Increase Productivity with a Morning Routine and the Pomodoro Method
Thanks for interest in my first blog and AMA: https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@daut44/introduction-and-ama-ask-me-anything-about-being-a-professional-poker-and-daily-fantasy-sports-player-cross-post-from-poker
Will run another AMA next week with poker and DFS players invited from other forums to participate, I would love to grow the following for poker and DFS here and to help bring brilliant and interesting people to Steem.
In 2006-2011, it was very easy to make big money in poker. Once my process and understanding reached a certain level, my work ethic and motivation to improve dropped considerably. I just had to make sure to play a moderate amount of hours a week, but I had difficulty focusing while playing, had trouble playing long sessions, stopped putting in work off the table (studying), and relied on my built up knowledge to continue my success. I found myself watching movies/shows on netflix and autopiloting (playing robotic rather than engaging my brain for each decision), and my growth as a player stopped. Over time, players caught up to my level of understanding and poker started getting very hard for me. The bad habits I built up for years were directly causing my profits to decrease each year after 2012.
I transitioned over to DFS (daily fantasy sports) at the end of 2014, and it consumed my life. I watched every relevant game, sweated how players/teams were doing, spent a few hours registering for contests and scouring the lobbies, and many more hours working on lineups each day. My process wasn't aimed to be efficient, DFS just took up 10+ hours of my days and it was the only thing I could focus on: despite my work ethic returning, as my obsession grew and my profits increased, I was having trouble focusing on other areas of life. For instance I couldn't sit down and read a book without stopping every other page to check twitter for news, check espn, or check things on the DFS sites. I couldn't get in a decent workout because halfway in I would have an epiphany or realization, run home and get back to work. I couldn't even get minor tasks crossed off a to do list because DFS always came first. My obsession destroyed my productivity in other areas of life.
Morning Routine
I listened to a Tim Ferriss podcast, best selling author of books such as The 4 hour Work Week and The 4 Hour Body and famed tinkerer and minimalist, where he detailed his desired morning routine to get his day started off right. Link if you want to listen: http://fourhourworkweek.com/2015/09/18/5-morning-rituals/
His intended routine:
-make bed
-tea
-journaling
-meditation
-hang off pull up bar
Of course life or obligations sometimes get in the way and the entire routine is hard for him to fully complete, but if he can complete at least 3 parts he feels that he is ready to "win the day”.
After tinkering with his suggestions and some additions of my own, I've landed on a method that maximizes my productivity throughout the day in a much shorter amount of time.
Make Bed
I copied this one directly from Tim. Every morning I wake up and quickly tidy up by sheets and blanket. Since I work from home, this reduces distraction from seeing a messy bed, takes less than a minute, and starts my day off with a win.
Stretching
I initially started meditating each morning, mostly through guided meditation from an app called Headspace, where a British man named Andy Puddicombe who was a former Buddhist monk guides you through 10 minute meditative sessions. Most people think meditation is about thinking of nothing, but the way Andy describes it, picture a congested roadway, with thoughts driving down one side of the road and feelings driving down the other. Don't try to stop the thoughts and feelings from happening, but rather try and remove yourself from them, placing yourself on the side of the road as an observer watching them pass and noting them. And every time your mind starts to wander or drift with thoughts or feelings, center yourself by returning your focus to your breathing. The app is helpful for many people, I felt improvement, and if you have problems compartmentalizing, focusing, or with anxiety I highly recommend trying it.
But I stopped meditating each morning and decided to pursue stretching instead. I play a few sports recreationally (rock climbing and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu), and although I am not a gifted athlete overall, flexibility and balance are still among my worst athletic traits, but are vital skills for both sports. I figured adding a stretch each morning to try and incrementally improve my flexibility so I would see results in my various activities. After a few months of stretching, I've seen little to no gain in my overall flexibility, but I started seeing the same meditative benefits that I got from Headspace and there were additional recuperative and injury recovery affects for my body.
My routine is a combination of things I picked up from sports and in Yoga classes:
30 second front leg stretch.
5 ankle rotations, each foot, each direction (20 total). I lift a foot off the ground, do 5 full 360 degree rotations, then do 5 in the other direction, then do this for the other foot.
While standing, lift knee to chest, hold position with gradual increased pressure over 15 seconds.
Follow up stretch: Do 5 circular rotations for each leg. Leg starts down, lift knee to chest, swing knee as far outside (with leg bent) as you can, then circle back down and restart. Then rotate other direction 5 times, then repeat for other leg. 20 total rotations.
Front bend forward, try to touch toes, hold for 30 seconds
Follow up stretch is a back bend to do the negative or reverse version. Gradually increase bend over 10-15 seconds
30 seconds butterfly stretch
Seated version of the front bet forward, touch toes, gradually increase pressure for 15 seconds
Spread legs, touch ankles, gradually increase stretch for 15 seconds
Leg over body, lay flat on floor, hold for 30 seconds each leg
With legs straight in front of you, cross right foot over left knee, then twist your left elbow across right knee and look behind you, gradually increasing the stretch over 30 seconds. Repeat left leg.
Locust pose, hold for as long as is comfortable:
Shoulder rolls, 5 each direction:
Hold the following for 10 seconds each arm:
Neck stretches: I nod my head yes 10 times, then nod my head no 10 times, then stretch my head so that my ear goes to my shoulder 10 times.
Then I do a power pose where I stand like this for 30 seconds:
A TED talk I watched back in the day claimed it showed bursts of increased testosterone, and also works as a great last stretch to open up your back.
The whole routine takes roughly 10-12 minutes total, but I feel great afterwards. It hits basically every body part and I feel much less soreness and body pain in my day to day life.
Scrambled Eggs and multivitamins
For the past year I experimented with incorporating tea into my morning routine. Instead of increased focus, I tended to feel worse: some things aren’t for everyone. However, I’ve found eating a high fat/protein breakfast gives me energy without leaving me bloated like many heavier carbohydrate meals do. I basically scramble 4-6 eggs, take glucosamine to aid in physical recovery, and a multivitamin to fill any possible holes in my diet. Plus having protein after a workout (even if it’s only a 10-12 minute stretch) is always good for your muscles.
Cold Shower
Cryotherapy is becoming increasingly popular in the athletic world. Athletes enter a cylindrical chamber as liquid nitrogen cooled -300 degree farenheit air surrounds their body, producing a fight or flight response in their bodies that releases endorphins and adrenaline. This process can reduce recovery time to a fraction of what it would be otherwise.
I don’t have a cryotherapy freezer, and ice baths sound excruciating, but I hop in the shower and gradually lower the temperature til it’s as cold as possible. I’m not sure how much of a response my body has to this, but I always feel great immediately afterwards and am ready to start the day.
Staying Productive afterwards using the Pomodoro Method
This morning routine is much faster than Tim’s: it takes me roughly 30 minutes to complete all 4 parts, but once done I can get started on any tasks and feel focused for long periods into the day. After I generally try to break up my day into 30 minute blocks where I get certain things done and stay balanced. This is similar to the Pomodoro method (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique), where I do something for 30 minutes and then offer myself a small reward, either a snack or a stretch or a couple minutes to play with my phone.
Example daily schedule:
830am: wake up, feed+water dog
845-915: morning routine
915-930: preliminary DFS work and registration. Reward: banana (because bananas are fucking awesome)
930-1000: to do list (i.e. pay bills, clean apartment, return emails, etc)
1000-1030: longer dog walk (also reward for finishing to do list)
1030-11: astrophysics work or other classes I take recreationally check out the following 2 sites: https://www.edx.org/
https://www.coursera.org/
11am-2pm: Indoor bouldering, lunch, shower. (also the reward for reading/learning)
2-4: DFS work (breaks every 30 minutes to either eat, do a short stetch, or take dog on a short walk)
4-430: DFS Journaling, write down observations, mistakes, triumphs, and anything else I want to note
Combining the morning routine and 30 minute blocks afterwards with mini rewards after has reduced my procrastination issues and helped return balance in my life.
Pledge 40% of payouts to top 4 Commenters (10% each)
I like to promote intelligent discourse in the comment sections of my blogs[1, link to blog I wrote on this subject], so I pledge to transfer money received from the OP to top commenters. It's hard to go through and distribute it evenly amongst commenters, but I'll transfer back 40% of the payouts received to commenters on this blog.
So, in the comments leave any tips you have for productivity, any tips for a morning routine, or anything you disagree with or think you can improve. It's all part of the learning process.
[1]: a previous blog I wrote on this subject: https://steemit.com/steemit/@daut44/steemit-needs-to-change-its-reward-system-to-better-incentivize-intelligent-discourse-in-blogs
What I was trying to say earlier is that productivity blocker is your process of dealing with uncertainty. It's easy to ignore things that you have little knowledge on how to execute until it's too late and can cause massive fuckups in the thing that you are trying to be productive on. It is also easy to purposefully ignore an uncertain process because it causes too much anxiety or stress. Personally I have had to deal with both of these situations so many times.
In the first instance, an example including myself. I was in first year uni doing an engineering unit involving a team project, one of my roles in the team was to do cad drawings of this thing we were designing. The drawings were a major part of the final presentation. I was the only one experienced in a drawing program but I wasn't really what I had to do to draw the design. Long story short I left it to the last week and spent about 3 nights working until 3am trying to get drawings out that were half decent. If I had spent some time earlier in the semester working out how I could do the drawings and what processes I would need to do the stuff I could've done the drawings in an afternoon.
When there are processes that you don't know how to execute, figuring out how to execute them and stabilising ( the process does the same thing every time ) them is a good way to become more productive.
Ah, I would classify that more as efficiency, and it for sure can increase productivity.
My favorite example about efficiency would be in training for a particular athletic event or sport. Let's say you wanted to be great at jiu jitsu but you are out of shape. If you use jiu jitsu as a way to get in shape and lose weight then start training, you can't train nearly as much as would have been able to had you come into jiu jitsu in great shape. Perhaps it would be more efficient to improve cardio and physical fitness over a 1-2 month period then start jiu jitsu, rather than dive into a physically demanding sport head first and try to sink or swim.
the uncertainty tangent I mentioned earlier when narrowing your focus while also taking risks was something I had not thought of at all and found really profound.
I think that a large blocker to productivity is uncertainty, if you can remove the various forms of uncertainty in your life your productivity will skyrocket. What this doesn't mean though, is to avoid uncertainty. What I am suggesting is working out better personal processes to remove the uncertainties as you encounter them.
I would post an example but I am at work.
It's an extreme generalization, but not one I disagree with.
Example in poker:
uncertainy to remove from life: I am unsure whether I want to concentrate on PLO, NL cash, MTT, SNG. Focusing on what is best for me is going to lead to greater success than wasting time switching back and forth and wavering.
uncertainy that shouldnt be avoided: I am unsure if I will make money or not today. This is the fundamental reason poker is profitable, if it were a sure thing nobody would play. I can't not play because of this uncertainty.
Yea apologies for the generalisation, I wanted to write more and will probably do so when I get home later.
Of any generalization possible, I think it's the most profound. But also tricky for people without a gambling background to understand. You can be a confident person with stable goals in mind while also understanding that nothing in life comes without risk, and trying to avoid all uncertainty caps possible upside.
looks like the payouts are basically done at this point. grand total of $0.43 since there are only 2 commenters, im going to combine the payouts for 20% each to @goingpaper and @biophil, so $0.09 each on the way. Once again, don't spend it all in one place haha
How long have you been using this routine? I've led a pretty unstructured life lately and I don't love the slow work ethic that it's bred in me. I'm extremely skeptical of Tim Ferris in general, but it sounds like he's hit on something pretty useful in this morning routine stuff - I'll have to take a closer look.
On a totally different note, it's one of my serious minor regrets in life that I never got into Texas Hold 'Em. My roommate in 2002-04 was totally obsessed with it, and if I'd just set aside a few hundred dollars to lose to him in poker I'm confident that I could have gotten really good. Oh well, hindsight is 20/20 and all that. :)
I've been using it about two months. And I try my best to perform it at some point of the day, even if I can't get to it in the morning. For instance, if my girlfriend crashes here and we go out to breakfast in the morning or go do some activity, I try to do it once I get back to recenter myself. I understand the criticisms of Tim Ferriss, but to me someone that tinkers in that many things is going to have a lot of failures and things that don't work but will also have a lot of things you can pick up. I'm a big believer in you can learn something from everyone, and learning from minimalists who try their hand at everything is often a good way to start.
Yes, 2002-2009 were the golden years and the time to really devote yourself to poker. It's still possible to make a living or do really well, but it's not nearly as easy as it once was. I have the same feelings when it comes to bitcoin. Wish I could have hopped in during the 2011-2012 years rather than much later. Oh well, at least there is still room for growth in crypto.