Mental Coaching (3) - Poker Habits

Introduction

In this article 

• Daily routine
  
• Habits
  
• 30 day test trial
  
• Ideas for changing habits

" Choose the life that is most useful, and habit will make it the most agreeable." - Francis Bacon

A poker player's career affords him the freedom to decide when he works and how much he works. This unusual lifestyle, which for many is also the reason they become a poker player, is often ridden with scheduling problems. On the other hand, this freedom is also a responsibility to yourself and others.

Sleeping longer and longer every day, not leaving the house and ordering pizza every day might sound tempting. However, whether it will really make you happy in the long run is a different matter. This article is meant to provide food for thought as to how you can steer your life in certain directions through simple habits in daily life. This will allow you to play a larger load, make faster progress or have more free time. 

Two different daily routines

These two different daily routines are intentionally slightly over exaggerated. You'll certainly see the odd point in which you may recognise yourself. Are these points more slob or perfectionist?

What exactly do fixed wake up times, meal times and grinding sessions do for you? They introduce structure to your daily routine. They function as the bones upon which you flesh out your day. Developing and sticking to such habits results in these regularly recurring activities becoming almost automatic actions. This means that we don't waste our thoughts deliberating about when we get up, eat, or start grinding, which saves time and nerves.

A further side effect is that you can acheive much more in a day. This means you can play a lot more hands with the same stress levels, or that you have a lot more free time at your disposal. The question remains however: how exactly do we develop this kind of daily routine?

What exactly are habits? For the purposes of this article, habits are defined as: 'recurring routines in our behaviour which define our daily routine'.

Good habits improve your health, make you stronger and more successful, afford you more time and ultimately, make you happier. The idea is to introduce these useful habits in your life.

On the path to effectively reforming your behaviour, chosing the right strategy and methods is crucial. It's here that this article can help you out. At the same time, you can decide how much you actually change your habits. You'll be surprised at the positive changes you can bring about. Changing habits becomes fun when your success rate improves.

30 day trial

Every change begins with a first step. The 30 day trial is an aid to simplify this step. The particular advantage of this method lies in that, in the moment you make the desired change, you have the thought in the back of your mind that it doesn't have to be forever. This motivates you to take the first step. It's easier for your head to come to terms with this thought. When the test phase is over, you've already got so used to the new situation and allowed it to become such a habit for you, that all you need to do is decide to keep it. There's pratically no further effort.

Moreover, you can gather your first experiences with the positive effects a change in behaviour triggers. The successes will put you in a euphoric state. This euphoria and the lowered resistance to establishing your new habit long-term provide motivation: 'I've successfully acheived this for 30 days, from now on, I can continue to do it daily.' In order to better fight your inner weaknesses and to ensure simpler and more assured success in changing your habits, I've compiled a few tricks for you.

In order to increase your chances of success, it's useful to look for an alternative to your old habits. It should have a similar benefit to that which you get from your bad habit. For example, you might turn on the television after playing poker to relax a bit, but instead you could review your hands after each session. The advantage here is that you routinely reflect on your played hands again, your mistake will become clearer to you and you'll remember important hands for longer.

If that isn't enough motivation, then you can make the change easier for yourself with extrinsic motivation. Moreover, you'll be setting yourself a penalty for breaking from your new routine. You can also impose a penalty on yourself for the entire failure of the project.

Let's stick with the example of the hand reviews. For each thing you forget from your hand reviews, you can fine yourself two euros (10 euros, 100 euros, depending on where your pain threshhold is), which you can donate to your partner, or a homeless person, or a charity of your choice. This can sometimes have very amusing effects, as the people you dondate to often develop an opposing interest and are happy to see you fail, in order to improve their finances. However, this is a further motivation you can also exploit.

You also have the opportunity to talk about your approach with poker buddies or other people who understand. If you explain your project to people, it will become more tangible, as it will when actually reveiwing your hands and it will also be embarassing to see this failure. This provides you with a motivation you shouldn't underestimate, so as to avoid this embarassment. If the project completely fails at the end, the penalty can be a bit higher. This means you think twice about whether it's really worth falling back into your old habits.

Ideas for changing habits

When it comes to possible ideas for changing habits, I differentiate between changes to the daily routine and poker habits. Daily routine describes rough time management, while poker habits refer specifically to individual situaitons, that is, the occur at irregular times. Both types can be easily combined with each other.  I will look more closely at the first idea in a different article.

Daily routines:

• Deal with three important or unpleasant tasks first thing in the morning
• Wake up at regular times
• Regular meal times
• Daily work outs
• Heatlhy nutrition
• Every evening, write down 10 things that have made you happy during the day
• Power naps (methods whereby short 10-20 minute naps can significantly reduce required sleep times)

Poker habits:

• Ritual before each poker session
• Make hand reviews after each session/day/week/month
• Full concentration solely on the poker game (no internet browser/chatting etc. instead, take notes on your opponents)
• Look at all the relevant statistics for every decision
• Note each difficult hand and post them for strategy discussions
• Daily/weekly coaching videos
• Do a coaching session every week/month
• Go to the casino every week/month
• Keep a mental diary
• Keep a diary about the poker game

The aim of this habit is to deal with the lots of important or unpleasant things first thing in the day and to start the day with a bang. You'll find you have  lot more motivation and energy for the day ahead if you can begin by crossing off three hurdles on your personal to-do list.

It could just as easily be two or five things. the point here is to have a number to commit to, so there are no excuses not to get stuck in. This means sooner or later, every task is addressed.

This refers to things which are associated with excuses or opposition. Drawing out these tasks does little more than cause unpleasant feelings or unnecessarily extend opposition. Dealing with these things in your head expends energy which could actually be used much more productively. It's a great relief to deal with these tasks. For this reason, these tasks have the highest priority. This may include uncomfortable telephone calls, updating poker software or patching things up with a partner or friend following an arguement.

This refers to the principle “first things first”. Imagine an empty glass, in this case, it represents the time you have available. Now imagine you fill the container with stones. Next you pour in gravel, then you cover it with sand. Finally, fill it up with water.

Lots of big stones (important, lengthy activities such as poker sessions) are at the bottom, small stones (fairly iimportant activities such as watching coaching videos) are underneath. Now imagine how you will fill in the sand and water (the small, generally less important activities such as spending 15 minutes checking your e-mails).

In the end, there's no space for the big stones. That is precisely the point of this exercise, i.e. dealing with the activities which really push you forward and on which you need to spend time. You'll find the little things sort themselves out in the breaks and waiting times.

This is a good way to get yourself in the mood for your poker session. In this way, you can change your conscious state as desired, to direct yourself purposely towards a flow state (complete immersion in an activity). Daily repetition makes it more or less like hypnotising yourself every day. The various ritual steps will be connected to your flow state, so you can recall the state at any time by repeating a step.

If you want to develop your skill and be able to call up this flow state at the push of a button, you should be aware of three prerequisites for an effective hypnotic trigger:

• 1. Individuality:
  The steps should be ones that you don't associate with other activities, or you'll mitigate the effect.
• 2. Emotional impact:
  Put yourself in the zone you get into when you're really involved in your poker game and you experince this flow state.
• 3. Repetition:
  The more often you experience this hypnotic trigger with the flow state, the stronger it will become.

Next, we'll use an example of a ritual to elaborate on what yours could look like. This time as well, the slob in particular is portrayed in an exaggerated fashion. The ultimate aim is to get to the desired flow state through [performing the ritual, in order to be able to call up your best game directly: your A-game.

• 1. Eliminate all sources of distraction
  Turn off mobiles and telephones, close the door, tell your room mates that you don't want to be disturbed for the next hour or so... / keep a shot gun on hand for your mother in-law.
• 2. Tidy your desk
  Only keep poker-relevant paraphenalia around / tidy away your pizza boxes so you can see your entire monitor.
• 3. Make sure you have supplies
  Water, fruit and nibbles / kebab, cola bottle and pee bottle (don't mix them up!) within reach
• 4. Motivational ssong
  Just as a boxer entering the ring has their own song playing, you should queue up a track to kick off your poker session / burp Eye of the Tiger.
• 5. Start all poker programs
  Close everything which is not poker related, start poker program / play Black Jack and Counter Strike on the side.
• 6. Position your desk chair
• 7. Scan the table and prepare yourself mentally
  
• 8. Make a resolution for today's session
  Play your A-game for at least 45 minutes / hold out for at least 45 minutes.
• 9. Do your starting ritual
  Make fists and consciously get into the flow state / turn the music up to deafening levels and get into the flow state
• 10. Start

Summary

This article demonstrates how you can develop daily routines and has elaborated on some ideas to this end. In addition, the 30 day trial period is presented as a method for changing habits. It also shows how such a change in habit might actually look, with the example habits of 'Dealing with three important or unpleasant things at the start of the day' and 'A pre-poker session ritual'.

In the next article, we look more deeply at the sub-conscious and present the impressive effect of 'dogmas and affirmations'.

About the author: Carsten Bruns is a successful mental coach. He coaches and holds seminars for amateur and professional poker players. He's been playing mid and high stakes poker successfully for many years.

LINKS
Related articles: Mental Coaching (1) - Introduction Mental Coaching (2) - Tilt: a Different Perspective Discussion forum: Discussion forum: Self study and management