Article: Goal Setting

Polycarpus · Article: Goal Setting

I wrote this article for 2+2. Might be of interest for some of you as well. Feel free to comment of course!

Goal setting

Introduction

At the beginning of every month, a “this months goals” topic appears. Some of you take this rather seriously, take a while to think about their goals, put down something decent, and check back at the end of the month wether or not they achieved their goal. Others write down the first thing that enters their mind, and forget about it the moment they open a new topic.
Because I think goal setting is an important part of improving, and because this is a “hot topic” at the start of every new year, I took the time to write a short article about goal setting, with a focus on poker. I hope you enjoy it and it helps some of you to improve their game.

Internal motivation

Studies prove (as studies can prove everything Smile

) that in every job, your salary guarantees about 20% of your motivation. The other 80% is “internal motivation”, and relates to your colleagues, boss, working hours, feeling to be doing something important, ability of being proud about what you do and so on. I don’t think this is any different in poker. Do we play poker because it’s good money? Or because we’re our own boss, we choose our own hours, we feel the need to challenge ourselves, we are competitive and or we just need to have that feeling of superiority when we beat our opponent? All these and a lot of other reasons are possible. And in order to determine a goal that suits us, we first need to find what motivates us. Is it purely money? Choose a goal in $$$. Is it purely the feeling to beat somebody? Stay at the $5 and don’t move up. Do you really want to be the best of the best? Don’t go bumhunting but sit the regs and don’t move up before you beat every one of them at your current level. Don’t set some random goal in function of profit, ROI, number of games or whatever. Think about your internal motivation first, and set a goal that is in line with this motivation.

There are a numer of good and a number of bad ways to define your goals. A simple tool to check if your goals are any good, is the SMART-method, often used in business. A SMART goal means that your goal should be: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timeframe bound. Lets go briefly through all of those, one at a time.

Specific: Your goal should be well defined. Translate your internal motivation into a goal, and make it specific. Choose a number of games, hours of play, profit to be reached, ROI to be attained, opponent to beat, … but something specific, and write it down.

Measurable: Your goal should be measurable. If your goal is “make a decent profit”, “crush the $5s” or “feel good about my play at the end of the month”, how will you evaluate if you reached it or not? Come up with some numbers, make it measurable, and possible to evaluate in an objective manner.

Attainable and Realistic: And I would add: challenging. It’s not attainable to play 5K games a month and and not realistic to expect a ROI of 30% over a decent samplesize. And it’s not challenging to play 50 games and set an objective to break-even. Pick something that requires some effort to achieve, that is realistic, but is challenging as well.

Timeframe Bound: Having as a goal to win 20 buy-ins, can be consistent with all of above. But if you don’t but a deadline on it, everybody can reach this sooner or later. Choose a timeframe, for example the coming month.

Goal translation

By now, most of you should have an idea what goal to choose, and if it’s a SMART one. We now risk being results oriented. If your goal is to have 10% ROI and play 200 games, and after 100 games you’re only at 4% ROI, you might panic and this can affect your play. For that reason, and to not be results-oriented, translate your goal into a number of games, or into a numer of hours to play. Do you want to make $1K next month? Calculate with your average ROI on these stakes, how many games you need to play. Then focus on getting that number of games, and playing your A-game when you do so. Don’t check your cashier every 2 hours. Just play according to your #games or #hours plan.

Goal evaluation
1. Intermediate
If your goal is stretched over a relatively long period, do one or several intermediate evaluations of your goal and adjust where necessary.
If your primary goal is a money objective, and after 2 weeks you’re not halfway your profit, try and see if you can increase the number of games you’ll be playing the 2nd half of the month. Otherwise you might lose motivation because you don’t believe in reaching your monthly goal anymore anyway. Or if you reach your goal before the end of your timeframe, adjust your goal as well. If your goal was to make $400 in a month, and you reach this after 20 days, don’t stop playing. Or don’t go playing scared money because you’ll be in a bad mood if you keep playing and lose money and “unreach” your initial goal. You can never “unreach” a goal! Consider the goal as reached, and set a new one for the remaining 10 days.

2. Final
Evaluate your goal when you reach it or when your timeframe closes. Did you reach it? Why or why not? Was it attainable? Challenging enough?

3. Use goal evaluation for next goal determination. If you did not reach your previous goal, determine if your next goal should be set lower, of if you should retry the same goal. Go through the same thinking line as before, but take previously obtained results into account. If you did reach it, figure out if this was a “Lucky shot” or an unexpected upswing, or if you just nailed it. Based on those conclusions, set yourself the same or a higher (or lower if needed!) goal for next period.

Conclusion
If you play a hand in poker, it’s not enough to win it. You should go for max value. This is the same for your overall game. Don’t just play what, when and where you feel like it but set goals, chase and evaluate them, and use them to play for “max value”.
May you all reach your 2011 goal before a year passes by!

Polycarpus

Wannawin

I read this and it made me feel like I was at work - then I realised I still was Sad

don't forget the 'Goal' must being intergrated with 2 or 3 (no more) 'Hows' and the hows must be smart as well. Rolling Eyes

Jasonsc

I can't believe this has been up for a week and only one reply. That was a great read, much appreciated.

Perfect time of the year to start thinking about goals. I have to ask, did you study or do you work in business? I'm studying business at the moment and a lot of this seems familiar to me, although I admit I never considered relating this theory to poker.

With this being near the start of 2011, long and short term plans might be a good idea too. Short term being a month or two, and long term being a year (or maybe two years at most for the more out going, but more than that wouldn't really make much point for poker I think).

Thanks for the post, I'll have to put some serious thought into this over the next few days.

Wannawin

yeah it is a good post, and appreciation does need to be shown for the time effort put in to it and posts like it. Thanks.

It is a very good concept / theory, but to understand it and appreciate it you have to put in a lot of time and effort understanding your goal and how you aim to get there (which is probably why few responces), but if you do put the effort in, then it is worth its weight in gold - not just for poker, but life skillz as a whole

Polycarpus

Thanx for the positive feedback.
To Jason: For my very first job (in sales), my salary was 100% based on commission. If you don't sell, you get nothing on your paycheck at the end of the month. But we had quite some training about goal setting and similar subjects. And it's just one of the many businessconcepts that can be translated to poker.

Another important part of goal setting that I failed to stress in the article: You have to set your own goal, preferably without any external pressure. It's much more difficult to get motivated to achieve a goal, if someone else decided this goal for you. Same thing if you felt obligated to put the goal as high as you did. Decide your own goal and make sure to feel good about it before you start chasing it.

Brokerstar

Solid read indeed.

I think not enough people set realistic goals that they have a direct impact on and instead set goals that are either money or ROI orientated.

I know full well about working in sales too, I did 7 years as an estate agent and had to sell in order to live!!

Jasonsc

Interesting the different backgrounds which people have that create the basis for their poker careers, isn't it?

I worked on some goals today and came up with some 6 months long and short term goals. I think they're pretty realistic for me, starting from the bottom. I threw them in the 2011 goals thread here. They're not entirely money and ROI orientated, and the elements of that which I did include are less important to me than the volume elements. Also, the ROI and money goals are pretty minuscule ha.

bridgegunner

well written poly.

i am a very firm believer in goals and have been a corporate trainer for years helping to develop new managers and future leaders. you hit the nail on the head with being specific and measurable goals. i agree some people take goals seriously and some just go through the motions but they arent motivated by them.

through all the training classes i have completed and taught finding the motivation is the key. no one stays at a job just for money. no one does well at a job for money there has to be some motivation. we should all take a page from this and treat our poker like a job. how many of us would be fired from the lack of following through about wat we said we would do? me included.

for 2011 i vote we all find something that truly motivates us and use that to push ourselves to that goal. for me its my kids. i want to be a professional poker player so i can be home with them all the time. that is my motivation and will push me to get to my goals this year.

once again great post and we all should read it