How do you measure productivity as a poker player?

yeah I dunno I don't measure this stuff.
Only quantitative measures I use is hours played hand hands played...

N.1 reason for being a poker professional is the freedom is grants you; I found it hard to stick to a monitoring regime long term ( and I tried many times, last time around it lasted for about a month)

i.e. spreadsheet for hours played, exercise done, social time spent.

I mean its dumb not to monitor it it takes like 30 mins to set up a spreadsheet and 10 m minutes per day? My brain is human brain tho, and human brain is dumb

id love to hear arguments for proper monitoring

I think the measure of anyone's performance comes down to efficiency; and the definition of efficiency is the ability to do something or produce something without wasting materials, time, or energy.

BTW where's your training site?

The two most important metrics are money made and time spent. Time spent should include time actively improving or training outside of actual play.

It can get complex because a simple calculation of money / hours would show that you shouldn't spend any time training, but that training may actually be going towards future win rate since you could continue to win at the same rate or gradually decrease without it.

To quantitatively figure out how much your efforts outside of direct play benefit your future game requires a different kind of modeling and over a more extended period of time.

If you could figure it out though, you would be able to chart out various projections based on your goals. For example if your goal is to significantly improve your game to reach a certain skill level over increasing a bankroll it may be better to spend the vast majority of your time on education with very little on play, whereas if your goal is to reach some monetary amount over the next 6 months then you may be better off with no education and all play.

The optimal goal is usually somewhere in the middle; to increase bankroll while increasing skill. Neither being better without the bankroll to play higher limits or having a higher bankroll without the skill to jump up are ideal.

If you've been accomplishing one faster than the other (bankroll increase versus skill increase), I would just adjust my time accordingly.

money won doesnt work at all, to get any kind of monitoring meaningful you need to do it frequencty and adjust your activities accordingly.

also how does time studied work for you guys? I still enjoy the game so study/talk poker alot and most improvements come in waves that are hard to schedule rly, much less to actually quantify them

On March 05 2014 18:13 LemOn[5thF] wrote: i.e. spreadsheet for hours played, exercise done, social time spent. I mean its dumb not to monitor it it takes like 30 mins to set up a spreadsheet and 10 m minutes per day? My brain is human brain tho, and human brain is dumb

AHAH!! I just finished Moonwalking with Einstein today, and I beg to differ!! The human brain is not dumb!!

Ok, that's all I had

I'm just going to guess, for you Joe, I think, the best thing is to keep playing as much as you find fun, then force yourself a little, but not too much.

You seem to be really good at it, and you're kinda ahead of the curve, and I think that's where you want to be, and to be there, I think you're fine if you keep doing what you're doing, but keep talking about all the newest trends, the best new video's, look at the best new rising stars, and incorporate whatever they are doing, steal where you can, and keep going like that!!


Oh, and I have something else you might like, I rarely remember this well, but just finished reading a pretty amazing book just a few hours ago. I'll share some of the bits I found most exciting. This book ------> http://www.brainpickings.org/index.ph...oshua-foer-moonwalking-with-einstein/


And it's actually about a Journalist, who reports some memory championships, get's really into it, and practices for a year, and then he also competes and wins the American championship (they newbs compared to Europeans, but still pretty awesome).

Anyway, in one bit, where he's been practicing for awhile, he get coaching and help from 2 people, and one is this amazing phd, chief scientist guy, who's got the leading research is researching experts. So whenever he got stuck, like, he was trying to memorize a deck of cards in under a minute, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't do it any faster, and he was just stuck. So he called up the doc, asked him what was wrong, if he hit his max or something.


Ok, and here comes the awesome part!!

It went a little something like this. When you first start to learn stuff, you go through various phases, till it become automatic, what happens then is that you're free to do other things. So if you're learning to drive a car, this is when "you get it", and it's easy, and you just do it.

Most people stop here, in whatever it is they were trying to learn, or get better at, this is the OKplateu, where most people stop, or feel they are stuck, give up, so forth!!

BUT!! You're not really stuck, this is where it get's interesting un dun dunnnn*


Some of the key points:

- Keep challenging yourself in any way, all the time

- Keep track of your your accomplishments, how well you do. Evaluate, rethink it, re-change things, reorganize.

- Imagine that you are someone else, who were facing whatever problem you are facing (good to picture someone who's top or best in the world in what you're trying to get better at). Find out how this person worked through the obstacle.

- Compare your own train of though with this person, or your teacher, coach, whatever (someone much better than you).

- Another secret to getting better at something is to have a certain amount of control whilst you're practicing. Force yourself to not use the autopilot.

For instance, one of the easiest ways to write faster on a keyboard is to write 10 - 15% faster than your max speed, and ignore mistakes and errors, and keep at it like that. If you always stumble on some of the keys, write it down, think about it, look at how other people click on the keys and how they click on that key, practice that key in particular, or write texts that uses that key a lot, only click that key, and keep adding speed, rinse repeat. (oops, a small digression, I get like that sometimes lol).

- Each time you run into something puzzling, difficult, or hard, write it down. Try to understand why

- It means a lot to find out what works and what doesn't work.


And one of the most awesome things in the book was this line:

"As a species, we humans have never reached the plateu in any skill".




Okay, hope any of that helps, or is amusing in some way or another xD

It didn't really say skill, but like in competitions, like, running and stuff. I think the most "famous" example that probably all of you have heard about is the 4 minute mile, people said it was impossible to ever run under 4 minutes, then one guy did it, and not to long after another, then lots of people.

And today, to get into a sports college, I think the minimum requirement is to run it under 4 minute, pretty crazy. And it's like that in most things. People just keep inventing, thinking of new and better ways to do stuff.

I think deep down (often under layers and layers of rationalization) people usually know what they should do / or what it takes to get the results they want. I would measure your productivity by trying to objectively evaluate whether you are doing those things. Some people will figure out what they need to do - and then do a lot more.

The problem in poker is there are people who do a shitload of good things and don't get results. And then there are people who seemingly don't do anything and get amazing results. To be completely honest I don't know why that is. I don't think it's because of talent, I think talent is overrated. All I know is that I recently realized that at the end of the day the only way for me to be happy about my poker life is doing the things I feel I should be doing to get the goals I want to get whether in the end I achieve those goals or not.

Mariuslol sweet input man ! Much appreciated, i'll try and read up, looks interesting.

My 2cents is merging short-term goals with long-term goals and making them meet in the middle somewhere.

Do whatever makes you happy. Reward yourself. Enjoy life.

TLDR

1st world problems

tldr, but talk to the wh00s

Why do you care so much about productivity ?... You have all the time to spend doing others things while winning more money than your average joe, isn't that productive enough ? Hell, I'm not even sure if the average joe are being productive with their salary's job or if they think they're satisfied with their day's work...

Does that help ?

I think you're trying too hard with that subject really.

Joe what would you be if you weren't a poker player??

what's the fullname of that PPT program you mentioned joe?

On March 09 2014 10:22 JosephCalgary wrote: Joe what would you be if you weren't a poker player??

I don't think he'd be one thing, first he'd try hard at something athletic, but he wouldn't do too well in that arena, but he's not unhappy, got fit, and did well with the chicks. Then he hit his crazy phase, and he started doing male stripping, and at the worst a little male giggoloing, but felt ashamed, and decided to drop that for new adventures!!

Next he started studying in college, but lost focus, and started partying too hard, but in his endeavours he met a lot of people, got a lot of connections, so he started in an off sea shipping company, and did surprisingly well there. After awhile got some jobs on one of the ships, and got to travel around and drink and party in new places, to finally stop in Thailand, and snooze around there for a few years!!

Then I imagine he'd get bored of that lifestyle, and want a change of scenery, and he decided to write a book about his crazy life, but the book didn't do as well as he planned, and he was starving for cash, so he had to get a job. He still wanted freedom, but he didn't want no low payed shit job. So he took some offshore courses, and got planted on a really awesome oil rig, with a kind of deal, where you work for 3-4 weeks, then you're free for 3-4 weeks. + You earn a lot of money, and also when the Helicopter comes to pick you of, he hit it off with one of the pilots, and he would let him off in different places!!

I reckon he'd keep that job for 5-6 years, since he kinda enjoyed the hard labor, and being paid around the clock!!

After that... Hmm, let's see... Hard to tell, maybe he'd get a less grease monkey job, or get inspired to learn how to fly Helicoptors... Yes, that seems plausible. Time to maybe, get some kids, do that whole gebang!!

And there you have it!!

marius start blogging again plz

marius honestly I read your original reply to my post right after you did it, started reading the book you mentioned, had a conversation about what you said with someone else and my original question became so much clearer to me that I spent the last 10 days barely online and decided to have some more fun (rage) with my life instead of stressing myself out

Thank you very much for your post, seriously it was fucking awesome and was just about exactly what I was hoping for when I made wrote my blog


As far as your adventure for me if I wasn't a poker player if i did life like 10 times I think that is probably pretty fucking close to how one of them goes


I'm pretty sure I'm moving to Oslo in the summer time as well, where do you live at?