Mental Game Forum

Sound like dicking around is something you're pretty good at.  Which means that while the job is completely different, now in poker you're fighting old habits of doing nothing.  So you play a ton, and successfully not only handle the stress/pressure of playing poker – which should not be underestimated – but you're also fighting against the motivation to do nothing. Is as thought theirs a gravitational force towards doing nothing and the following day it catches up to you. 

If I'm correct so far, the solution is two fold:

1) Increase your capacity to play more poker as you would if you were lifting weights or training to run farther.  If you can do 15hrs/week right now, going to 30hrs is double.  The mind plays by the same rules as the body, so essentially what you're saying is that you expect yourself to be able to bench 250lbs when you can only do 125. So instead of just expecting yourself to do 30hrs, work your way up steadily, and treat playing poker as a workout. 

2) Remove the cause of why you'd waste time, energy dicking around.  Playing poker is very different than your last job, but as the old saying goes, "you can take the kid out of the city, but you can't take the city out of the kid," just because you left your old job doesn't mean this problem goes away entirely.  Likely a lot of it has and was associated with where you were, but what's left is a problem.  To get to that just post more about it and I can help you work through it. 

I've clearly made some assumptions here – much like you do when playing poker.  If I'm off, let me know and I'll adjust my answer. 

There are things in your life that come easily.  Why?  You worked at it.  Maybe it came easily because you enjoyed it or were naturally good at it or your genious made it so.  But then there are other things that don't come as easily and require work.  Everyone has them.  But when you look at others who are naturally better at grinding at poker, or picking up girls it can make you forget about all the things you can do well.  And it can also make it seem as thought it should be easy for you to do, because they make it look so easy. 

Is there anything that you've done where you've had to work hard?  Work ethic to some degree is a muscle, that you can build.  Especially if school came easy to you, what you also learned in school is that you can half ass things and get by.  Now if you want some that doesn't come so easily or you want to make the most of the talents you have, learning what it means and how to put in the work is the same step as the specifics of what you're working on. 

The other side to this may be that there are other underlying motivation problems.  Do you expect perfection for yourself?  Do you have trouble accepting mistakes?  You do you have a lot of interests and trouble deciding what you want most?

Any of this sound relevent?

The main reasoning for my questions was to open up your thinking more and it looks like that's what's happened.  In order to know what to do, it's important to first know what the problem is.  You're not alone in struggling at first to be able to describe it, it's common, and knowing that writing is helpful to organize your thought, I'd suggest doing it regularly.  When there's a lot to keep track of, important peices can easily get lost among the random things that roll through the mind. 

It's great that you see willpower or motivation as a muscle.  The example you gave about working 50hours is like running a marathon because you absolutely have to.  But what's actually been gained in your muscles – well you know you can do it, which is one thing, but in terms of muscle development very little compared with regularly exercise. 

So one part of developing your will power steadily as I've said.

The other side to this is dealing with the reason you're lazy.  Feeling detached from results isn't the worst thing in the world, but if you aren't getting any reward from playing the game, any enjoyment out of it, then it makes perfect sense why you wouldn't have strong motivation for it, especially if your willpower in general needs work.  It would be a good exercise to spend some time writing/thinking about what you get out of poker (besides money), what you want to achieve in poker (accomplishments, better quality of life, freedom, money, etc), and maybe a bit about what you want in life.

None of this is written in stone, but when someone has a lot they like, the tendency can be to be decent at a lot of things and been a master at none.  As in poker, in life, it's important to prioritize so you're making sure to get the most important stuff done.  Getting things written down and organized, helps you to make solid steps forward and allows you to know even more about what motivates you and is important to you.  It sounds like you're in a holding pattern which reminds me a bit of the movie groundhogs day.  Holding patterns aren't a negative at all, they're tremendous opportunities to figure out what's important right now, and just being aware that's what you're doing – combine with building the muscle for your willpower – will make this whole process go much smoother.