Day 23 - The Power of Quitting

No, not quitting the challenge... quitting the session. An important skill to have, and a difficult one when doing a challenge such as this.

3,000 hands in, and my head is all over the place. Emotional responses to everything, thought processes missing, judgement way off. A fuzz in my head with a foul mood to go along with it. I shut down the tables and went to find my copy of the Mental Game of Poker, by Jared Tendler, which I highly recommend to anyone that isn't a robot.. and there was the answer...

Malfunctioning mind.. When the emotional system becomes overactive, it shuts down higher brain functions

It talks about how the brain is organised in a hierarchy. The first being basic functions, such as breathing, the second is emotional system, and the third is the higher level thinking, creativity, emotional control etc.

When the second function, the emotional control, shuts down, it stops the third from functioning properly, and there is nothing you can do about it. In other words, recognise when it happens and do it fast, because there is no coming back from it without resolving the problem first.

I went away, still feeling the fuzz, the emotion in my mind, and watched TV for an hour. When I started to feel a bit more normal, I watched a couple of poker videos with similar level and styles of play to me, and would pause before each decision and talk about what I would do and why. Gradually everything came back, and not long after I fired up 4 zoom tables, ignoring the overload of further ring games, and continued my day, fully aware that I would finish a couple of thousand VPP's below what I needed. Every hour I would sit out for a couple of minutes and reflect on how I'm performing mentally, which also acts as a further reminded if I get tempted by any distractions.



It was the difference between having a -$3-4,000 day, and a profitable day. Lesson learned.

****ing hero. well done.

oh my god.

pure <3

updates op?

Big write up as soon as I've got time, including some stuff on my new biphasic sleep schedule which is working well.

Yet to miss a day, 115k vpps.

Best of luck man!!

Day 34 - Biphasic Sleep Schedule and Downswings

Downswings part coming after this..

Current VPP: 115k

Every day I was lacking in sleep, feeling groggy a lot of the time. I've done it before in life, it almost felt part of the challenge. But after an alternate sleep schedule was suggested to me, I read up on it.

I did some studies on sleep in school, and interestingly read about polyphasic sleep schedules, where you have a series of naps rather than one long sleep. The great thing about it would be the amount of hours you get to work in a day, but the zombie like torturous adaption phase makes that a big no.

Biphasic on the other hand, maybe the answer.

It turns out that humans naturally sleep biphasically, where you have one core sleep in the night and a nap in the day. Only in recent times have humans considered a monophasic (one core 8hour sleep) the norm. It explains the lunchtime lul, that tired feeling you get between 1-3pm. It's when your body naturally wants a nap.

The problems with my old monophasic schedule:

Un-natural hours - evidence suggests that rising with the sun satisfies our circadian rhythm, and avoids the 'social jetlag' a third of the population suffer from.
In those early waking minutes, our memory, reaction time, ability to perform basic mathematical tasks, and alertness and attention all suffer. Even simple tasks, like finding and turning on the light switch, become far more complicated. As a result, our decisions are neither rational nor optimal. Waking up outside of sunrise can cause this to last two hours, sometimes much longer.

Working hours - Sleeping for 7-8 hours only gives 16 hours a day of productivity, and that's excluding all of the other stuff, eating, showering, breaks. With a 13,500 a day hand requirement, taking 14.5 hours, it's almost impossible.

Mental challenge - having one long session every day is mentally daunting. Splitting the day into two or three segments is much easier mentally to achieve, smaller goals to reach every day.

Weirdly, biphasic sleep also allows you to sleep less. The first day of doing this, I felt better after 4.5hours of sleep than I have after 7.5 hours in the last 3 weeks. And still feel great days later.

I now sleep 4.5 hours 2 - 6.30am(sunrise), and have a nap 2.30 - 4pm. The nap was later in the day until I read research suggesting our bodies are honed to sleep at lunch, confirmed by my natural tiredness.

I now have my day split into three, with the lunch time nap and evening gym/spa session.

I now have 18 hours to complete 13,500 hands and can 4 table and play optimally. I'm behind my VPP requirement (to finish early), but 97 more days of 13,500 hands a day and I'm there.

That's if I'm not finished by my massive downswing, ironically when I've been playing and feeling my best. Coming soon...

Really intresting stuff, ill wait for some weeks and see how you feel after sleeping like that for a longer period, keep us updated and gl in your challenge

If you google biphasic sleep there are journals of people who have been doing it, and I don't think I've read a negative report yet, with plenty saying they have a lot more energy. Lots of science as well that suggests it is healthier and more natural than a flat 8 hours at night.

4.5 hours should be plenty tbh, I operate on less than that with no naps in the middle of day. Have you tried sleeping 6 hours straight? That should be more than plenty. It's claimed that the 'standard' sleep in one go is good for the body/brain. Lack of sleep is claimed to have irreversible brain damage (i'm sure you can read evidence which both agrees and contradicts with that.)

The lunchtime lull is diet dependent. If you eat a heavy meal, all the body wants to do is exert energy to digest it. If you have something lighter then it's much easier on the digestive system to process.

After doing a fair bit of research, I would argue against both of your points..

Everyone has their own set time of sleep needed if sleeping in one go, some 7, some 8, some 9. Mine is 9. Less than that, whatever the situation, and I'm tired. For the last few weeks I've been struggling on 7.5.

I've also been intermittent fasting, so the meals wasn't an issue.

From the link below (check out the graphs)
Phase 8: Siesta: perfect time for napping. As it can be seen in the graph, this is the period when the mental performance is at its mid-day nadir. It is not true that the nadir is caused by a hefty lunch (even though meals have a big impact on sleep control). The nadir is a natural expression of the circadian wave in sleep control. This circadian low time comes at the roughly same clock time as the subjective night nadir at a roughly 12 hour shift (e.g. if the middle of your night falls at 3 am, naps at 3 pm could be most effective). This is well explained in "How to nap". Dr Stampi also praises the value of siesta. Its benefits have been confirmed by numerous studies. It has been practised for ages in many regions of the world. It will definitely trickle into the corporate world as human productivity becomes increasingly dependent on one's creative powers.

Might be wrong, just the consensus from nearly every scientific piece.

http://www.supermemo.com/articles/po...ged_in_5_years

modafinil ainec

http://www.theguardian.com/education...e-in-long-term

EDIT: Ordered some

Very interesting sleep stuff. Do you have a book recommendation? I'd love to read more about this stuff. The polyphasic sleeping always seemed way too tough and intensive for me, but the biphasic makes a ton of sense.

Very challenging :-)! I'm checking this thread daily because im really really curious about it, best of luck with it !

Haven't read any books, just google polyphasic/biphasic sleep. The link I posted above has some very good scientific research on it as well, the graphs showing your times for your brain wanting sleep etc are very good for planning it out.

I'm actually going be holding off on the updates for a while, I just checked it because someone at my house asked me if the threads still running.

I've been doing more work on subconcious sabotage, it's a big problem for me (and the vast amount of other people in the world). In order to combat it, my exercises include visualising (with alpha waves audio in the backround) the benefits of being a SNE (financial security, freedom, travelling etc), which includes telling myself I'm already there and I'm just smashing through my daily targets like it's the norm. Worked great today, +$1500 or something. Very much fake it until I make it. I'm finding the law of attraction stuff fascinating. Unfortunately, believing I'm already there and just going through the motions of a highly motivated effective machine isn't conducive with upgrading a blog detailing any struggles. I'm not giving up on this thread, just making sure I'm smashing it regularly first.

gl,sub

Listening to this relaxing alpha track while playing.



Alpha waves can be seen as the "relaxing waves". Besides being quite relaxing, they also have an extremely important role to play in the human mind. They work as a bridge between the subconscious part of the mind (theta waves) and the conscious part of the mind (beta waves).

Information, feelings, creativity, memories, which are deep down in one's mind, cannot become conscious if there is no bridge (no alpha waves), between the two states of mind.

There is a phenomenon, which is called "Alpha Block". It will be discussed later.

Alpha waves typically occur, when someone is lying on his couch with closed eyes and simply takes some time for him or her. They also occur in early stages of meditation. Alpha waves can also be induced or stimulated to be produced more frequently and easily with alpha binaural beats.

There are a number of benefits of alpha waves. The most obvious are that you become calmer and more relaxed. It has also many effects on the body. For example, it slows down the heart rate, which can be effective against heart problems, the body finds more time to regenerate and it even has a very positive effect on learning speed and memorization.

I have also removed my bb/100 and $ results from HM2 reports, there is no need to check how much I am up or down in a session, it should make zero difference to individual decisions. At best it's distracting, at worst it's tilting. I will see if I can do this over multiple days.

Wishing you all the luck OP of reaching these goals. Subbed and following for the reminder of the challenge.

5 days no updates?!??!?! wats going on!?!?!?

sub'd gl man

Check back a couple of posts as to why

Thread has no interest to me without updates, I imagine I'm not the only one. Will check back eventually to see if there's updates

this is pretty awesome.

you seem so casual about getting SNE is such a short period of time. "yeh im gunna get SNE and THEN take poker seriously after" lol

whats your poker background?
jumping into a SNE chase now seems amazing to me so gl!

got any pics? im trying to get to 10% body fat are you already there and trying to get under?

lol