My "career" consists of private home-games and some online-playing (mostly cash) for the last 10 years without turning a profit. I began to take the game seriously like 2 years ago, and have been getting better since.
I study computer science and was always good at maths, and loved to play (card) games...which seems like a good starting point for a beginning poker player.
My problem was: All of this made me WAY to arrogant in comparison to my non-existent poker skills. I thought like "Behold! I am the smart one, I will crush the game"....even now, I feel bad writing this down, because it still is such a cringe to think about my way of thinking back then.
So, to make my point now:
If I could restart, I would start studying poker, instead of (without any reason to do so) thinking I was already good.
Another thing i would change:
Dont waste too much time memorizing starting-hand-charts till you have 'em perfectly down, just to not know what to do after the flop....I can´t possibly ever remember all the times that I played KQ and the likes, and just didn´t have one single clue as to what are possible actions or strategies on a Q7A- rainbow board, for example.
Another thing with those starting hand-charts was, that I tried to force myself to play accordingly, but didn´t even know WHY I should fold a given hand PF to a Raise. I was playing mechanical and not learning anything. As I mentioned above: cringeworthy. Over 9000.
Maybe I´ll add something later on, but thats enough for now^^
Cheers,
SlamDonk