So I've recently passed 30k hands at all levels in my PT database.
There are hands in PO which aren't counted and some from incompatible sites and those on iPoker before I got PO.

Overall I have an 11ptbb/100 and am up about $100, to which one can add several bonuses and peraps $200 from a couple of ther sites.
The vast majority of my 11ptbb comes from 11k on $5NL at 30ptbb/100.

From PT the graph of BBs looks okay:


There's a dip last month, but the overall trend is good. But looking at dollar values instead:



The swings are much more noticeable and you can probably see why at the end of last month I was just not sure what I was doing.

Since then I've tried a "reboot". I've gone back to playing $5NL and I've started playing 6-max at the 0.02NL tables at stars.
Not only is this giving my stats a nice kick without risking much of my roll it's allowed me to do things like get experience 8-tabling etc.

But I had a bit of an "aha" experience when I looked over this last week.
I had a really sucky day midweek. Everything was wrong. I lost about 2-3 bbuy-ins at $5NL and a bit more elsewhere.
But it didn't bother me too much.
A couple of good day's later and I've made the losses back with interest.

Part of the reason for the confidence is that losing $30 from a $600 roll is nothing. So a big bankroll is important.
But also I've got a good track-record at $5NL. It'll take quite some run to really make my stats look bad at that level. When you're thinking in terms of 1k hands then a couple hundred bad hands mean little.

So how do you take that to levels where you don't have the roll or the experience to shrug it off.

I've got 2.5k hands at $50NL and I'm down three buy ins at -6ptbb/100.
I had to drop back down to $25NL again (and in the end, although I had the roll for $25 I dropped further for confidence reasons).

So I'm thinking of setting myself a huge target for $25NL. I'm thinking that I'm going to play 50k hands (i.e. another 40k) of $25NL and re-evaluate.
Hopefully I'll have got a nice 4+ptbb/100 rate at that level by that point.

If all goes well that would probably mean I'd have enough from that to give a good shot at $50NL again. The real challenge will be to keep playing at the same level even when things seem to be going well and when I have passed the $1k mark.

So, good plan? Bad plan?
How else can you deal with the swings of moving up levels? I know some people cruise up the limits while others get stuck. It's probably a case of if you start well you can handle the setbacks, start badly and you feel behind. In which case what's a good buffer to take with you?