[Chobohoya]

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I play because poker is far superior to my other career options(none). I have no resume to speak of and I earned <3.0 GPA in college, so my occupation outlook is limited.

Eventually, I want to earn enough money so that I can start generating passive income while still maintaining a comfortable bankroll.

And, as much as I hate to admit it, I am driven to become an excellent poker player. I have never felt confident in my abilities and I need to put in a ton of hours to get to the point where I will feel happy with my game and my accomplishments.

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One thing that may help you motivate yourself is taking a part time job--- even looking for one might help you focus yourself better.

I've been working a sort of grunt job, that I definitely don't "need," though the contacts will be useful down the road, and I'm playing more hands per available time than I ever did in college. It really helps to get home, look in PT and say "sooo.... Even though I only played 3 hours today, I made twice as much as I did all week at work." Sometimes the best way to motivate yourself is finding the outside stimulus that you need.

Lately I've been thinking more about variance and its effects on earn. I think it's safe to say we all play better when happy. I think it's also safe to say that we all get happier when we run good. None of this is going to surprise any one, but I think most people underestimate the fact that their running bad cripples their earn or conversely, their running good more than doubles it. Long term effects of this multiply not add: If running bad makes you feel really bad, you might drop down in limits for XX thousand hands. During that time, you play worse at a limit lower than normal. So your theoretical earn is a fraction of a fraction of what it "should" be. Don't fall into this trap! I think shot-taking as outlined in a number of very good, very thoughtful posts is far riskier than it seems at first by the same reasoning as above. If you run hot at first and THEN lose your stake at the increased limit, you're missing not only your earn from your normal game, but also you lose whatever fraction from tilt or time taken off.

The other side of this is that if you run hot for a sustained period, your BR doubles or triples, and you move up. When you move up you have a greater amount of confidence, which not only makes you play better, but withstand swing better as well. This means that you earn at a rate larger 2+X for longer! There are many posters here who took shots, had their BR skyrocket, and have since still been crippled for weeks or months by swings. How many more never even skyrocketed, but instead have stayed at 2/4 or 3/6 for months or years because of being burned?