Videos with Schnitzelfisch - NEW: How to Balance Your Life in 10 Minutes a Week

Originally posted by RTT314
Its pretty sad that only i'm the one who is interested in this.
Another thing which I'm wondering about:

Its def very important to be very proactive, keep your goals in mind and make a considerable effort day by day to improve in every aspect of your life but what about the off time? How much off time do you use a day? When you just do what you want and relax?

It really depends from day to day. I usually relax/do what I want in the evenings/afternoons though, because I like to work on important things in the morning. After that I'm in a great mood because I know that I've already done a lot of productive stuff, so I can go out, socialize have fun, read books, etc. without feeling guilty. I also recover/relax during breaks and often go out to exercise in the middle of a day to mentally recover.

Best regards,

-SF

Originally posted by rupucis2
Questions and interesting topics for webinar:

• What should you take in to account before becoming a poker pro? Most often and best known pitfalls for new poker pros!

1. are you a winning player/have good results consistently for at least a couple of months?
2. do you have 6 months of living expenses?
3. do you have a backup plan?
4. do you have other streams of income (I REALLY advise you to have those, no matter if you're a poker pro, go to a daily job or own a business.)
5. do you think you have what it takes? have you managed to be motivated and determined to put in the effort for longer periods of time?
6. how good is your mental game? are you frequently working on it?

Those are the things I would consider (might be more). Often people only have one stream of income, no saved up living expenses, bad mental game, lack motivation, have no backup plan, etc., which is what brings them A LOT of stress, especially when they hit a downswing, which makes them play worse, become losing players, hate poker and quit it eventually.

• Sky is not the limit! How to determine, how much can I do, how intense to work on tasks every week, in order not to burn out myself?

By testing yourself/tracking your progress/time logging :). Generally to improve, you will need to push yourself almost to exhaustion. But then you will take some good, quality recovery time, and repeat. You will need to work hard. The problem why people burn out is mostly because they work for 15 hours STRAIGHT and have really shitty recovery. If you take frequent breaks, have good nutrition, stay hydrated, frequently exercise, socialize, etc., you should constantly be able to push yourself and avoid burnout.

Best regards,

-SF

New video of the learning to learn video series is out :):

3. How to learn new concepts in poker

-SF

Thanks Schnitz for all the detailed resposnes. I will try to answer to your ideas in as much details as possible. Also sorry for the delay in the response.

Me having problems with starting things:

I did write a vision statement already and i do read it when I feel unmotivated to do something. It helps quite a lot but my vision is pretty removed from my daily activites. My daily activites aren't really linked to my vision. Instead my vision is that I stick to my plans and that would be following my daily to-dos. So thats why I do them. I think my mission is to bring out the most of of every aspect of my life and that's what I try to do every day.

About the start of an activity itself I feel this block within myself. I think its a fear (probably its a fear of failure) and lazyness . Which completely does not make sense but for some reason - even if its a minor thing - its there. Also I think the goal of the activity itself its too far removed from the current present (its a long term goal) and that can drain my motivation.

Working on hard things first during the day is indeed really awesome. I always do my workout and yoga during the morning. Also I try to start the hard projects during that time and it indeed gives a snese of accomplishment.

[To be honest I think I improved quite a bit since I wrote my question to you regarding this. I woke up 21 days in a row at 8:00am and I did pretty much 95% of what I wanted to do. So thats pretty cool!]

Regarding my changes and making them stick:

Around mid December I have read your productivity guide. I went over each article and DID stuff what you mentioned.
- I made a vision statement.
- I made a diet plan and wrote down why is that good for me.
- I made an exercise plan and wrote down all the positive effects that it will bring to my life
- I made a detailed poker plan which I'm following now
- And I made a general schedule for all the things which I'm planning on doing each day. Not making it too fixed but mixing in a bit of everything (socializing, playing my guitar, reading, studying poker, playing poker, doing university stuff and such.)
- Also I made a reward system out of this schedule which rewards me for each completed task/day with a small amount of money. I track this in an excel file and I will use that money to buy something which I totally wouldnt have bought without this plan but i always wanted to have

And on new years eve I made a resolution that I want to change my life to its finest. I implemented every one of my plans in my life. Basically turning my life around completely. Started doing gym, yoga, a completely healthy diet, scheduleing stuff, setting my biorythm and controlling my life to a big extent.
I DID read that you recommend 1 change per month out of these but I was looking at this rather as a challenge. If I can make all of them sitck I gained just so much value in my life and If I can't do it I will simply start over 1-by-1 from the next month.

I'd like to know what do you think about this. Will I be able to make these changes stick permanently? What do you think how hard it is to do this? Was this a bad idea?

About me being socially passive:

So you say that I should write down why would it benefit my if I would organize stuff. This is rather weird to talk about but to be honest but again the chance of failure factor comes in again (what if they decline if I invite) which I have to get rid of somehow. Do you think if I would DO right away instead of thinking first (it would be harder than you think) this problem would go away?

Regarding me going out:

To be honest if I really think about why I don't like to go outside these things come in my head:

- Laziness: I just rather prefer to stay in the comfortable aparments
- Its easier to stay passive than to get active: I think you or somnius mentioned somewhere that its harder to get something in motion that is not already in it and vice-versa. Well probably thats a cause too.

The positive effects of going out are huge. Probably I wasn't clear enough because I do go out a lot. I walk on average 1-1.5 hours a day because of the university and general big distances in my city. But yes. Even though I do it and I know its good for my health/energy levels/body I still dislike it... God I'm a pain in the @#$.....lol

Nutrisionwise:

Yeah I managed to solve this. I kept looking and managed to find wholewheat pasta, and coconut grease. Also I'm using normal but high quality white rice because couldn't find any unrefined one.

Since 21 days I also changed my diet completely. I only eat
fish/chicken/eggs/protein shake for proteins,
potatos/rice/wholewheat pasta/oatmeal/canned corn for carbs
and veggies/fruits as much as i can along these

Also I only drink tea, no coffee and no cigs but that was standard before too.

To be honest I feel its a bit dull to have this diet even though I'm trying to mix it up as much as I can. My brother (hes a personal trainer) told me that its fine to eat whatever you want once or twice every 2 weeks to keep the motivation up and to not get sick of the diet. Do you think thats a good idea?

Thanks so much for the detailed responses. It means a lot to me.

Originally posted by RTT314
Thanks Schnitz for all the detailed resposnes. I will try to answer to your ideas in as much details as possible. Also sorry for the delay in the response.

Me having problems with starting things:

I did write a vision statement already and i do read it when I feel unmotivated to do something. It helps quite a lot but my vision is pretty removed from my daily activites. My daily activites aren't really linked to my vision. Instead my vision is that I stick to my plans and that would be following my daily to-dos. So thats why I do them. I think my mission is to bring out the most of of every aspect of my life and that's what I try to do every day.

About the start of an activity itself I feel this block within myself. I think its a fear (probably its a fear of failure) and lazyness . Which completely does not make sense but for some reason - even if its a minor thing - its there. Also I think the goal of the activity itself its too far removed from the current present (its a long term goal) and that can drain my motivation.

Working on hard things first during the day is indeed really awesome. I always do my workout and yoga during the morning. Also I try to start the hard projects during that time and it indeed gives a snese of accomplishment.

[To be honest I think I improved quite a bit since I wrote my question to you regarding this. I woke up 21 days in a row at 8:00am and I did pretty much 95% of what I wanted to do. So thats pretty cool!]

Regarding my changes and making them stick:

Around mid December I have read your productivity guide. I went over each article and DID stuff what you mentioned.
- I made a vision statement.
- I made a diet plan and wrote down why is that good for me.
- I made an exercise plan and wrote down all the positive effects that it will bring to my life
- I made a detailed poker plan which I'm following now
- And I made a general schedule for all the things which I'm planning on doing each day. Not making it too fixed but mixing in a bit of everything (socializing, playing my guitar, reading, studying poker, playing poker, doing university stuff and such.)
- Also I made a reward system out of this schedule which rewards me for each completed task/day with a small amount of money. I track this in an excel file and I will use that money to buy something which I totally wouldnt have bought without this plan but i always wanted to have

And on new years eve I made a resolution that I want to change my life to its finest. I implemented every one of my plans in my life. Basically turning my life around completely. Started doing gym, yoga, a completely healthy diet, scheduleing stuff, setting my biorythm and controlling my life to a big extent.
I DID read that you recommend 1 change per month out of these but I was looking at this rather as a challenge. If I can make all of them sitck I gained just so much value in my life and If I can't do it I will simply start over 1-by-1 from the next month.

I'd like to know what do you think about this. Will I be able to make these changes stick permanently? What do you think how hard it is to do this? Was this a bad idea?

About me being socially passive:

So you say that I should write down why would it benefit my if I would organize stuff. This is rather weird to talk about but to be honest but again the chance of failure factor comes in again (what if they decline if I invite) which I have to get rid of somehow. Do you think if I would DO right away instead of thinking first (it would be harder than you think) this problem would go away?

Regarding me going out:

To be honest if I really think about why I don't like to go outside these things come in my head:

- Laziness: I just rather prefer to stay in the comfortable aparments
- Its easier to stay passive than to get active: I think you or somnius mentioned somewhere that its harder to get something in motion that is not already in it and vice-versa. Well probably thats a cause too.

The positive effects of going out are huge. Probably I wasn't clear enough because I do go out a lot. I walk on average 1-1.5 hours a day because of the university and general big distances in my city. But yes. Even though I do it and I know its good for my health/energy levels/body I still dislike it... God I'm a pain in the @#$.....lol

Nutrisionwise:

Yeah I managed to solve this. I kept looking and managed to find wholewheat pasta, and coconut grease. Also I'm using normal but high quality white rice because couldn't find any unrefined one.

Since 21 days I also changed my diet completely. I only eat
fish/chicken/eggs/protein shake for proteins,
potatos/rice/wholewheat pasta/oatmeal/canned corn for carbs
and veggies/fruits as much as i can along these

Also I only drink tea, no coffee and no cigs but that was standard before too.

To be honest I feel its a bit dull to have this diet even though I'm trying to mix it up as much as I can. My brother (hes a personal trainer) told me that its fine to eat whatever you want once or twice every 2 weeks to keep the motivation up and to not get sick of the diet. Do you think thats a good idea?

Thanks so much for the detailed responses. It means a lot to me.

Hey again!

Congratulations on taking control of your life and overcoming your barriers :). You have probably done more for yourself in the last couple of months than the majority of people does in years!

You have defined a clear and vision for yourself. You fixed your sleep schedule. You do workouts and yoga frequently. You have improved your nutrition and also determined how you will improve in poker.

Most importantly, you are doing the things that you've set to do, and this will bring you very far in life :).

I think that you have a good attitude towards life and taking the time to write here also shows that ;).

The reward system is also a pretty nice idea, it's good to reward yourself from time to time.

Now to address your problems an offer you some solutions:

My personal opinion (i might be wrong) is that people have the fear of failure because they have constantly been criticized for making mistakes/failing in the past. I would recommend finding an encouraging environment (have you maybe looked at our self-development group?) which will support you and help you improve even more.

Also I think that making mistakes/failing is good, Because if you're not constantly failing, you're not learning and improving. You'd just be staying in your comfort zone, doing the things you know how to do. So make mistakes -> learn from them -> improve :).

Regarding trying to change 5 things in your life at once, I think it's possible, but not for everyone. For most people it's better to change things 1 by 1, but for some people making radical changes works as well. I like your plan here - if it works keep doing it, if it doesn't fall back to implementing one thing at a time :).

Regarding organizing stuff, I think that you might be overthinking this just a little bit, and as you say, it would be better to just go out and do it :). If it works, great! If it doesn't, it's not the end of the world. You'll learn something from it and do it better next time ;).

As for going out, this might be a bit strange suggestion, but maybe you could try observing the world? Observe the happy peoples' faces. Observe the children playing. Observe the nature, how beautiful it is. Observe the birds that are flying. Try to actually relax, forget about the past and the future, and enjoy being outside, even if it's cold. Try to find nice things around you, it might make you feel better.

And nutrition-wise, great job on finding those things. I understand what your brother means, it's called taking a day off in the bodybuilding circles. I think that's not a problem, as long as you needn't do any productive stuff on that day. Because eating junk/sweets will not be the best for your productivity ♦. Also try to avoid eating too much crap before you go to bed on this day, as it might make you feel bad the next morning as well and you don't want that.

I think that you'll be able to solve your problems and overcome your barriers, because you have shown that you are a person who takes action and does thinks, not just think about doing them. Keep up the good work, and I hope to hear from you soon with some more good results :).

Thanks for taking the time to reply!

-SF

Hahaha thanks for the kind words Schnitz. I read that yesterday morning and was pretty much laughing out of happiness during readin lol. It made my day start just awesome and the whole day continued that way. Thanks for that.

The cool thing is that I don't see any of my changes stopping soon. (I don't want to jinx it but) I do not feel sick of any of my changes so far and thats pretty cool. I rather look at it as a growing snowball than a weight on my shoulders.
The snowball rolls down a snowy hill and it grows bigger and bigger if I keep to my plans. I want the snowball to be as big and as nice as possible and I like to see it grow during the rolldown. Now if I would stop with my plans the hill would stop having snow and the snowball would start shrinking. I don't want that.

I have another question nutritionwise:

So for the first 13-16 days of my diet I cut out sugar completely. No honey no sugar no sweets no nothing which contains sugar besides fruits. Only a small piece of 75% cococa content chocolate a day. This was a huge thing for me because before i was eating A !@#% TON of sweets. I'm talking 2-3 tables of chocolate/day. My mom is a confectioneer (makes cakes) and I love chocolate in general (the funny thing is that i was still always very slim haha).
Now the thing is that after ~2 weeks into my diet without any sugar i started to feel a bit weird. I felt kinda like constantly being underwater? Couldn't think as fast as before and yeah really felt like my brain is held back to some extent. I talked with my brother about it and he said that thats expected especially at the beginning of the diet and that i MUST eat sweets at least during poker studying and during sessions. That way this will go away and I will be able to think properly.
After this I started to eat honey and chocolate during sessions and it indeed helped.

Now I'm wondering if this "underwater" feeling will go away after a while if I stop eating sugar. Will it? Also how did you deal with this? I assume you don't really eat sweets either considering your nutrition advice. Should I only get sugars out of fruits? Is eating chocolate bad? What do you think about honey?

Now a few things regarding the tips that you wrote last:

Regarding going out:

Haha its quite funny that you wrote this idea of looking at the small things. While I was reading it I realized that I'm doing this too only differently. Like for some reason I always loved the smell of the air. You can actually tell the season by smelling into the air. Also I love small things outside like how the fresh snow shines under the lamps of the street and such. Yeah this is a pretty cool technique to follow only sometimes during the mornings I'm just too sleepy to notice when I'm out haha ♦.

I don't really have to say anthing about your other pieces of advice. I think all of them are mega-useful. I will try really hard to let my fears go on every level. I hope it'll work out.

Thanks yet again,
RTT314

Hey there,

Thanks for the compliment (I am trying hard to be nicer to people, so it means a lot to me to actually succeed at it :))!

I luckily never had similar problems with nutrition myself. I do however understand how drastically decreasing the amount of carbs in your diet by a lot can cause this kind of behaviour and have heard about similar cases in the past. I also think it makes sense to eat some carbs before/during studying, but I'm not sure if sweets are the best option. Have you perhaps tried dried fruits or something similar?

This kind of a feeling usually goes away once your body adapts to the changes though, so don't worry. I think fruits/dried fruits would be way better than chocolates/honey, yep. My opinion about honey? Honey is almost the same as sugar to me mostly. Honey and sugar have really similar effects on your body since honey is mostly made out of simple sugars. So I would generally avoid it personally.

That's a very interesting fact about the smell of air ♦. I should pay more attention to that myself (although I must admit that I don't like the smell of rain/upcoming rain all that much ♦). Yep, paying attention to these things should make going out more fun :).

Keep up the good work, looking forward to hearing from you :)!

-SF

Thanks Schnitz! I will make updates from time to time:)

Heyo Schnitz its me again.

I have this problem regarding eating the wholewheat bread which I can't seem to get around.

Just to be sure that we're on the same page the bread looks like this:

So i'll be honest - it just tastes sour and bad in my opinion. The only thing where I ate it kinda happily was with eggs. Other than that I never want to eat it so I don't. (I dont eat normal bread instead or anything like that. I simply do not eat bread at all rather)

Along what stuff do you eat that bread or do you have some recipes or tricks regarding making it more desirable?

Thanks,
RTT314

hey there,

in my opinion, avoiding bread (and wheat) completely is actually the best option.

that is because every wheat is full of antinutrients, which decrease the absorption of vitamins and minerals. from a health perspective, i think wholewheat bread is just less bad than white bread.

from a productivity point of view, i don't think that eating wholewheat stuff will make you less energetic, but normal bread definitely will.

so it's up to you to decide if you want to eat it or not, but i think that eliminating it from your daily nutrition would be best :).

-sf

Hey guys,

the new video of Learning to learn video series is out:

4. How to fix leaks

In other news, I have opened a thread specifically for Q & A regarding productivity, so please post further questions in this thread:

Schnitzelfisch Q & A - Become a productive poker player!

Take care!

-SF

Thanks for your reply Schnitz. Will post further stuff there.

New vid is here for the Learning to learn video series:

5. Avoiding common mistakes

Take care!

-SF

Hey guys,

the last vid of the LTL series is out:

6. Implementation

I'm looking for ideas for new videos, I would really appreciate it if you posted them in this thread :).

Take care,

-SF

Hey guys,

I wanted you to know about some of the new videos from me on Pokerstrategy:

NEW - Visual Planning video series:

1. How do you track progress with multiple habits at once?
2. How can you efficiently plan your tasks?
3. How to plan your months to ensure that you get enough done=
4. How to track your progress throughout the year?
5. How to plan your day like a boss

Bootcamp Topics video series:

1. How to stay Focused
2. Motivation
3. Goal Setting

-SF

New video is out!

How to use your calender like a pro

-SF

Last video from the Visual Planning series is out:

How to make others respect your working hours

Something AWESOME is coming out in the following weeks, so stay tuned!

-Primoz

Hey guys,

new video series is out there!

Maximizing Your Productivity

1. Building Momentum

I used a new approach that is far more visual this time, together with clear action steps for this video. Take a look!

-Primoz

My long-awaited video on Procrastination is finally out!

Mindset Webinar with Erik Stenqvist has been uploaded :).