my non poker activities, namely programming and languages. There're so many things I can do: studying deeply computer science, studying different technologies, making pet projects, etc. I need to define some clear goals, build the plan of attack and curriculum for studying. It will be the goal for tomorrow.

Day 19

Playing 3 hours (2 + 1).
Studying 0.

Today was a busy day. I visited parents, did almost 2 hour run with a friend, went to sauna. But still managed to put on some volume and to make progress in non poker stuff.

My goal is to move to software development. I was overwhelmed by myriads of options. There are so many things I can do. I can study different programming languages and technologies, go through tens of MOOCs, follow diffent advices on blogs. After gaining expertise, the skill can be monetized via freelance, remote work or office work. I didn't know what to do, what was the best choice and as a result I did nothing.

After analyzing options I finally made a decision. The main goal is to get remote or office job. To accomplish this I need to do two things:

1) To get theoretical knowledge. I'll go through some Computer Science books and courses to fill in gaps in my current knowledge and expand it. The list from https://teachyourselfcs.com/ looks decent.

This part will be of lower importance. To finish everything from this list will require a lot of time. And it should be possible to achieve the goal finishing this part only partially.

2) To get practical knowledge. To learn specific languages and technologies and to build portfolio.

But before I will tackle this project, I'm going to spend some time studying books and courses on how to learn better, specifically stuff from Cal Newport and Scott H Young.

Today for example I learned two new things from Scott. The first was hovering somewhere in the back of my mind for a long time and was revealed today. That it would be a good idea to take a project approach to studying. Not just do some studying, but to have week by week plan of what exactly should be done. He elaborates this in more details in his videos. When I was listening to him, I realized that not doing this is the reason why I slack off often on my German/French studies, the same with poker and programming. If I were doing it with German for example, I'd probably been already fluent and could focus more on French or even Dutch.

The second thing is his note taking approach. Super intuitive and easy. He doesn't do bullet lists or transcriptions, he writes main ideas and connects them with arrows in a very free manner. Looks obvious, but I've never seen it. I'm going to watch a lot of lectures. It should be very helpful.

Day 20

Playing: 80 minutes
Studying: 45 minutes

Played only one session today. There were some non poker problems that took almost all of my time. But the good thing is - reviewed many hands.

Day 21

Playing: 4 hours
Studying: 0

Back on track. Just open tables, sit down and play. Easy

Day 22

Playing: 4 hours
Studying: 40 minutes - very intensive!

It's time to adjust my approach.

I'll stop listen to any music while playing. Even relaxing, "for focus", etc. Also I'll try to reduce web usage while playing.

Music gives mixed signals. It can help with boredom and concentration, setting right mood. It looks like a very good thing. But it always takes some of working memory and very moving music takes a lot of it. It's very bad for playing. As during playing I need to make fast and correct decisions, most of which rely on identifying correct patterns from memory. Limiting working memory capacity leads to not accessing neccessary information from memory when it's needed. It leads to mistakes and slow down progress.

In different situation, for example during writing, some music could be very beneficial.

Day 23

Playing 3h 13m
Studying 30m

The experiment with switching music and web off turned to be successful. It's not really difficult to play in complete silence, I concentrate on gameplay more and forget about boredom of silence. And it noticeably improves my game, I see way more interesting spots which I defaulted before and didn't get max value.

I'm also back on my fancy studying routine. It's hard to do, but my game is getting better after following it. So I just do hard thing, steer away from convenience.

btw, really great read on the topic, highly recommended.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/16/o...nvenience.html

There's another reason that boosted my motivation. I just looked at my recent results and realised that if my monthly income from poker will not improve, then it might be a better idea to drop poker completely and go for some labour job for 300 usd/month.

My hourly winrate is $3/hr on 5nl. The problem is that in recent months I played 60-70 hours a month, hence 180-200 usd a month. I played so little because too often I didn't play for 3-4 days or often played 1-2 hours a day. I was unorganized and lazy.

So 4 hours in a day, every day should bring ~120 hours a month and 360 profit. If I increase hourly rate to 4-5, the profit will increase too, hence no music and no web. And I could finally move to 10nl.

Day 24

Playing 3h 52m
Studying 0

Most of the day again wasted online. Then tried to play my daily volume. Experienced super epic rise and fall

Day 25

Wasted.
Underslept, was super tired all day. Had serious intentions to put on good volume, but was away for half a day and managed to play only 40 minutes.

Day 26

Play 3.5 hours
Study 30 minutes (serious)

Recovered and put on some volume.

For a few days again I spent more time online than it was necessary. I was reflecting on this. I waste time on news and funny/interesting content.

I think there's no point of keeping up with news at all. It never makes my state better, it consistently makes it worser. News are not good representation of what is really happening in the world/country/city. There're a lot of things occur every day. Good, bad, boring, interesting or not really. But there're only a few slots for the most important news of the day. So media always choose something that will grab more attention, something dramatic and tragic. Screw it!

I also explored counterarguments for this position. First, most important things somebody will always tell anyway Second, what if most of the people would choose this strategy, it should hurt everyone in the long run? Not really, if this would occurs, there would be some solution, maybe in the form of less involved consumption, or some different format. Not a problem really. But the current state is really a huge problem for a lot of people.

On interesting content. In small amount it's very beneficial, it can ispire, motivate, show new way of living. But after a certain amount, it turns into another bad thing and can demotivate, uninspire and make less happy. So it's better to put on some limits on this consumption.

Unfortunately I have deep entrenched habits in both cases and it is very difficult to change them. Reflecting and exploring them deeper is the first, most important step.

I'm back!

Results for march:

Mostly nl5 + some nl10, 67 hours, 42700 hands, +$140

===

I think I'm staying with poker for a while. I need to deepen my programming knowledge before applying again for other jobs/projects.

But I really need money every month to sustain myself. At least $250 a month. There're two options for me: to find a job offline or grind poker. I can find a job, but it will be exactly 250-300 usd a month and will require much more time than poker. I'd better play poker.

The problem with poker is that I play 60-70 hours when I need to play 110-130. Procrastination, web surfing, lack of focus are the culprits here.

To fix this problem I've come up with the following solution:

I'm switching to weekly goals instead of monthly goals or goals without time boundaries at all. One month is too large of a planning horizon. It doesn't produce any good time pressure. I can slack off for days without feeling any guilt and hoping to catch up later. Of course it never worked.

Goals for a week feel very different. I know and feel that if I want to play 30 hours in a week, I cannot take a 2-3 day break.

And with weekly goals I can look more often back and make changes to my plans, schedule, approach.

===

So, the current plan for poker is:

1) Play 25-30 hours in a week.

I'll try to play 4 hours every day in 3 sessions. The last session of the day will be a bit longer.
If on the Saturday I've already achieved desired amount of hours, I can take a break on Sunday.

2) Review 25-30 hands with FlopZilla in a week.

Need to think about this point.

3) Watch and make notes on 1-2 videos.

Need to think about this point too.

You have to work on your preflop game.

I see many leaks that can be fixed very, very ez.

Good Luck.

I think you should find a 2 on 2 days work, where you work 15 days and play poker 10-15 days.

I am also from a poor country and I was not willing to work for 250-300$ a month with my college education. But I did start working in a 15 days a month, rest of the time I played poker. Once I had to money to buy a good PC, I quited my job and started to run SIMs and play full time.

Now I make more then the Presidential salary in my country.

But this was long ago. Cash games are full of bots. I personally have 6 bots running at WPN and they destroy the 5nl-10nl regs. There is more chance in building a roll with MTT's and Sng's.

Results for 9 April - 15 April:
Played: 24h 48m
Hands: 15264

Let me repeat the previous idea. Mainly to refresh it in my mind.

To work well I have to set goals for a week not a month. When I set goals for a month, I regularly slack off for a few days hoping to catch up later. I never caught up.

But when I set goals for a week, slacking off becomes much harder. Because I know that there're 3-4 days left in the week and I have to play 15-20 hours. And it's impossible to play 15 hours in 2 days

So, I indeed increased volume 1.5-2 times. There were times when I didn't want to play, but I knew that to achieve the goal for the week, I have to sit down and play. And in the end, all these times I played well, the results were good.

Goals for this week:

25-30 hour of play
study poker

I was out of poker for two weeks. I finally received the test assignment and put all my efforts to finish it. It took me 9 full days due my inexperience. I was stuck on very easy problems several times, after figuring out which I was every time surprised by how easy was the solution. In the end I didn't get the position as my work had many amateurish flaws and the company is not ready to invest in beginners. But it still was very good experience. It significantly boosted my skill and gave me a clearer direction for further work. I'm happy with the outcome.

It's time to return to poker for a while.

I finished April with break-even result in H2N after 36 hours of playing. There were many noobish mistakes because of distractions + low motivation + lack of work off of tables.

On studying poker:

I'm changing my approach to studying poker. I will not follow some "funny" routines. I will just review ~10 marked hands every day before playing with opened Flopzilla + I will try to sprinkle a few sweat sessions here and there.

I followed more complicated routine for studying, that in theory brings much better results. But it's hard to do it every day. On paper it's not hard. But when it came to the real work, I routinely avoided it.

The idea here is very simple. If there're two options. The option A that brings you 400% result, but which is hard, not fun and always avoided. And the option B that brings you 100% result, but which is easy, manageable and doable every day. In the long rise it's wise to stick with B

On playing poker:

I'll keep recent approach intact. There're weekly goals, not monthly goals. 25 or more hours of play a week, 4 or more a day. And at least weakly update to keep myself in check.

Ok, let me summarize:

Play 25+ hours a week.
Review 10 marked hands every day.

It's been a while since the last update. Nothing changed much, except a few more books I read, a handful of more observations and ideas. And I feel the need to start posting here again.

I feel myself being stuck in the same sub-optimal routines and habits every day. At the same time I have desires and intentions to progress in several long term projects and these routines are huge obstacles on the way.

I learned that it's impossible to harness willpower use it to overcome established habits. It works for a few days, but then always bounds back. I need to establish new habits, routines and rituals instead.

For now, I'll change my relationships with poker. I always played whenever I feel like, stopped playing whenever I wanted. This approach didn't work well. From now on, I'll treat it as a regular job.

I'll create two roles for myself: the boss and the player. The boss hires the player to play specific amount of time during specific time slot each day. If the boss isn't satisfied with performance of his employee, he fires him like in a regular job.

The rules:

1) Working day is 10:00-18:00. Monday - Saturday, Sunday - off.
2) I have to play 4 hours total during this period or 2500 hands whichever comes first.
3) I also have to spend some time studying.
4) At 10:00 I must start playing.
5) At 18:00 the day is over, no more poker is allowed.

Ok, tomorrow is the day 1. I'll make updates.

It's time for update.

The next day I wrote the last post, my brother who's a contractor/builder asked for a help (payed) with his project. The next 5 or so days I spent helping making up a porch for his client. Actually, not a bad job, and payed very well. But 5 days were enough to breakup the established routine and it took me a few days to get back on track.

I realized (again) that I'm an Internet junkie and without admitting this and making a plan for recovery, I won't go far in my endeavors. So, I decided to establish few rules:

1) Meditate two times a day, 30 minutes each time*. In the morning right after waking up, and in the evening. For the last two days I meditated 3 times already.

2) Leave Youtube forever.

3) Use Internet once a day, in the evening. There's no need to constantly check email, updates, feeds.

* This is Vipassana meditation. If someone reading this decides to start meditating, I'd advice to start small and building up the time really slowly, or it would be really hard and you would abandon this shortly.

Aug 31

Played: 3 x 80 min - lost 5 buy ins, sometimes this happens... Nevertheless satisfied with the quality of my play.
Studied: 1 hr - reviewed ~50 old hands
Meditation: 30 min in the morning + 30 min I'll do after finishing this post
Programming: started making progress again.
Walking: 2 hr (including 1 hr audiobook)
German: 1 hr

Really satisfied!

What's really amaze me, that I procrastinated from 9:00 (when I got up) until 17:00 (and meditated 12:30-13:00). And despite this, I achieved in half a day more than I did in 2 weeks. It seems that the meditation effects kick in at 17:00 when I finished reading German. There was a very strong feeling of mindfulness, deep concentration, flow, equanimity, control and sharpness of the mind.

Meditation changes something deeply in the brain. It breaks the negative loops, which leaks my energy. It makes me a hugely better version of myself. Time investment of 1 hour a day totally worth it.

On Poker:

I finally noticed that my brain tries to avoid thinking deeply too often. Instead of gathering all information available at the moment, weighing different options, taking time to make a decision, it switches to simple schemes, like "I have a top pair, I bet 2/3 pot".

Of course this mode of play leads to many sub-optimal decisions. And it obviously should halt any progress. So, I'm practicing awareness and try to verbally (silently or aloud) articulate every decision. It's straining and I hope that with time it will be easier.

On Programming:

I finally understood that it's totally possible to look busy, doing a lot of things, without doing actual progress. That's basically what I was doing for the last few months.

I think progress in programming is measured in the number and complexity of finished projects. In the beginning you do something simple, like a most basic blog. Then you do a slightly harder project. Rinse, repeat. During this process you acquire the necessary knowledge and expertise.

So, instead "just doing something", I should clearly define what's the project I should complete, write every requirement down and start programming it. And this list shouldn't be modified without real necessity, until the current iteration is finished. It's too easy to start adding new features and ideas, and making it never-ending list.