Refocusing My Writing & Battling Internal Conflicts
If you’ve visited my website before, you may notice that it looks a little different.
I started this site as a place to explore my interests. In 2020, that happened to be mostly poker. But as I wrote a few weeks ago, those interests have evolved. And as a result, I decided to start writing about a more comprehensive set of topics. Over the past few weeks, I’ve moved my poker work to the Solver School blog to refocus this website as a space driven by my broader interests.
To this day, I have no idea how I was so productive in the first half of 2020. I wrote extensively during the first six months of creating content for this site! You can check it out for yourselves — I compiled all the posts I moved to the Solver School website in this easy-to-reference archive post.
But something changed in the middle of 2020, and my writing dropped significantly.
I’ve spent the past few years thinking about life, often reflecting on the past. I will share more about one of those reflections in today's post. I’ll explain why I believe that my writing decreased and how I plan to work through it.
Epictetus once said, “Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens. Some things are up to us, and some things are not up to us.” He’s telling us to focus on the process, not the outcome. That we should do our best because that is in our control.
I embodied this mindset in early 2020. I wasn’t focused on an outcome. I wanted to explore something I was passionate about and share it broadly. And I focused on the process by habitually writing about it.
But again, something happened in mid-2020, and I started posting much less frequently.
Looking back, I think there were several reasons why my posting frequency decreased. One of the primary ones was that I struggled with depression starting during that first Covid summer. This impacted my motivation significantly, which made me far less productive.
I’m sure other factors also impacted how much I wrote: shifting to work from home, raising kids, or moving to a new state. I acknowledge that they all contributed to the issue.
But despite all of them, I also made a poor strategic decision. I think that I tried to lean too heavily into monetization.
In June 2020, I launched the first of my products. The traffic on my site was growing, and I had an Excel workbook that I put a lot of time into. So, I decided to package it up and sell it as a product.
The early feedback was good. I made some nice side money. Life was great!
Only it wasn’t. Instead of being happy with my progress and continuing to explore my interests, I started to turn it into…a job. I focused less on writing and sharing content and more on finding ways to support myself with it.
Looking back, I understand why I did it. To explain why, I will channel my inner Tim Urban…without the stick figures.
There is an approach to psychotherapy called Internal Family Systems that breaks up a person's mental system into different sub-personalities. According to this approach, the sum of these parts makes up our core selves. These parts always have some level of conflict and, depending on their severity can drive some serious internal struggles.
Whether or not you subscribe to this worldview, it’s a useful way of visualizing the struggle in someone's head. We can all envision the angel and devil sitting on your shoulders, whispering into one's ear. So I will use this concept to explain how I interpret what is going on within my system.
Two distinct parts within my system have starring roles in this story:
One part wants nothing more than freedom. It wants me to be able to choose what I want to do with my time at all times, never having to answer to anyone.
The other part is constantly anxious and terrified of the unknown. It is hyper-aware of risks, particularly the downside. Fear dominates everything in this part.
In my life, the anxious side has run the show. He knows about everything going on in my system and understands risk-reward incentives. He knows that the freedom side is only interested in self-autonomy. So he's been able to keep it occupied most of the time.
My quest for freedom took over briefly in my 20s when I quit my full-time job to attend business school. But looking back, it made complete sense. I gave up a decent salary. But I received a full scholarship that covered my tuition, so I only had to cover my living expenses. And with the additional education, I was set to make a much greater salary a few years later. It was an investment that had a low risk and high return.
For those two years, the freedom-seeking side ran the show. I followed my interests, learning all about economics, marketing, finance, game theory, operations, and more about how complex businesses and the economy are. It was a fantastic experience.
During my 30s, I moved up the corporate ladder. I wasn't in love with my job, but I was doing stimulating work that challenged me, and I excelled at it. I made many great friends, got promoted regularly, and continued to increase my income.
The freedom-seeking side was always there, scratching at the surface and looking for a potential opportunity. But overall, I was content with life. I could do enough of what I wanted, so the itch was always bearable.
In 2021 during the pandemic, both sides had a meeting (inside my head, of course), and they did some math together. Making some reasonable assumptions about living situations, yearly income, and expenses, they calculated the "enough" point — where I could reasonably walk away from a steady income without impacting my lifestyle and do whatever I wanted to with my time.
They both learned that I was 10-15 years away then. By that point, a year of the pandemic and working from home had amplified my anxiety. Life changed so much in such a short period. Both parts became laser-focused on that 10-15 year outcome. The problem was that each part stared at a different number.
Ok, I lied about no stick figures, but I couldn't get through a tangent in honor of Tim Urban without including one drawing! The anxious part is on the right and not smiling, in case you couldn’t tell.
My anxious side had been running the show most of my life. And as I've accumulated more — money, a house, a wife, two daughters, and a dog in the picture — the power of the anxious side grew. There are far more responsibilities and far more to lose. That part stared at that 15 number and put a hard stop on anything that would cause that to get higher.
Meanwhile, the freedom-seeking part stared at the 10. The finish line was over the horizon, and that part became more excited. It was as if a fire ignited in my system to do anything to lower that number as quickly as possible.
And that's where I've hovered for the past couple of years.
While there is always conflict between these two parts, there has always been a clear winner. But this time, it has been a stalemate. Both parts have been staring at that time horizon, refusing to back down. With reasonable estimates, if I keep the current trajectory, I'm still ~8-12 years away from hitting that point.
So why did I spend the last 750 words sharing this? It's to explain that monetization push. My free part doesn't care about the money. He wants to do extraordinary things and follow my interests. But my terrified, anxiety-driven part is obsessed with making sure the more significant number doesn't get bigger. So he hates letting the free part explore. And he won’t stand down unless he sees a reasonable path to lower the smaller number faster than keeping the current trajectory.
I've come to a realization. I believe that after the imaginary meeting above, my anxiety-driven part let my free part only focus on projects that could make money. As a result, I stopped exploring my curiosities. Instead, I became too focused on how to turn any of those curiosities into income-generating ventures.
In retrospect, that approach has caused a lot of anguish. The past couple of years have been filled with stress over self-imposed deadlines, creativity paralysis, self-doubt, perfectionism, and other self-inflicted wounds. And I think it's all because I have focused too much on making money to appease my anxious part.
I started this website as a place to explore different interests in poker. As I wrote last month, I am not as obsessed with poker as I once was. I still love the game and am currently working on several poker-related projects, as noted below, but there are several other areas that I'm also exploring.
In that post, I also shared that I planned to refocus my writing here on AI. I then spent the next few weeks taking steps to turn this into an AI-focused newsletter. But I've realized that was just the monetization push creeping in. Instead of just writing, I immediately tried to turn it into a business. I was making the same mistake again.
Well, I caught myself this time because I'm in a much better place in my relationship with myself these days…and all of my parts.
I still plan to reset the focus of this blog. And I’ll still write about the things in which I’m interested. But I won’t pigeonhole myself by focusing on any particular thing. Regardless of the topic, I plan to write about my work. Some posts might focus on AI. Some will be about poker. Others might be about business. The point is that this will be where I can write about what I'm working through in this never-ending journey to become the best me I can be.
If monetization opportunities come up, I'll explore them. But I'm conscious enough to know not to force it this time and to let it happen organically.
Solver School will still be where most of my poker work will go. But again, the most important thing for me here is that I use this website for what I originally planned to use it for — as a place to share the plethora of projects I'm working on.
What I’m Reading
Recently Finished: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck by Mark Manson, Endgame Poker Strategy by Dara O’Kearney, The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin
Currently Reading: The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
What’s Next: Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samin Nosrat, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
What I’m Learning
Python: I’m taking the 100 Days of Python Challenge. I’m also sporadically following YouTube video tutorials to build things in Python using the Chat GPT API. Here’s an excellent video I followed last week to learn how to build a chatbot to read and analyze data in CSV files.
R: I haven’t made much progress lately because work has been crazy, but I’m slowly going through R for Data Science by Hadley Wickham.
AI: At least 1x per week, I have been exploring the ChatGPT plugins. New ones constantly appear, and testing different use cases has been fun. I’m excited to see the variety of things you could do with LLMs when suitable interfaces are built. The possibilities seem endless. I’m currently working with Noteable. Their ChatGPT plugin provides extraordinary use cases for analyzing data using natural language. I plan to devote an entire post to this over the next few weeks.
Guitar: I taught myself to play the guitar in college. But I haven’t played much in the last ten years. I want to bring that back into my life, so I ordered a guitar this week and will start playing a few times per week. I don’t have anything planned yet, but I will go through an online course to learn more formally this time.
What I’m Working On
PioSolver Aggregated Report: I built this simple web app to convert PioSolver aggregated report data into a usable format. Here’s a video I made to walk through it. I have some ideas as to how to make it more useful. I’ve been using ChatGPT to help me write the code to implement these ideas.
Solver School Webinar: I’m targeting July or August for a webinar. It will be an AMA format for Masterclass customers that will be recorded and repurposed for YouTube. I’ll share the timing here when that’s finalized. If you want to check out my Solver Masterclass course, you can check out the course details here. I’m running a WSOP promo for $100 when you use the code WSOP23 at purchase.
Booking a Trip to France: This fall marks my 10th wedding anniversary. To celebrate, my wife and I are spending a week in Paris and Bordeaux in September for our longest trip since having kids. We’re in the early planning phases now and are excited to get the trip booked!
Getting Back in Shape: In 2021, I got myself into fantastic shape. Over the past two years, I’ve slowly gained 20 lbs. I have a bigger frame and can carry the extra weight well. However, I can tell that I’m not where I once was. I’m working hard this summer to drop the weight and get back to that point between 200 and 205 pounds.
Projects on the Back Burner
Migrating Lukich.io to Beehiiv: Solver School and this site are currently built within Squarespace. While this platform is excellent for Solver School, it’s a bit overkill for this site, which is more like a blog/newsletter. I eventually plan to migrate this site to Beehiiv. The platform is a bit more focused and lets me handle writing, distribution, and list management within the same place. My Squarespace plan runs through the year, so this will likely happen in the November/December timeframe.
Additional Solver School Module: I’m planning another module for later this year. For this one, I think I will dive into some ICM situations within HRC or ICMizer. I haven’t fully planned this one out yet, though.
I will start writing more here, testing different formats and topics. I do plan to keep this final section as a consistent addition within these posts as a measure of continuity.
If you enjoy the content, please let me know.
Best,
Lukich