Three Crucial Poker Mindset Tips Inspired by Jared Tendler

Build a Healthy Relationship with Distraction

The constant growth and improvement of mobile devices give people 24/7 access to almost any type of information in just a tap. It has a positive side — for example, speeding up data finding and fact-checking. But on the other side lies an enormous amount of distractions and time-consuming loops that influence people’s ability to focus and keep clarity of mind.
So, this situation demands choosing one of two solutions depending on your personal problems:

• If you are easily distracted and want to become more focused — you need deep focus training.
• If you tend to become hyper-focused on unnecessary information and can’t get out from time-consuming loops — you need distraction training.

Both of them help you to boost willpower and improve your ability to shield your mind from unnecessary information. But you can’t go through these trainings at the same time.

Deep Focus Training

Deep focus training is meant to help you structure your mind and clean it out from any distractors. Jared recommends starting this process with the right foot:

“First, you must assess your current capabilities. What is your baseline level of focus through the ups and downs you experience over the course of several weeks? Don’t just guess. Track how well you sustain focus, how often distractions arise, how quickly you can recover after being distracted, how many breaks you take, when and for how long. Once you know where you are, you can start training with these practical steps.”

Practical steps of deep focus training are:

1. Take notes to clear your mind. Use a pen to extract any disturbing, unpleasant, annoying, or intrusive thoughts and place them on paper that you can put aside to focus on poker.
2. Set your goals. Determine goals for reaching a certain level of focus and getting results for different periods of time. Then, get connected to them: firstly — from the perspective of your long-term planning, and secondly — from the perspective of daily planning.
3. Use tools to maintain focus. Every time you feel the influence of distraction — start to do things that help you to get rid of it and return to focused mode. It can be anything by your choice: deep breaths, push-ups, slow counting backward, etc.

By repeating this plan, you build deep focus over time. Consistency is the key to achieving it, so go for it.

Training for Distraction

Distraction training is meant to help you maintain willpower for two purposes:

1. Breaking the cycle and getting out of the loop when you realize that something is consuming all your focus and attention.
2. Resisting the urge for distraction when you realize that some distractor pulls you away from the task and breaks your concentration.

For poker players, this training is as important as deep focus training because of the looping affection of emotionally involving distractors such as dramas on X (ex-Twitter), funny videos on YouTube and TikTok, branching discussions on Reddit, etc. Jared details their effects more precisely:

“As a poker player, you can generally cut off more of these external streams of data, but when you’re card dead or bored by the game, the allure of something more interesting can drive you to social media, or to play marginal hands looking for action. You can only go so long without anything exciting – it’s like watching everyone else have fun at an amusement park while you sit on the bench. There’s only so much of it you can take.”

There are also three steps to train for distraction:

1. Analyze your circumstances from the point of distraction. Reflect on your experience to find a couple of instances where you are more distractable than usual. Try to find out on paper why these situations differ from others — which of their aspects contribute to motivating you to distract yourself or obstruct your ability to maintain focus.
2. Remind yourself about typical struggles. Every day before studying or a poker session, you need to systematically remember every situation found in the first step to prepare a quick response to protect your mind from unnecessary shifts.
3. Listen to your mind & body signals. When your bad habits of distraction remind you of themselves — your mind and body always warn you. You should be able to recognize these signals and react appropriately before it’s too late. One of the most effective ways is to remind yourself why you need to remain focused: what goals you pursue and why focus is important on this journey.

This practice is required daily to maintain an automatic ability to push against distractions when they take you away from the goal and, at the same time, to distract from something consuming when you need to focus.

Accept That No One Is in Their Best 24/7

People aren’t flawless, and poker players aren’t exceptions. Not a single one of them can play their A-Game every day, every month, and every year without mistakes and downfalls — even Phil Hellmuth (but he likely disagrees). As Jared explains on his website:

“A primary reason you can’t always be your best is because as long as you are motivated and focused on improving, your “best” is a moving target. Plus, making progress has ups and downs that can’t be avoided. This can be a tough fact for some people, especially the (ahem) more competitive among us, to accept.

A sign to watch for is extreme reactions to good or bad circumstances or results. Do you find it really easy to get ahead of yourself or really down about future prospects? Then this might be a problem for you. Even those who intellectually understand the impossibility deep down may harbor a wish that they can and should be at their best all the time. You can’t, and that’s OK.”

Being able to realize and accept that you are one of them is a great step toward a healthy poker mindset. If you feel troubled with accepting your flaws and inability to be at your best all the time, you can find help in reflecting on your mental state, especially expectations and reactions.

So, you can use Jared’s Mental Hand History every time you find yourself in a mind-troubling situation. This technique includes five steps to better self-understanding:

1. Describe the problem in detail.
2. Explain why it makes logical sense that you have this problem or why you think, feel, or react that way.
3. Explain why the logic in step 2 is flawed.
4. Come up with a correction to that flawed logic.
5. Explain why that correction is correct.

If you can’t do it by yourself — it is absolutely fine: just reach out to Jared or other poker mental professionals to help you get used to it.

Use Your Own System to Improve Mindset

It is always tempting to shift responsibility for your mental improvement from your own shoulders to a psychologist, therapist, mental coach, or significant other. But building a mindset, especially for poker, is hard work that can fully be done only by your own brain. Just get over it and start preparing to develop.

The preliminary step is accepting the fact that almost every “universal advice” is not for everyone. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure — so your ultimate goal on a journey of improving your mindset is to find or build this treasure. Or as Jared describes it:

“Determine what maintenance looks like for you. It’s fine for it to be less aggressive than when you are actively resolving issues. But you want to be engaged enough to both prevent previous problems and respond quickly to subtle new ones as well.”

When you come to terms with the necessity of finding your own way to improve mindset, you will be ready to create your own system depending on your level of self-awareness:

• If you already know what helps you grow — systemize your knowledge and experiences to build a convenient routine and plan of development for the near future.
• If you don’t know what helps you grow — it’s time to research different platforms, blogs, and forums with free tips from poker players, mental professionals, and coaches to get information and start experimenting. You need to find out which methods are fitting for you.
• If you have bad relationships with planning and structuring — do not be afraid to reach out to qualified mental professionals to get help. It is always better to spend some time and money on someone experienced to make a plan you will use for a long time after than to spend all your time and money on trying without solid results.