Wasting Time?

I’ve been slacking on my posts lately. Thankfully Jamin has been picking it up with his Atlantic City recap. You would think that having no real job, living at home with your parents, and sitting around 90% of the time would be a great formula for a ridiculous amount of posts. It’s not. There is so much crap out there that has the singular goal of distracting us so that we aren’t out there doing things. Ultimately, these things hurt us. I think it’s hurting my poker but I think it’s a hurting society in general. How much more time would we spend with our friends and families or our hobbies or our job if it weren’t for television and video games and movies and the internet and books? Yes even books.

Let’s take a very narrow look at this phenomenon to see how only poker distractions affect my life. My typical day is 11am to 3:30am. I probably spend an hour every day browsing poker-related websites. I spend another hour reading the articles that I’ve noted as readable. I watch Poker After Dark every night for an hour. Often I watch an hour or two of WSOP or other poker replays. I spend uncountable hours talking about poker with my friends and I normally get in somewhere between 2 and 5 hours of solid online play every night. With my copy of the Mathematics of Poker arriving tomorrow, even more of my time will be taken up by poker.

Here is the point I’m trying to make. If playing is considered my job and I do consider it a job, then I should spend the majority of my time working. On good days it’s five hours of play. On bad days I play about two hours. I’d say that averages out over time to three and a half hours every day. Yet I am easily spending an equal or greater amount of time reading, watching, and talking poker. That’s 3+ hours every day where I could be working that I am losing out on. There are merits of attacking poker from another a different angle to try to improve your game but nothing beats personal experience. At some point you have to wonder how much of the poker saturation has a minor or subconscious goal of keeping us interested in poker but away from the table. Every time a pro appears on TV or writes a book, he is doing two things: 1) Keeping us away from the felt and 2) Maintaining our interest level. How many people watch this stuff and think, I can beat these guys? I know I have thought it before. They don’t always look untouchable. Take Negreanu on Season 2 of High Stakes Poker. He was on tilt. I could have taken all his money. My dad could have taken all his money. Even some bum who’s never played before would have a chance. We are tempted to play but without the requisite experience needed and we are wasting time getting tempted that could be used to get that experience.

Now this is just poker. There’s a bigger message here. How many hours do we watch sitcoms or sports or talk shows or movies or sit alone with a book? How much of that time could be used to making our lives better? Better jobs, happier families, and more fun. There’s a place for this type of entertainment but like everything, it should be in moderation. Hopefully if you do that, you will find your life becomes better, be it poker or whatever.