You know that is what I had been asking myself for the past couple of months with my successes in Magic being far and few between. I needed to stop and self reflect, but with a new job and a new schedule, as well as, an extra course that I thought covered with previous credits rearing its ugly head, my life had been down right hectic and no time for magic self-reflecting occurred. That brings us full circle and back to the original question, what happened to me?

On my long trip back from my most recent failure (yes, as my skid continues, my trips feel like they take longer and longer), I stopped to truly self-reflect back on the mistakes I had made. Down-right amateurish stuff, like forgetting a beast token off of Thragtusk and more intermediate stuff, like taking unnecessary damage that cost me a game. A couple of mistakes and before you know it all the mistakes have compounded into 2 losses and I am out of another PTQ. So what happened to me?

My first two PTQs back in and I made top 8 in both and the finals in one of them. Since then I have been in a drought, due to my constant perchance to make mistakes I would have never made when I was a better player (I was a better player at one point than I am now). That's it. Right there. Eureka! (I miss that show). Why self-reflect when I can time-travel back to the source? Ok, not time travel, but think back to those times when I won PTQs, back to that time I would have said I was a good player. What did I do so long ago when I was this "good player" that I am not doing now? What's the edge I had, that I am missing now? It was the study of it all, it was this intense focus and attention to detail in my game play that I have been lacking recently. That right there is what had been allowing me to make these terrible mistakes. My focus was gone.

"Focus on what matters." - Jon Finkel

This quote comes straight out Patrick Chapin's book (if we had an editor, I am sure he would make some snarky remark right about now), "Next Level Magic" and I am finally getting around to re-reading it (a younger me would have already read it 4 times), and if you haven't, I recommend you read it now. It is a very good book for helping Magic players acquire some important thought patterns and tips for improving their game that one might not come to on their own. This is one of the things I use to do that I have gotten lax on doing, reading magic articles and books, and just staying on top of the flow of Magic information. I feel when I do this that it helps hone my focus and keeps me in the loop of what is going in Magicdom, thus I play better.

Chapin tells us that playing Magic alone won't improve your performance, but playing better Magic more often will. In fact, playing larger amounts of poor Magic can make you worse. This thought reminds me of a quote from my high school soccer coach, "Practice don't make perfect," he would say. "Perfect practice makes perfect." As a kid, I never did appreciate that statement as much as I do now. Humans are creatures of habit, and the more low quality magic you play, the more you will get in the habit of playing poorly, leading to a downward spiral of low quality play.

Well, I believe I can answer my own question now, what happened to me? I let a number of things distract me from focusing on Magic, in fact, I would argue that I don't have the time or the inclination to focus more on Magic because of life, but I would be deceiving myself and giving myself an excuse instead of results. I know what I need to do. I need to focus on Magic if I am going to do it competitively. One other quote I am going to borrow from Mr. Chapin that I feel really ties this all together, "what are you trying to accomplish?" Chapin ask this question early in his book and makes a strong case for this being one of the most important train of thoughts that run through the book. The reason I believ this to be so important is because of the question's ability to really focus the mind on what matters, which is key in helping the mind sort the large amounts of data that comes its way, and further helping the mind come to the solution that leads to the accomplishing of the goal.

To further tie this into one train of thought (focus), I am going to recount some of the points that Nick Saban made a couple of months ago in his speech (really just a taste, got to leave you wanting more). I would hope everyone knows who Nick Saban is, just in case you really have been hiding under a rock, he is the head coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide and one the most successful active head coaches in college football, which as a Tennessee fan, makes me naturally inclined not to like the guy, but I digress. He is a tried and true winner (hurts to write this), and if you want a good starting point for being successful, then emulating a winner is that point. I will say that he is a hell of a speaker and whether you like 'Bama or not, if you get the chance to hear him speak, you should definitely go. Ok those points I was talking about, he said there was six:

"How to win" by Nick Saban

1. People

2. Be a good example

3. A willingness to serve

4. Inspiration

5. Don't expect reciprocity

6. Who you are, is the most important question

In the interest of getting back into writing more articles and building my readership up, I plan to write a series of articles about focus. We will start at the top and start relating these points to professional Magic, and see what knowledge can be gleaned from doing this. I hypothesize that we can expect we will find many things Magic players already do, but haven't really given any thought to they help lead to successful outcomes at competitive Magic. I do believe that there is definitely some new ideas to be found in there. Plus, I have a lot more I took down in notes from his speech and I just can't wait to further extrapolate practices and habits that I should be applying in Magic.

Until next time,

Matt Norton

PS> I hadn't forgot about my "List." So to start next weeks article, the modified "List" goes up so that my progress can continue. Also, I will give a recap of my adventures at SCG Open Cincinnati in both Standard and Legacy.