I used to play a lot of online poker and thanks to a combination of third party analytics tools like PokerTracker and ones I built myself, I was able to gain a lot of insights into my own play.

For example, the generally accepted best time of day to play online is usually late at night because that’s when people are the most tired and therefore make poor decisions. I once looked at how much money I made per hour broken down by hour of the day. Because I played a lot at night to take advantage of the poor play by others, I expected my highest hourly rate to be in the evenings and early morning. But the numbers told a different story: my hourly rate after 11pm was about break even. After countless hours of late night play, my overall profit would have been the same had I not played at all after 11pm.

Turns out that even though others were playing poorly during those hours, I was too, which negatated any advantage that I had.

The late night play also took its toll on my wellbeing during the day because I’d inevitably be tired from staying up late to play.

I bring this up because the experience taught me that working harder often isn’t the solution to a problem. It’s tempting to think that you can just put in more hours and you’ll achieve more results, but if the quality of your work suffers you might not make any meaningful progress or worse, you could undo the previous progress you made.

Next time you catch yourself trying to push through on a task even though you’re not feeling 100%, consider taking a break until you are.