Labels, Lack of Work Ethic and a twelve month horizon

Often, during conversation at live poker tables, I am asked what I do for an occupation. In the first half of the year the answer provided was along the lines of "Unemployed Project Manager".  With the passage of time, I have become uncomfortable with that answer. I have no desire at this point in time to return to employment as a Project Manager, nor any desire, or immediate need, to gain an income by way of employment.  The need for an income diminished when, shortly after jumping ruts back to New Zealand in March 2013, my father died at the fairly ripe old age of 84. After it became clear I was going to receive a modest inheritance, my desire and drive for finding another job fell off a cliff. In the last little while, whenever I have examined my reaction to self labeling as "Unemployed", I have felt that the term "Unemployed" is now an incorrect description of my work status. I have no desire to be employed in a formal sense and have started to be become aware that I am more comfortable with the label "Retired" or "Recreational Poker Player".  Although at least one player at the tables thought my occupation was that of "roading contractor". Unfortunately I never quizzed him as to why he saw me in that light.

With 20 months now having passed since I last worked, and about 12 months having passed since I last applied for a job, with my current age of 55, my expectation is that if I attempted to find another role as a Project Manager, it wouldn't be a happening thing.So can I make any money as a poker player?

I've asked myself the question of whether I could apply the label of "Professional Poker Player" given my current skills, ability and results? The answer is, sadly, no. I am just not good enough at this point in time. Bucket list wise, becoming a "Professional Poker Player" is pretty much one of the major items I would like to achieve over the next 5 to 10 years and to move towards that goal I need to change the way I have been working away from the tables.

As I looked back at some of the goals I have publicly documented on my pokerstrategy blog , I realized I stopped posting goals on that blog due to my failure to complete many of the tasks I set myself. I didn't like the feeling of public failure and embarrassment that accompanied the failure to hit many of my study goals.  However, when I reviewed the amount of work I put in during the months I was posting goals compared to the amount of work I put in over the last several months, I have found that I was putting more work into my game in  those months I had publicly stated goals than I am now. In other words, even though I would fail to complete a lot of the work I had set myself for a month, the mere fact I had put some goals up meant that I was much more likely to do some work, however small that amount of work was. The conclusion I have reached is that I need to go back to publicly stating work goals for a while and see whether the correlation of publicly stating goals with increased effort still holds.

Goals tor the next month:

Online:

•  play big $4.40, Turbo 7.50 four to five times per week. Mix in some $3.50 45 seat SNGs as well as some of the tournaments that contribute to the Pokerstars ANZ Tournament Leader Board (providing live tournament play does not conflict)
• For tournaments where I get into top 5% perform hand history reviews some time in the 48 hours following the tournament

Live:

• Aim to satellite into Auckland NZPT November main event (currently hold three $520 mega satellite tickets which were won via feeder satellite events.  The casino allows for a mixture of $520 satellite tickets and cash to be swapped for a main event ticket. I will continue to play in feeder satellite events with the hope of getting enough tickets for a main event ticket and if not successful either play in the mega satellites that are scheduled almost nightly in the week prior to the main event)
• Cash in several $100 tournaments

Study:

• Online hand history reviews as noted above
• Load Tournament Poker Edge videos to ipad. Obtain carry bag for ipad. Take ipad with me to Casino and watch videos in period between registering for live events and live event starting. (There is a lot of dead wait time at the Casino so this will be a way of obtaining some value from that dead time)
• On three days per week watch a minimum of two hours worth of videos
• Post a minimum of two hands per month to Tournament Poker Edge (TPE) MTT Strategy review forum. Stretch goal is to post four hands per month. 
• On one day per week, read and process 20 pages of Matthew Janda's "Applications of No-Limit Hold'em". Update work-in-progress mind map for this book so as to more deeply process the material.

Goals for the next 12 months:
Online:

• Move from a losing player to a winning player. Success would be measured over the last 6 months results of the 12 month period. Aim to review results over May-October 2015 in November 2015 and if the bankroll is higher in October than May then that will be the measure of success

Live:

• Become profitable in the live tournament environment. 
• If bankroll increases by more than $10,000 then start turning my attention to live cash games. Until then only play live tournaments

Study:

• Post hands for discussion on TPE with a minimum of 8 hands per month to be posted
• Hand History review at least once per month
• Acquire a coach in Jan or Feb 2015 for a short period of concentrated study
• As per Andrew Brokos's recommendation, obtain a short membership to Runitonce.com and watch Ben Sulsky's and Brian Rast's videos

Notes:

•  Acquired Janda's book at the start of this year (2014) and have made several attempts to read all the way through. Each of my attempts has petered out somewhere the 100 and 120 page mark, despite my recognition there is some extremely valuable content in this book. While the content is valuable, I suspect Janda has a brain the size of a large planet and often times is writing for other big brained folk. I find his writing style induces my feeble brain to rebel at the effort to hold onto and process many of the concepts Janda introduces without significant, painful, mental effort. The way I am going to try to carrot and stick myself into completing the book is to publicly state I am going to work on the book (the stick) and treat myself to an inappropriate sensory treat if I meet my Janda goal for the month (the carrot). The ultimate aim is to work through the book over a lengthy period and end up with a mind map that can be used as a reference / refresher
• After posting several scenarios to TPE's MTT strategy forum I have found that much benefit is to be derived from the posting process. Having to sit at my PC and write the scenario out as clearly as possible has helped me to identify and deal with similar scenarios, particularly when playing in live tournaments.