More on setting goals: Fitness and poker related examples

Looking back on my video on setting goals I wanted to mention a specific example where by not following my own advice I did not accomplish what I set out to do.

A few months ago I decided that I needed to lose some weight and get healthier. I decided to dust off an old goal of running a 10 mile race. I weighed about 215 and wanted to lose about 10-20 lbs through training.

Fast forward a few months and I have run the 10 mile race but have lost no weight what soever and feel as if the health benefits I was looking for have not materialized. Two weeks before the race I topped the scales at a whopping 220lbs! I had actually gained 5lbs. I set and met my short term training goals and eventually hit my long term goal.

If I had done this the right way I would have looked at my definite major purpose (now defined as "To achieve a healthier weight and fitness level") and because I had not yet defined it, I missed the mark when setting my short term goals. I have started dieting as well as continuing my exercise regime and I am happy to say that in the last few weeks I have dropped almost 10lbs. Last Sunday at my weigh in I was under 210 for the first time in at least a year and the Wii told me I am now no longer obese (just "overweight").

I have been recording everything I eat in a food journal and it has been very helpful in keeping a daily focus on my eating habits. I hope to lose somewhere between 20-30lbs more in the next 6 months so that I am in good shape for the cruise I am going on with my wife in October. That should be realistic as I lose about 1.5lbs a week on average when I am exercising and watching what I eat.

As far as poker goals are concerned I am starting to set some. One is that I would like to start playing at least 100 tourneys a week again and ramp up to something like 800-1000 a month over the next few months. This is going to be tough. I have never before played that kind of volume. But I think is doable especially since I have been pretty easily managing 12 tables and think that now that I am stacking I'll be able to easily max out the 16 table limit at FTP.

One of the major hurdles that I think I will face is the mental endurance so I am going to address it similar to running. I will play two to three short sessions a week and one long one. I am going to play 25 games in my short sessions and 50 in my long session. Then I will start to ramp up my long session lengths from 25-50 and 50-100. That would put me playing roughly 200 tourneys a week.

I am going to schedule it just like I scheduled running on the calendar so that I can make sure to play when games are good. The other night I was table selecting the $24s and the games were horrible so I just dropped to the $12s. I am not going to play tables with 6+ winning players while the level below is infested with fish. My second video in the Zero to Hero series (coming out this month) is going to discuss table selection so stay tuned.

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