Another Busy Work Week

This week it was another hard push.  We were going to have Thanksgiving Dinner with our family on Thursday.  Saturday we were going to take our grandchildren out for a horse-and-carriage ride and the lighting of the downtown Christmas tree.  At about 1800 on Wednesday I looked at my wife and said, "You know, I'm just going to have to sit my butt in that office and stay there until midnight"--and I did that.that.

I thought it would be easy to work 40 hours.  After all, I worked all kinds of overtime at various jobs. At one job there was so much voluntary overtime available that I sometimes worked aroud 60 hours a week.  Once I worked all three shifts (first, second and third) in the same week.

The difference with poker as a job is that you're locked into that commitment.  You can't volunteer and then change your mind.  It's the only priority and nothing can get in the way.  Being self-employed is different.  I'll always have the Available Guy label on me unless I'm playing a tournament out of town with my phone turned off.

My wife and I are getting better at working things out but I think that it's always going to be awkward.  We will never really have schedules that match.  She gets up early, goes to work early at her home office, and is done by around 1500.  Most weekends she does not work.

I play poker.  Poker is a nights-and-weekends business.  On weekdays almost all of the tournaments in the area poker rooms are at night, on the weekend, or both.  I can theoretically play online any time I want, but most of the good weekday MTTs start between about 1900 and 2200  The big promotions like the Sunday Millions are usually on weekends.

My wife gets out of work at about the same time that my granddaughters get out of school, and she wants to see them as much as she can.  That's about the same time that the main part of my work day starts. I can and often do play during the online off hours, but I'm an MTT player.  MTT players have to go where (and when) the tournaments are.  During the off hours I'm often limited to SNGs online.  I love my grandchildren and I want to see them often, but the conflict between that and maximizing profit is going to be difficult sometimes.

I did get my 40 hours in.  I wound up playing or studying starting on Friday at 1000 and ending on Saturday on 0327, with breaks totaling about 4 hours.  I spent the final 2.25 hours of that push going over Jonathan Little's Weekly Poker Hands for 2.25 Hours.  When I stopped studying at 0317 on Saturday I was at at 39 hours.  After we took the grandchildren out, I came home and signed up for an MTT starting at 2020.  I got knocked out at 2242, giving me another 2.25 hours for a total of 41.25 hours for the week.

I know that this emphasis on hours seems very process-oriented,  That is exactly what it is, by design. Getting good at anything is about the process.  How many miles to you have to run to train for a marathon?  How many hours a week do you have to play scales to be a good clarinet player, or practice rudiments to be a good drummer?  To be a doctor you have to go to school until around age 30.

I have a process, and it's pretty specific.  I want to work at least 40 hours a week.  I'm doing that.  I want at least 25% of my poker time to be study.  Last week I fell short but this week I hit the studying hard:

Playing, 59%
Study, 39%
Administrative, 2%

I'll talk about what I study in a future post.  The study percentage won't always be that high, as I hope to spend some time going deep in MTTs before too long. For the forseable future I would like to keep study at or above 25% every week. I'm thinking about poker differently than I did just two weeks ago and it's exciting.