A Case Study On The Nature Of Discipline And Willpower

The Inspiration For This Post

Watching Part 1 of the 'Arnold' documentary on Netflix made me reflect on the nature of discipline and willpower.

In most cases, people talk about the discipline and willpower to do something, as that thing makes them uncomfortable (or otherwise, they have mental associations of discomfort around that thing).

However, in some unique cases, it feels like the 'hard work' doesn't require any discipline or willpower at all. Instead, it is the breaks that require our discipline and willpower.

In my experience, it's easier to discipline yourself to take breaks to improve your performance, so how do we get to that stage?

The 30-Second Summary Of My Chess Journey

With chess, when I was quite young, I found it effortless to read chess books and to move the pieces around the board, analyzing and trying different things. Later on, I also found it effortless to solve tactics puzzles and could do it all day. (For others, playing blitz all day online feels effortless).

But as I got into my early to mid-20s, I noticed that I needed more and more willpower for intensive study. Eventually, my willpower would wear out, and I would need an extended break. At some point, I ended up not enjoying the game at all, feeling a lack of progress or opportunity to realize my full potential as a person.

My Hypothesis For How To Make 'Hard Work' Easy

Could this be the key?

Are we able to condition our minds to make what others call 'hard work' very easy for us? I believe so, by:

- connecting our efforts to a clear and powerful vision;
- being so absorbed in what we do that the external environment is no longer a major factor;
- feeling what we are doing is significant;
- we can observe our progress over time;
- our actions are congruent with both our identity and the deepest parts of ourselves.

Testing My Theory With My Recent Poker Experience

Let's see if this matches my experience in the last month, of totally focusing on poker.

In the last 2-3 weeks, I've spent virtually all of my time either studying or playing poker. I stopped playing other games (including chess) for my downtime, as I noticed that in those games, I would get quite upset when I lost, but feel not that much better when I won.

A pattern I've noticed is that every day that I wake up, I feel excited for the day ahead. I'm excited about learning more and testing my skills on the felt. Every day, I'm grateful to be living at home with my parents and wife, as I can totally absorb myself in what I love to do, and don't have to work another job to support others (which would slow the rate of my learning and practice).

The Feeling Of 'Flow'

Another pattern is that, when I am looking at poker situations, I just forget everything else. I very easily get in the zone - unlike in chess, where I would often get fixated on the result or the Elo ratings. Essentially, my head would take me out of the game. I've mentally trained myself to look down every half an hour so that I know to take a short break or to drink some water (a useful habit I developed from chess).

I also find that I don't have conflicting priorities when I am doing poker work. I'm not thinking about other opportunities I could be pursuing. I'm not wondering or caring at all what others think about what I am doing. I'm just in the moment, trying to do the best I can in the situation in front of me. And unlike with chess, I'm not beating myself up over mistakes. Instead, I get curious and try to figure out what I can learn from this.

Quantifying What Makes Deliberate Practice Sustainable

The most measurable difference between my poker journey and chess journey, however, lies in the elements of significance and progress (which are things I value more than nearly anything else in the world, from the long-term perspective). I want to know that, at the end of my life, the things I did mattered and made a big difference.

I believe there's a clear ceiling in chess in this aspect (which is reflected in the income ceiling, unless you go the route of running a huge business or going viral on Youtube, but this is a very high-variance route in my experience).

The Limitations Of Chess Coaching (and other educational material)

I've come to realize that chess coaches in general significantly overestimate the influence of their input on the successes of their students. It feels good to think that our students improved 200 points in 2 months because of the insights we shared over those 8 hours. But if you let your ego attach yourself to such successes, then by the same token, you also have to take responsibility when a student does not achieve such results. And that's a slippery slope that can easily lead to misery.

But if you accept that you are just one of a large number of factors influencing a chess player's improvement, this also puts a great limit on the value that your service provides. It is very difficult to successfully charge a large amount of money (representing a large amount of value) when you are unable to promise a clear result (Marketing 101). This is the ceiling I referenced before (which applies for other educational chess material as well), and a big reason why my passion for chess coaching slowly waned over time.

(Of course, if you would be happily spending all your time in chess/poker even if you had a trillion USD in net worth, then other arguments may not matter to you)

The Ceiling In Poker

When you compare this with poker, playing poker is also an activity with a clear ceiling, as you are essentially exchanging time for money (if you are a profitable player - 95% of players lose money or are break-even due to the rake).

However, the earning potential in poker is far greater, with the best tournament players in the world having $50M+ in live tournament earnings. (And there are cash game players who have earned even more in their lifetime, by being strong players who get in games with bad players throwing away a lot of money at the tables each day).

Poker Is A More Accurate Model For Life

It's arguably mentally tougher to be a professional poker player than a professional chess player, because you have to handle a lot of variance, including the coolers and the bad beats. But that also leads to a greater feeling of progress (for me anyway) where you are constantly getting mentally stronger, and feeling yourself grow as a person, where you can more easily handle setbacks and challenges in life as well.

Perhaps another reason that I feel more personal growth with poker than with chess is that, due to being a game of incomplete information, it's a more reliable model for life than chess (as a game of complete information). So when we improve a skill a poker, it's easier to apply that same thought process to our decision-making in life and to effectively analogize between different situations.

The Social Element

Another advantage of poker is that it is significantly more social than poker - you are overhearing people chat and also sometimes talking to people at the table between hands (both as a way to acquire information and just to relax). Since you can't talk to your opponent during a chess game, the social element of chess is limited to between rounds. So playing live poker allows us to meet our social needs more efficiently, leaving more time to meet other needs in our lives.

Fewer Barriers

Finally, it feels like it is easier to improve in poker, leading to less resistance in training. There are a lot of great resources in both chess and poker, but somehow the learning process in poker feels a lot faster. I don't know if that's a question of talent or simply being very well-practiced in the art of learning from chess and other disciplines. But that definitely makes it easier to keep on learning, when you feel that your efforts are having some kind of benefit.

Conclusion - Why I Wrote This

This was a very long effort to quantify what is making things work in my poker journey, compared to where things didn't work when undertaking a similar path in the past in my chess journey. I believe that such an analysis can help us greatly to remember why we do what we do, allowing us to more easily overcome burnout, or even better, recognize the early signs of burnout so that we can take swift action and accelerate the recovery process.