Ep. 133: Chris Sparks – Poker, Mental Training and Performance

Today we talk about decision-making, resilience, mental training and more with our guest, Chris Sparks. Chris is a professional poker player who was ranked among the Top 20 of the world’s best online players. It is this experience making an exponential number of decisions and performing at an elite level that has given Chris a number of insights and practices that he has further developed. He helps people apply these to both their work and their personal growth.If you listen to a couple of our previous episodes with Annie Duke and Alec Torelli you will know that poker mimics life because it is a game that involves decision-making under uncertainty and incomplete information. This makes Chris’ expertise and experience highly transferable. He is the founder and CEO of The Forcing Function, a company that is dedicated to empowering the next generation of entrepreneurship.

In this episode, Chris shares a wealth of very useful techniques to improve performance and deal with uncertainty and that are incredibly useful, particularly now. We cover:

• Decision-making techniques;
• What to do when things go wrong;
• Why we are all “mental athletes” and the importance of mental training;
• The importance (and limitations) of story;
• What Chris learned at Davos
• Much more!

Show notes:

The Forcing Function

Chris on Twitter

The Forcing Function’s Expected Value Calculator

The Fermi problem

Firebreak

Narrative bias

Article – Manage Your Energy Not Your Time

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Our free course module “How to Set Up Any Decision for Success” from our upcoming course How to Make Decisions With Calm and Confidence

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