Poker and Productivity - Part 2

Continuing our list from last time -

d) Hydration – This is so important that it needs its own category aside from nutrition. Water is a massive component that makes up human beings, so it's illogical to assume that we can function well without it. 

Being dehydrated is one of the most common reasons that we feel tired throughout the day. The bad part is, we may not always realize that it's because we are dehydrated. The solution is to make sure that we drink plenty of water even if we don't feel like we need it. It's recommended to keep a reasonably large bottle of water on our desk which we can drink at regular intervals.

This in itself can contribute hugely to our energy levels and overall health. When we don't drink enough water our blood becomes thicker and our heart has to work harder to pump the blood around our body. This is one of the reasons that we feel tired.

It's no secret that on average people who smoke are less productive than people who don't. This is for two reasons. Firstly smokers have poorer health, lower circulation and lower energy levels as a result. Secondly time can easily get wasted in the physical act of smoking. If we smoke 20 a day and take a 5 minute break for each, that's actually 1hr40mins of our day literally gone up in smoke.

Alcohol also does not help our energy levels and our concentration. It's not necessarily the case that we need to cut out all alcoholic beverages (although it wouldn't be a bad thing), but it's good to use them in moderation. Drinking too much the night before a work-day can leave us feeling tired and less productive the following day. Over-drinking is also often associated with staying up or out late which can result in decreased sleep, contributing to how bad we feel the next day.

Drinking also causes a degree of mental impairment, so assuming we are drinking while working our decisions will usually be less optimal. In most jobs we would never get away with drinking and working, but some poker players will actually drink and grind. This may seem like fun but it's counter-productive when grinding seriously because our win-rate may decrease.

These are just the main 2 things on the list. There are a whole list of other minor and major drugs that we can use that have a negative effect on our productivity. We have mentioned caffeine already (yes caffeine is a drug). A reasonable amount of players will smoke weed and grind at the same time. This makes the game seem more interesting but does not allow for a prolonged grind in most cases.

Users will usually end up taking a nap within the next hour or wandering around the house looking for cookies or other munchies. Speed up drugs might seem like a good idea (cocaine etc) but again these things can really kill our productivity. It might seem as if we have a burst of energy for a while, but we will always end up paying this back one way or the other.

We have talked already about getting the proper amount of sleep, but waking up needs its own category. 

Waking up early can be a great way to be productive. We can get a huge chunk of our work done long before the average person is waking up. However it's also important to accept that there is no inherent advantage to waking up early. The most important thing is to regulate the amount of sleep we get. So long as we get roughly 8 hours sleep it's not a big deal whether we wake up at 6am or 11am.

Studies have shown that our sleep quality is better when it is dark. So there is actually a small advantage for going to bed earlier and getting up earlier, but this effect won't necessarily be huge. Not everyone is a morning person, so if we feel that we just don't function well in the morning then getting up later doesn't automatically mean we are unproductive as some people assume. It's actually quite amusing how if we tell someone we got up at mid-day they will automatically assume we were being lazy without asking what time we went to sleep. If we go to sleep at 4am we should not try to wake ourselves up at 9am. We should aim for the full 8 hours of sleep and get up at mid-day.However, once our 8 hours is up (or however long we need, this does vary per person), we want to make sure that we are actually getting up out of bed and not hitting the snooze button on our alarm for the next 4 hours. Some of us just leap out of bed first thing in the morning with a big smile on our faces (I've never seen this in person, just in movies), while others among us really hate getting out of bed in the morning. There are a few tricks that can help us with this.

Usually once we are up and ready to work it makes sense to start with the most difficult tasks first. We are simply more likely to get more work done this way. Our day will have the feeling of being a downhill slope where we tackle the hardest things first and move on to easier and easier tasks. If we start with the easiest tasks we won't fully relax until we have sunk our teeth into the harder projects.

Most humans have a threshold where they stop performing a certain task as efficiently as they are capable of. This will often be somewhere between about 45min and 90mins. With training we can potentially increase these numbers, but however long we are capable of concentrating for we at some point will need to take a break. Our project will feel fresh this way and we can use our time efficiently because we have a stronger focus.

It's useful also to define what exactly we mean by breaks here. We are not necessarily talking about recreational activities such as watching random YouTube videos. It's simply important that we do a different activity for a while that involves different parts of our brain. In fact, watching YouTube videos may not actually be a good way to take a break if we were previously grinding. This is because we are not giving our eyes a rest from staring at a computer screen. Most good break activities involve getting away from the screen.Another important criteria for taking a break is that if we have been previously doing something which requires mental exertion that we switch to an activity that doesn't involve our brains on the same level. This doesn't necessarily have to be a task which achieves nothing. For example various household chores such as cleaning and tidying involve physical work (which is great if we have been sitting down) but doesn't really involve engaging our brains. By the time we get back to our computer we will feel rested but will have also achieved something at the same time. Other activities could include doing some shopping or simply taking a walk.

There are reasonably strong links between productivity and mindset. In order to have a good mindset it's necessary that we prioritize the things which are important to us. For example we could spend so much time grinding that we completely disregard our family and work related issues. It's great that we are putting in a lot of volume, but is it true to say that we are maximizing our productivity? 

For most of us, the feeling that we are disregarding something that is important to us is enough to give us an extra weight on our mind. It will be there ready to distract us when we try to concentrate. So even though we might be working very hard, if we are not operating at the highest level of mental efficiency because we are distracted then we are not maximizing our efficiency. We need to make sure that we take care of all of the outside obligations we have if we want to also do well at the poker tables.

Having a good work environment is enough to make or break an online poker player. Essentially we need our environment to help us stay focused as much as possible.

We need a setting where there is peace and quiet. It's usually not going to be good if there is loud music playing or a TV blaring in the background. This kind of thing will distract us even if we don't directly realize it. Playing music while grinding does not result in the highest efficiency in most cases but can still be acceptable since it allows us to regulate our emotions better and grind for longer periods of time. So playing music is essentially a trade-off for most people and our decision can go either way.It's very important that our family members or whoever else we live with understand that our grind-station is a work environment. Sometimes when working from home it is very easy for others to diminish the necessity of what we are doing. They might call us up randomly in the middle of the day and expect us to come round and help them with something. After all, we are just sitting there at home so obviously we can't be doing anything important. 

It's necessary to set clear boundaries (within reason) so people understand that despite the fact that we are at home, we are essentially at work. They wouldn't call us up when we were at an office somewhere so they shouldn't assume that it's OK to distract us just because we are at home in our room. 

Even if we make this clear some people still just won't get it. In extreme situations it can be worth renting an office space so people finally understand that we are working and are not just messing around on our computers for fun. Assuming we live with somewhat reasonable people they should get the picture eventually and leave us alone when we are grinding. 

Poker is not like any other job. If we work a 9-5 job and someone distracts us we still get the same wage at the end of the day. If someone distracts us in a crucial pot then our wage for the day is lowered, so it's more vital than other jobs that we are left alone and not distracted.

By far the biggest killer of productivity is procrastination. Procrastination is putting off the start of work that we know needs to be done. Procrastination can essentially be caused by any of the above things on the list.

In many cases there is a link between procrastination and getting distracted by various hobbies. For example we log onto our computer in the morning with the intention to grind and see that we have a few Skype messages. Before we know it we have been chatting for several hours while watching YouTube videos and checking out Facebook in the background. Half the day is gone and we have done nothing. 

There are some software programs out there that track how we spend our time on the computer. At the end of the week we can review and see how much of our time we spent using our computer for non-work-related activities inside hours we have designated for work.

This productivity guide is by no means exhaustive and it is recommended to do some additional research on the areas mentioned. Some areas such as nutrition are obviously big enough in themselves that people have written entire books on the subject so it's not possible to do this justice in the space of 2 articles.

Making changes to our productivity can potentially be life-changing and allow us to harness our raw potential in full.