p****r
发帖数: 9164 | 1 By " SGT RJ".
She is finishing her Ph.d in counseling psych and a mod in 2p2 NVG.
Q:
The one thing that I've been working on the past week (and slightly
improving at day by day) is my mental endurance. I struggle with sitting and
playing a session after I play for about an hour to an hour and a half. I
usually get distracted or feel very slight fatigue and use that as a
scapegoat to not play. To combat this I am putting in longer sessions to
increase endurance and trying to schedule my sessions so that I can get the
volume I want.
What else can I do to keep improving my endurance and strengthen my
willpower towards completing more and more 1-1.5 hour sessions per day?
A by "SGT RJ":
Well, that's actually two separate questions: improving endurance and
improving motivation/willpower.
The good news is you've pretty much already answered the improving endurance
question for yourself - progressively longer sessions. A lot of people,
particularly in this day in age where we have so many potential distractions
with the omni-prescence of multi-media, have to build up a tolerance for
prolonged concentration and mental activity. Think of it like running - the
first time you try to run a 400m at a full sprint, you are going to hit the
wall about half-way around and wheeze your way to the finish, ready to fall
over and convinced it's impossible. With a few weeks of training, you'll be
able to run that far without difficulty, and then can extend out even
further.
Schedule small mini-breaks (the tournament sync breaks on Stars are ideal
for this), and do something mentally cleansing during those breaks - either
a short, intense work-out, or something relaxing and decompressing like a
relaxation or meditation technique. They both work to help clear your mind,
so that you feel rejuvenated when the games start back up. Obviously if you
play cash you can just sit out when you need that break.
Also, don't assume that just because some other player talks about playing
12, 18, 24+ hour sessions that this is the key to success. Some people find
they simply can't concentrate for that long and still play their A game. If
that's the case with you, it's not a short coming, and you can adapt your
game to your own upper limits of your endurance thresh hold.
Maintaining motivation can be more tricky, since what saps motivation is
often unique to each person. In general, however, it's often helpful to
constantly remind yourself why you are putting in all this work in the first
place. Do you enjoy the game? Take a few moments periodically during your
sessions to remind yourself of what and why you love poker. Are you trying
to improve to a certain win rate? Break down your larger long term goals
into shorter, easier to achieve goals, so that you'll be able to see your
own improvement and feel a sense of pride in what you have achieved. That's
much more motivating than always looking ahead at what still needs to be
done. If fatigue is a factor, take that break. And if you find yourself
making excuses not to play, look into instituting rewards for overcoming
that fatigue (and punishments for failure to meet your own goals). Something
as simple as grabbing your favorite meal if and only if you complete X goal
can be enough to keep some people motivating; others find it motivating to
avoid certain things, like having to pay a friend X amount of money if they
fail to meet certain goals.
If there's something specific about how and why you feel your motivation is
lacking, I can maybe go into greater details, but what motivates player X is
often only minimally motivating for player Y, and is actually demotivating
for player Z, so that answer is a little more generic.
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