The power of concentration

One of the things Demetrius mentioned to me and I forgot to put in my blog, was the power of concentration, and how much it improves one’s game. There was so much amazingness from that weekend. This really made me think about my own pool game, and why I was making excuses for not concentrating.

First, a little background on me so you know where I’m coming from. I hold college degrees in computer science and psychology, so I tend to think of things very analytically. I’m also a lead cyber security engineer by trade so capitalizing on poor human decisions is also part of my job. I regularly craft phishing emails taking human behavior into account and utilizing things like game theory and Milgram’s studies on obedience to get people to click on things they shouldn’t.

It’s obvious that concentrating on my game more will make me better, and I want to be a better player. So why was I making the bad decisions to drink a beer, play on my phone, or get chat with friends during a match when I knew full well that it would affect my game? For me, this was just clearly a case of recognizing my cognitive dissonance, and determining why I was making decisions to socialize or drink during matches even when I realized that it hurt my game. It was like a smoker who knows that smoking is bad for him, and knowing it will shorten his life, trying to justify smoking anyway, or in my fat guy logic it was eating that tasty donut when it went against my belief that I wanted to lose weight. Why was I making these poor decisions in my pool game?

Partially, I was risk minimizing…

• "The medical evidence that smoking is harmful is exaggerated." became "there’s no research proving concentrating while playing pool is better"
• "One has to die of something, so why not enjoy yourself and smoke?" became "It doesn’t hurt my game as much as he thinks it does" 
• "Smoking is no more risky than many other things people do." became "There’s worse things for my game than not concentrating"
• "It’s only one cigarette" or "It’s only one donut" became "I only drink one beer to clam down before shooting"

Partially, it was bounded rationality. I didn’t realize how much better I could be, so I was making decisions that this was “good enough” behavior for increasing my game. Maybe I was a “good enough” pool player already or the improvements I were making were at a “fast enough” pace already. After seeing some amazing players, I knew that this wasn’t me though. I wanted to be much better than I currently was.

Part of it was the halo effect. “I saw SVB playing on his phone, so it’s ok for me to play on my phone” is this one. I was totally doing this. It’s kind of like seeing an anorexic person eating a donut and thinking that donuts must have no calories. This person is a great pool player, so I assume that they must be doing “everything” in the best way possible. That’s quite a big one that I needed to overcome.

Part of it was the licensing effect. Allowing myself to indulge after doing something positive or negative first. High fiving friends after an amazing shot, was part of it. The harder one was feeling the need to say something after a really bad shot like “at least the leave on the next ball was good” or “I’m playing like crap today” makes no sense. It’s like drinking a diet coke with a super-sized value meal. Doing one doesn’t discount the negative effect of the other. Why did I feel the need to makes comments after a bad shot? I feel it was often just to get justification that I was a better pool player than that shot indicated I was. This was especially true when I felt I missed an “easy” shot. Rather than commenting like “ugh, that was an easy one I missed”, I needed to accept that clearly the shot wasn’t easy for me, because I missed it. It could be that my own insecurities was making my game even worse. My preconceived ideas of the poolplayer I was, clearly was getting in the way of the poolplayer I could become.

This was a really hard thing to do. Much harder  running drills for hours. It was really weird to me how hard it actually was to just be quiet during my match and concentrate on it. The results were amazing though. The concentration does help me quite a bit. I decided that I could drink and socialize, but only when I was not playing pool. So I had to determine when I was “playing pool” and when I wasn’t. I considered that when my opponent was shooting, I was still technically “playing pool” because my leaves affected him, and the table he was playing affected me. So at the very minimum I needed to concentrate the entire match of games from beginning to end. From the moment I screwed my cue together until the moment I broke down my cue, I was playing. Associating it with that physical act helped me define what I needed to do. Because drinking beers before matches affected my play, I limited myself to no caffeinated soda and no beer before my play, no matter how long the other people’s matches lasted, I couldn’t order a beer. Because I have a tremor, caffeinated soda affects my hands more than the average person. I limited that until after all my games were done also.

The concentration works. Suddenly I wasn’t making silly mistakes. I wasn’t rushing shots. I wasn’t making nearly as many mental errors. The game started to be less about my ability to execute, and more about my lack knowledge of the game and how things were going to react. Both of which, I have massive growing to do in. My ability to put the cue on a spot on the table with a certain speed and spin has increased, but my knowledge of what speed and spin to use still has a long ways to go.