Today I played 1.57 hours of FR for 1036 hands and -$10. Additionally, I played 1.52 hours of HU for 319 hands and $135.65. Holy crap HU is awesome. I don’t really feel like doing the biggest winners/biggest losers thing anymore. It takes up like 15-20 minutes of my time at night when I’m ready to go to bed and gets me hung up thinking too hard about some of my mistakes.
Session Focus: 4/5, This morning my focus was average to above-average, and this evening while playing heads-up my focus was really great
Poker Development: 4/5, Something clicked today and breaking down my opponents’ games suddenly seems much easier and clearer now
Personal Development: 1/5, I didn’t get up on time, meditate, or play my second session when I was supposed to
Happiness: 4/5, I’ve been pretty happy today, despite not feeling so well this afternoon
Stress: 2/5, Would have been a 1/5 but I had a really bad headache this afternoon
I’ve been getting a lot of my thoughts together and organized on mental game topics and I might write more about them later to help solidify some of the connections I’ve made. In general, there’s a model for the long-term process of learning that I was exposed to at an early age (it’s similar to the one Jared Tendler uses if you’re familiar with that), and a lot of my ideas on the mental game center around that.
Basically there are five stages that we can be in while learning some specific concept, which means four transitions we can go through. These stages are based on our level of skill, whether our action is mostly conscious or unconscious, and our ability to bring out a high level of skill in others (ie: teaching). Each stage and each transition has specific characteristics, and we can study all 9 “parts” of the whole, etc.
If you’ve familiar with Josh Waitzkin’s courses for the Chessmaster software series or his books, or if you’re familiar with Tommy Angelo’s material, or if you’re familiar with Jared Tendler’s material, or if you’re familiar with the big ideas in Buddhism, then you’ll easily make connections with the parts of this model.
On a slightly different subject, getting up (though an hour or so late) and immediately taking a shower helped to wake me up again this morning and I was able to start getting things done soon after. I wonder what it is about that routine that gets my excitement/emotional level/motivation up?