1:37am: I’ve learned over time to seperate business from pleasure, no matter what line of work you go into. Any time personal feelings are injected into the workplace, usually things get a bit more complicated. The same holds true with poker. At no time during a session should I be thinking about spending time with my girlfriend, and conversely at no time while I’m spending time with my girlfriend should I be thinking about the bad beat I took last night, right?

Maybe in a perfect world, but the truth is that most of the time work permeates into other areas of your life that should be more reserved for leisure only.

Achieving the correct balance between life and poker is one of the hardest things about the game, not only because of it’s addictive qualities, but also because of it’s tendency to linger in the human brain for quite a while after the session is complete. That being said, it’s hard to please everybody and acquiring this balance is usually easier said than done. How much time you devote to poker depends on the role it plays in your life. If you do it for a living, then naturally you should expect to have to put in 30+ hours a week at the table (usually more). If poker is a part time gig for you, then that’s exactly what it should be — part time. Point being, money has been the root of many evils for quite some time now and once it becomes the axis at which your world rotates, then everything else around it could (and usually does) fall apart. Pulling a line from one of my favorite movies, but used in a somewhat different context:

“Some people play poker to enrich their lives, and some people play poker to define it. Don’t be the latter.”

We might need money to survive, but it’s the people around us that make life worth living. Always know what’s important to you at the end of the day, and keep the big picture in mind. Sometimes we lose sight of the fact that the most important thing in our day isn’t whether or not 70/30’s are holding up like they should.

How to counter balance this? Take breaks — lots of them. It may even do you some good to schedule breaks. Go tell your girlfriend, wife, or mother that you love them. Spend some time with the kids. Just like we protect our investment at the poker table, we need to protect our investment in that which makes us happy. It’s pretty much agreeable that it’s a healthy thing to be a well balanced person. So to that I say don’t let poker make you become one dimensional, and get out there and start leading a healthy lifestyle today.

Start a Clean Slate at a New Room, a New Sharkscope, and Keep HFL Free in the Process