3 Game-Changing Principles for Self-Improvement

Skill acquisition. My obsession with it began in high school when I temporarily held an unofficial world-record for throwing cards. Unfortunately, card throwing didn’t do much for me or my popularity, but it set me on course to truly understand what is required to reach the top of any domain. During my own journey of mastering many different activities, and after talking extensively with different masters of their craft, I've learned the three key characteristics that separate the creme from the crop.

Why are there so many "crops"? I first noticed a surprising fact when I was a 9-ball coach.... Nobody seems to get better at anything. There are always a large group of people who’ve played for decades and are still bad. Why do so many people stay bad, but a few ascend to the top after only a couple of years?

It’s actually not time spent on the activity… at least not per se. Most people confuse practice with repetition, but there’s a world of difference. If you play a lot, but don’t critically think about your decisions, you’ll just repeat bad habits. And guess what happens? You get really good at playing poorly. In fact, there are people who are the best in the world at playing poorly because they’ve practiced playing poorly so much. Have you ever heard somebody say something to the effect of “nobody runs like me”? That’s one of the diagnostic criteria for identifying these people.

The “creme of the crop” share three core characteristics:

1. They think about the topic and its priorities constantly

2. They suspend disbelief

3. They are fairly good at meta-cognition.

Principle #1:

Did you know that according to a study from the Harvard Business Review, most people do not spend the majority of their time on the goals they themselves say are their top priorities? It turns out that there is a huge mismatch between what people say are their priorities and the amount of time they actually spend trying to accomplish them.

Spending time on a priority isn’t just about doing it, though; the most important component of skill acquisition is thinking critically about it. You need to be obsessed with thinking. In poker, that means thinking through hands and figuring out what could have happened with different decisions at each decision point, thinking about the table dynamics, reflecting on emotions, and assessing / re-assessing what the most important things to think about were.

I’ll tell you what the most important items to think about are in the next blog post. For now, I just want to convey that critically thinking through your actions is absolutely required to rapidly improve. You must think.

Principle #2: 

Did you know that most people are heavily resistant to advice? It turns out that cognitive dissonance is a real thing. It happens when people hold two conflicting values or beliefs: one their brain knows to be true, and one their ego wants to be true. Ego manifests itself in many different ways, but relying on self-defeating strategies is certainly one of the most common.

I once had a friend who thought he had learning figured out. He had an algorithm. He said he learned best by doing things incorrectly, losing as a result, and then figuring out what to do better. That’s kind of like working from first principles. The only problem with his method was that it took him months to figure out that what he was doing was wrong because he didn’t have the tools to identify that his actions were wrong. And that was in chess - not poker - where the results are concrete. In poker, with elements of probability, it could take much longer to learn what you're doing wrong on your own. In the end, he never ascended beyond the intermediate ranks.

A much better strategy is to take it for granted that most authority figures know what they’re talking about, and then do it. If you see a person that consistently wins, maybe you should try doing what they do. This sounds so obvious, but hardly anybody does it. Learning by imitation can be a wonderful tool. Some top players tell me they learned best by pretending to be their favorite player. There is absolutely nothing wrong with having a role model and emulating the way they play, even if you don't fully understand why they are making the choices they make.

The concept of suspending your disbelief comes from literature, but I’m borrowing it to express the idea that you should set your beginner strategies aside and adopt new strategies that are endorsed by winners and then actually use them.

If you want to learn some top strategies that the best in the world employ, sign up for one of our courses!

Principle #3:

Did you know that a hallmark of beginners is that they don’t know why they make decisions? Here’s a classic example in poker:

Coach: “Why did you bet on this river card?"

Student: “I’m not really sure”

Coach: “Was it for value or as a bluff?”

Student: “Well, kind of both”

Coach: “Oh, a merge bet?”

Student: “I don’t know what that is, but I guess sort of both”

Coach: “And you were hoping to accomplish what”?

Student: “Well, it just seemed like I should bet.”

You then enter an infinite loop of circular logic. Do a thing because you should do the thing. Unfortunately, this is not a repeatable strategy. In fact, it’s not a strategy at all. It’s an impulse.

Meta cognition is the ability to monitor how you think about things. It’s a type of self awareness that is critical for self improvement. Students who engage in deliberate meta-cognition develop skills much faster due to self-awareness. Here's how the same conversation might go with a good self-aware student:

Coach: “Why did you bet on this river?”

Student: “To tell you the truth, my impulse is to bet when I’m not sure what to do”

Coach: “Why is that?”

Student: “Because I heard that aggression is better than non-aggression, and I... I guess it’s part of my core personality. I’m naturally a risk-taker, and when I don’t know what to do, I like putting money into the pot.

Coach: “Let’s evaluate whether that’s always a good strategy…”

Student: “Yes please”

What's really the difference between Student A and Student B? It's that Student B recognizes that they don't know what to do, but they are aware that they lean towards aggression when unsure. Student A never made the connection between unsurety and aggression. A statement like "it just seems like I should bet" is not a self aware statemen... why couldn't this student have said "it just seems like I should check"? Student B actually provided a reason having to do with their emotional state, which is something a coach can work on with them. Student A provided a blanket statement that will go into the void of uselessness. Student A won't improve.

Short Summary

I’ve seen people fail and I’ve seen people succeed. There are three main differences between winners and losers. First is how they prioritize things. People who rise through the ranks don’t value repetition, they value critical thinking and adjustment. Practice isn’t about repetition, it’s about improvement. Second is that they take their ego out of the picture by listening to advice. They watch other winners, and then do the things those winners do, instead of relying on their own self-defeating strategies. Last is that winners are self-aware and constantly monitor their thought process and emotions. If you can harness these three principles and actually use them, you too can be a winner.