[spoonitnow strategy] OPTIMIZING Your Sessions With Simple Routines (Aug 31)

http://www.flopturnriver.com/optimiz...routines-20006

Originally Posted by spoonitnow

With our routine, we want to create a situation where we can eventually take a single deep breath to achieve the same level of focus as we would get with a full 10-minute routine. The involuntary reaction that you’re having is the higher level of focus, and you can currently only achieve that with some sort of routine that takes several minutes. Once you do this routine enough, you’ll be able to trigger that same level of focus by taking a single deep breath that you really focus on. This is why focusing on your breathing and having long, slow, controlled breaths is such a critical part of the routine.

what are your thoughts at using smiling/laughing as a tool to regain focus after a spot that may damage focus during a session?

Originally Posted by daven

what are your thoughts at using smiling/laughing as a tool to regain focus after a spot that may damage focus during a session?

I've never thought about it before, but it seems reasonable enough.

None of these things work, at most they'll give you the impression they do.

Sounds like you're arguing that emotional control is a myth.

If none of these things work... why? and what works?

Emotional control is very powerful and very real. But approaches like this with trying to anchor a mindset or breathing or laughing is the same as kicking your TV and hoping that fixes it. It might, but probably not, and you're going about it the wrong way in any case.

If I'm doing it wrong, I am eager to know how to change and do it better.

What's the right way?

Wriggle your toes.

Guru spoony wins.

Originally Posted by jackvance

Emotional control is very powerful and very real. But approaches like this with trying to anchor a mindset or breathing or laughing is the same as kicking your TV and hoping that fixes it. It might, but probably not, and you're going about it the wrong way in any case.

There's a metric fuckton of evidence that shows that this approach works for triggering physiological functions. A similar approach is used to break down the anxiety that people with OCD feel, for example.

This is not about "anchoring," whatever the hell that is. It's about classical conditioning. This is about science, not some Tony Robbins bullshit.

Suggested reading: http://psychology.about.com/od/class...experiment.htm

Originally Posted by jackvance

Emotional control is very powerful and very real.

Moreover, regarding this specific quote, emotional control takes willpower. You'll know from my past few weeks of articles that willpower is depleted when you have to work for emotional control. The approach outlined in this week's article moves emotional control out of the conscious decision-making process which shortens the amount of willpower used to maintain focus. In short, you'll have more willpower left over than if you had to power through it.

Ok I was in a bad mood yesterday sorry. I meant it more as in, this sort of stuff never worked for me. The term anchoring comes from NLP, they deal a lot with this sort of thing.

I don't know about "anchoring" but when I was a pre-school teacher, I used this trick to get rowdy kids to focus. It's just a little speach, where the child participates by standing still and listening / imagining what I'm telling them.

It goes like this:
Stand with your legs about shoulder width apart, and your hands at your sides. Hold your hands out from your side a little bit, so they are like a capital A. OK, now close your eyes and don't move until I tell you to open them again.

OK, now feel the earth under your feet.
Feel the energy of the ground seep into your feet. It's slowly starts to creep up your legs. Do you feel it?

OK, I want you to stop the energy before it gets to your head. Instead, push it down your arms and let it gather up in your fingertips. Pretty soon, your hands are full. So shoot the energy out your fingertips, and back into the ground.

But the ground wants to give you the energy again, so it comes back in your feet. And it goes up to your shoulders, and you push it back down your arms. And you shoot it from your fingers. Over and over.

There's a lot of energy spinning up your feet through your body to your shoulders, down your arms to the ground and back into your feet. The energy is building up, going faster and faster. There's only one thing left to do.

We have to let the energy go. But when we let it go down, it just came back, so we'll let it go up, this time.

I want you to let the energy through your neck and through your head and just shoot all that energy straight up into the sky until it's gone.

Are you doing it?

Is it all gone?

You can open your eyes now. How do you feel?


I don't remember who taught me to do this, but it works really well to get a rowdy, unfocused child to join in with the class.

Originally Posted by jackvance

Ok I was in a bad mood yesterday sorry. I meant it more as in, this sort of stuff never worked for me. The term anchoring comes from NLP, they deal a lot with this sort of thing.

In the book "The Art of Learning" by Josh Waitzkin, he describes a more involved process for using this application of classical conditioning. His approach involves using whatever gets you the feeling you want instead of just a generic stretching/breathing routine. He goes into a lot of depth about how to choose your routine, start out with it being longer and shorten it over time while preserving the feeling. After a few weeks, you'll be able to trigger that response with a minimal amount of stimulation (eg: listening to a particular song). I recommend this process to people who have trouble with conditioning themselves with a simplified approach like the one I outlined in this week's article.

On the other, I'll go so far to say NLP is largely a crock of shit.

I kind of do that anyway
my routine involves running down stairs, making coffee,
breathing exercise, (puffing on a cigarete)
running back upstairs.

and doing this routine every hour on the scheduled tournaments 5 minute breaks.

This may initially sound joky, but seriously does it not cover the routine requirements in the strategy guide?



mojomonkey's routine worries me because I am expecting all that energy to fall back down from the sky and land on my head, am I the only one who has this thought?

Nice article, spoon. I have "The Art of Learning" on my list of books to buy/read, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. Sounds interesting, though, so maybe I'll finally pick it up soon.

MMM how often did you have to do this? Did it keep working with the same kid?

Originally Posted by chemist

I kind of do that anyway
my routine involves running down stairs, making coffee,
breathing exercise, (puffing on a cigarete)
running back upstairs.

and doing this routine every hour on the scheduled tournaments 5 minute breaks.

This may initially sound joky, but seriously does it not cover the routine requirements in the strategy guide?

I would suggest that it probably helps you more than just sitting there through the breaks, but I also don't think that it works the same as the routine that I outlined in this week's article. The main difference is the conditioning aspect.

Originally Posted by NightGizmo

Nice article, spoon. I have "The Art of Learning" on my list of books to buy/read, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. Sounds interesting, though, so maybe I'll finally pick it up soon.

One of the main complaints I've heard about the book is that it's somewhat biographical. I was familiar with the author for a long time before the book was written because of my involvement with chess, so I was already familiar with his teaching style and how it contains a strong biographical component. It's not just "rah rah look at how great I am," but instead, he uses his own experiences and how he learned to deal with these things to illustrate the topics he covers.

Originally Posted by jackvance

MMM how often did you have to do this? Did it keep working with the same kid?

I'd say that I did it once or twice a month. Spread out enough to maintain novelty.
It did work with the same kid(s), but their mood would effect how well it worked at any given time.

I remember a little girl who had an incredible amount of energy and who was older than most of the class, so she had a default leadership role among the kids. She got this exercise more often than any other student, but other kids would surround her and do it with her as I talked, so I got a mass effect due to her leadership role. They really liked it. It did seem to work over and over again, especially if I followed it up by helping her find something to do (even if it was something as simple as stand patiently in line for the cafeteria).

It always worked, but the duration of the affect was a bit variable.


EDIT: I suspect the one-on-one attention from me was as much a factor as anything.

Yeah there are a lot of these confounding variables (like attention as you say) that make it hard to judge the exercise alone.