Hello everyone! Since I'm not 100% sure that what I'm about to write is exactly what SF is looking for, I'll do so inside the spoiler and just hope to be right 
Spoiler
Brief introduction about myself:
Hello everyone, I’m lulualine, active member in the spanish forum and regular grinder in NL50 cash up to june 6th 2012, when the spanish market was regulated. As for today, I’m on strike, not playing online poker at all and surviving thanks only to live (cash NL200 and MTTs up to 110€ BI) in either of the 2 casinos located in the area of Madrid.
First of all I’d like to make one point clear: I started taking action a few months before actually reading this excellent article by SF. Consequently, my development has been somewhat different, however, I strongly believe my case study will be pretty useful to all of you.
I started taking poker seriously before even becoming a consistent winner in NL10. I struggled at NL10 for quite a bit and finally, when I was about to give NL25 a shot, BF took my bankroll away. I tried starting all over again from NL2, but soon became fully frustrated and so decided to ask my indulgent and highly worried parents to stake me (3K€) thinking that I would easily beat NL200 live, since the spanish regulation was about to be implemented and the future of online poker was uncertain.
From December 2011 to February 2012 I pretty much busted my whole BR and so decided to deposit my last 500€ into my William Hill account. I managed to turn that into 2.5K€ after a couple of months playing NL20-50 thanks to several changes in my working methods, attitude, organization and a few other elements – all of which are included in this article – which exponentially improved my productivity. After that I even got to play WPT NS Madrid, cashing for a nice 3,140€.
Introducing my case study:
Now lets go back to those 500€ which I deposited back in February 2012. First of all I gotta admit I felt awfully ashamed. I kept repeating to myself that it was all variance, that I simply had a bad run which is something totally common in live poker where so little hands/hour are played. Deeply inside, however, I knew for certain that my game and especially my mindset weren’t that good.
Therefore, I can now assert that selfawareness and acknowledging that I had a problem was the first step towards the better player that I am today. What was my action step then? I set aside all the theory, coachings, hand evaluation and tried to solve the root of my stagnation, namely, my weak mindset.
In order to do so I started reading every article in the psychology section and watching every video I could find about the subject. I saw the whole series about “setting and reaching goals”, “neuropsychology of poker” (thank you so much Somnius for your amazing work), and “excelence & performance” by fingertilt (spanish comunity, sorry). They were all great and really helpful, but what really made me change, was this video by faarcyde.
He was the only one who actually got me to write down my goals on paper. I took this step really seriously, dividing my goals into “short term”, “mid term” and “long term”, the latter being so detailed and motivating that could be easily compared to what later (having read SF’s article) would become my vision statement. All of this I believe correlates 100% with point 1 in SF’s guide.
I also learnt a few things about workspace (point nº 6.2)and the need of it being clean and tidy. This became a monthly fashion sort of automatically. It’s something I don’t even have to program anymore, whenever I feel like it could be tidier I go on and sort it out.
I then programmed each and every session starting with a simple 10 minute ritual (point nº 10):
1. I would start off reading my goals, picturing them carefully in my mind.
2. Then I’d listen to a song called “Iron”, by Woodkid.
3. I would then proceed by executing my “self-evaluation” (I will come back to this later on).
4. Finally I’d open the lobby careful not to show the cashier balance.
This short procedure is like turning a switch on which allows me to mantain focus on what really matters (the action on the tables), it’s almost like telling my brain “hey! Concentrate, it’s time to work” and my mind really responds positively.
By april, it was clear that I had improved my productivity in many ways, but there was more to come. At this point, I had loads of free time due to the fact that I didn’t have to spend so many hours grinding as before (when I went to the casino), so I decided to start going regularly to the gym (point nº 3.4). By regularly I mean 6-7 days a week, spending 2 out of those 6 days practicing yoga. I didn’t really have much of a problem with this, the only obstacle was my girlfriend, who really demands a lot of attention and would often ask me please not to go. Fortunately, once I succeeded in making her understand that going to the gym (and specifically yoga) was sort of an obligation (self-imposed, okay, but still an obligation), she got quickly used to it.
I can’t possibly stress hard enough how shocking an impact the practice of yoga had in my concentration, mood, productivity and overall life. It’s something that I strongly recommend to all of you guys, alongside with physical activity. I can now control my emotions a lot more and I rarely tilt, plus, I withstand longer sessions, something particularly relevant when playing live tournaments.
As far as nutrition is concerned (point 3.3), I will only say that I’ve been a vegetarian for over a year now (moral reasons, nothing to do with health, I just kinda love animals) and I’ve never been all that keen on unhealthy food (hate sweets, chocolate, pastries, cakes, etc.) so that’s something I didn’t have to work that hard on. However, having read SF’s guide, I was surprised to hear that coffee’s really that bad for you. I’m a coffee lover, I don’t drink it because I think I need it to keep awake or anything, I do it because I love how it tastes and cutting it off will be tough. Still, I’m taking some measures on the right direction, this being my present “action step” (point nº 3.2).
Of course, all of this went into my blog which has been open since August 2011, so I’ve also followed the accountability technique (point nº 2.1) without actually being aware of how helpful this was when it came to holding myself responsible for all these goals and promises I was sharing. This is something definitely worth doing, at the beginning it might sound boring, but once you get decent feedback it becomes one of the most rewarding things you’ll have. I’ve felt kinda depressed at times, even close to quitting, but thankfully my followers gave me the necessary support and strenght to go on.
It was also around then when I started keeping track of what I was doing and how I was spending my time (point nº 5.1). I designed an excel sheet which included all those activities I executed daily, the level of priority I granted each of them, and my weekly objective measured in hours. At the end of the week I would check my results and mark in green those areas in which I had succeeded, leaving red for my failures. This method became a very useful and visual way of recording and analysing my progress throughout the month, hence making it easier to correct whatever mistakes I was making.
My next step was related to multitasking (point nº 7). I realized that my winrate decreased drastically due to 2 connected factors: multitabling more than 9 tables and/or checking pokerstrategy, emails, etc. while playing. Thus, I wrote the rule down on my blog and stuck to it. Needless to say that my winrate increased accordingly.
One other thing that really concerned me was the fact that I was wasting so much time moving around from my place to the gym, to my GF’s, etc. I noticed that, on average, I was spending more than one hour/day just driving. That sums up to loads of wasted time per month, so I decided to convert lots of theory videos into MP3/4 archives that would allow me to keep learning during those times. I had never got to “watch” so many videos up to that day and I gotta tell you, my game did improve a great deal.
I’d like to come back to that 3rd point I mentioned in reference to my “ritual”, the one about my self-evaluation. It’s quite simple actually, I just came up with this excell sheet where I have 4 columns: Mood; Tiredness; Emotions; Concentration. Then, I rate each of them following a straightforward system where 0 is the optimal state; 1 isn’t perfect but still okay; 2 starts to be a problem since it’ll be almost imposible to play A-game throughout the entire session; and 3 means that something’s really bothering me and I shouldn’t play at all.
Let’s see an example:
Imagine that today I’ve been studying 4 hours straight for some exam and I decide to go ahead and play a short poker session. I’m up for some action so my mood would probably be 0; however, I’ve wasted lots of mental energy during my study hours, so I’d rate my tiredness at around 2; I’m doing great with my girlfriend, family and friends, so no interference there with my emotions, therefore I’ll give it a 0; due to tiredness, my concentration’s not that good, let’s say 1.
As you can see, any deviation from an optimal 0, 0, 0, 0 is pretty bad news, since I know for sure that I won’t be playing my A-game. In cases like this I will play maximum 1 hour, sometimes even less if I realize during the session that I’m playing increasingly worse. In general, I ban myself from playing whenever I rate myself with either one 3 or two 2.
I can assure you this system has saved me a lot of money in the last 3 or 4 months.
Before concluding my case study, I would like to point something out that many of you may find less important within the guide. I’m referring to point 9, i.e. Making time for the things you love. In my particular case, what I love the most is my girlfriend, and not long ago, I realized that I was taking too much time grinding and spending little time with her. I justified this by telling myself “it doesn’t really matter, we share our workspace (she’s an artist and paints at home in the same room where I grind), we eat together, we spend all day together, blablabla”. The truth is that we weren’t doing any fun stuff together, and that had a deep impact in both our productivity. She became a bit moodier and so did I, some days I started my self-evaluation with a big 3 under the heading “emotions” due to a fight or something. I became conscious of this after reading this guide, and took the necessary action steps to change it to the point that it isn’t a problem anymore and, once again, my productivity has increased greatly.
And that’s pretty much it for now. On October I’ll start a MA on Anthropology, so I’ll have to check this guide more than ever in order to combine my studies with poker successfully.
As for your organizing system, I can’t really tell what it is, but there’s something that doesn’t fit me all that well (besides the huge waste of paper 
). On the other hand, I’m not happy with my current system either, so maybe I’ll work on combining both in some way... I used to make very detailed timetables which I never got to carry out exactly as planned and, as you explained, this became rather frustrating.
Anyway, I honestly hope this serves well to your study and if there’s anything else you’d like to know just let me know and I’ll answer as soon as I can.
Cheers!
