The year started late for me. Got back from vacation end of January and didn't play much poker in the first month of the year. Played semi-ok and ran bad at like 10k hands of RUSH poker, and played v little HU. On vacation I had a lot of time to just sit around and think. About poker, it's future, and my future life in general. I'm realizing it's pretty important to have a long-term vision of your life. It's too easy to get stuck in the grind of playing without a purpose, and get too caught up in random real life stuff that comes up.

Something I've gotten better in the last 8-9 months is being a better pro. Our profession is so unstructured and it's easy to just wander aimlessly without a schedule and goals. In that regard I'm making a video this weekend about being a better pro. The core of the video will be discussing poker business plan (I go over my template which I'll make available for download) . Poker is a business, and a business should have a plan.

I'm reading a lot about learning, performance, and reaching expertise lately. It's a really cool subject and very applicable to any performance based field like poker. Since I'm a bad writer I plan to make a video series based on this stuff. My "How to Train for Poker" video is a good intro to the subject. The next series will go into more depth, and view learning, training, and performance from a slightly different view. One big idea I hope you get from it is that psychology is mostly irrelevant. Training builds competence, competence builds confidence, confidence leads to one associating an energizing positive feeling to performance and learning. The cycle promotes exponential learning. If you're supremely confident in your approach, you don't want to do anything different. The best psychology in poker is getting good at poker.

I'm dabbling in stock market/trading stuff lately. It's pretty fun and a nice change of pace. You often hear trading is similar to poker but that's a pretty narrow view imo. There are so many different trading styles.The point is to find a methodology that works for you. A view of the markets, technical strategy and risk management to suit your personality. I feel my personality is better suited to trading than poker because of this huge variation. I've always been a careful decision maker.. Like I research everything before I buy a computer, go on vacation etc. In trading you're not forced to play a game of quick decision making (of course that is one style, scalping or day trading). But there are long term approaches like trend following that don't require you to make trades every day. I've talked to some poker to trading guys. It takes a huge commitment and there's really no point unless you plan to make it your full-time career. On 2p2 you often here people talking like it's some easy game. It's NOT like poker where you can reach a basic level of profitability in a short time frame. It's necessary to treat it like a career and make a long term (5-10 year) plan for yourself.