Money or Skill?

When you guys are playing poker what are you focusing on making money or improving your skills at the table? I recently caught myself getting angry because I lost 5 dollars and my bankroll says 39 not 50 and I keep getting caught up in how much I have. Should I shift my attention to my skills at the table or continue on trying to make more and more money. I don't mean make more and more money but pay less attention to haveing 35 not 40.

Focus on skills. If you keep your focus on making the right plays, you will take a beat here and there, but your BR will grow in the long run.

pay attention to your skills I use to look at what I had all the time and when your skills get better and you start with $50 and play 5 hours and never look at what in the bank and you come back the next day and theres $300 that means your skills are improving and if you have $50 at a site and you cant aford to loose it then you shouldnt gamble

I'm looking to do both. My goal is to make money everyday I play. I've been playing a lot of SnG's to try and work up my Titan Points to get some more bonus money. If I don't place, I'll typically look at the tournament hand history while I wait for the next SnG to fill up. Doing that has helped my skill improve a lot. When you don't have any emotion involved, you can easily look back and say "why the hell did I play that hand!!" For me, most of the time I find out I was a little peeved at losing a tough hand and try to make it up by playing a marginal hand instead of folding and being patient. By reviewing my tourney history, I've been able to reduce that a lot and the results have been a lot more cash finishes...

Look at skills, not money. Sometimes you'll get a run of bad cards and can't do much other than make a loss for the session. In some ways those are the most important sessions - because you need to make sure that you don't tilt - that you don't start playing too many bad hands, and that you don't start chasing too much. This is the big reason for focussing on skill rather than money - if you focus on money then you'll want to try to push to get at least break-even, which is bad news when it affects your style of play or tempts you to keep playing at an unprofitable table. You'll also be tempted to leave good table or throw away a fairly good hand sometimes when you don't want to risk going out of profit for the session. Focussing on skill keeps you focussed on making the right play, whether that happens to leave you up or down that session.
That said, there is one skill that won't improve your actual poker playing skills, but will improve your profits, and is therefore valuable - and that is table selection - in that regard I'll focus on money rather than skill, because playing at tables full of fish won't improve your game much but will be more profitable, and I'll pick those tables over tables full of sharks any day. Skill first, but only in as far as that maximises medium-term profits.

Ya It is important that you rely and focus on your skills. Whenever I focus on how much money I have I lose a lot of money because I play tight and end up getting a bad beat or getting caught with someone that has a slightly better hand. If you focus on your skills you will obviously become a lot better player, which will help you a lot when you play in the future.

Until you teach yourself that the money isn't important but that playing good poker is you'll never succeed. You can't be focused on the money side of playing poker. Analysis your play. Did you play well? If you can honestly answer that question yes, then you shouldn't worry about the short term results because you can certainly play very poorly and because of the short term luck still come out ahead.
I ask myself did I play my best. I ask myself if in certain situations I could have played differently or better and those are things I work on. If I happen to win because of skill, I'm happy. Obviously I'm not unhappy when I win with luck but I try to figure out why I needed to get lucky.

...but money is the measure of your skills, in the long run!

In the short term, in any given session, day or week, I simply want to make the best plays and let the poker gods decide the outcome. I know that the right play will make money in the long run. So, as has already been stated, don't focus on the money in the short term.

BUT, you have to look at money in the long run. The fact is, if you are consistantly losing money over a long period of time, you skills deserve questioning. So, if I were to show a cash lose for more than 10k hands, I know that I am doing something wrong: BR management, in the wrong games, making the wrong poker decisions, something.

So, short term you measure success by making the best play...BUT LONG TERM, you have to use money as your measurement!

One other aspect of skill over money is that it makes you less afraid of situations which in the long run will earn you money but which may lose a significant amount in the short term.
You have to be bankrolled and mentally prepared to take the right shots in a game for maximum profit in the long run. Some of these will include bets which will pay off well but infrequently (such as flush draws), and when you're playing these hands you can have significant runs where you miss and lose money on that hand, but it doesn't make it the wrong play. You have to then look at those hands from a skill perspective and see that they were the right play mathematically.
For looking at things from both a money and skill perspective, I recommend using a stats package like PokerTracker or PokerOffice. This will ensure that you know whether you are in profit or not overall and session by session, and will also help you to identify leaks in your game. If you play a range of stakes, then it will also help you to work out which ones are most profitable. They will help you to improve your skill while looking at a money perspective, because you can then group hands together and see how they play over several occurrences, not just one hand at a time - e.g. whether you make a profit or loss overall with hands like 66, or AJs.

for me I play for money, period. now in order to win that money consistently you need to have skill and a lil luck. for me I care about both, but wanting and becoming better in turn brings the money.

if i could concentrate on the game i would be a lot better off than the results i want id probably play a better game

A major problem with focusing on the money, is your play can be heavily influenced phsycoligally. You don't want this. If you're playing where you're mind is thinking about the money, then you're playing with scared money. And it becomes very hard to win in poker with scared money.

It really gives your opponents a leg up on you, because the good players can smell this at the table and they will hammer you on this.

Concentrate on the best play to make for the hand, and get your mind off the money when playing. Think that your bankroll is sufficient and there are no mone problems. I usually get my mind in a state where I convince myself that I just came off a big tournament win and now I have alot of money to make moves with.

If I understand the theory behind all the math, improving your skill level brings in more money. When I find myself paying more attention to my bankroll than to the quality of my play I am usually playing for stakes inappropriate to my bankroll.

Actually I think truushot has it dead on here. Definitely money is what matters in the long run, but ironically until you can forget about money it will be to the detriment of your play.

In any given poker situation, you should be thinking about what the best thing to do at the time is (raise or call? bluff or fold?). Money can only be a distraction here. If you're letting how much you want to make today or this week or this session dictate what you do in a hand, it can lead to bad decisions. I think this is highly connected to tilt.

I make much better decisions when playing at a level where I can afford to lose my buy-in without so much damaging my bankroll, which is why I think bankroll management is so important here too.

If I watch my smalllllll bankroll while playing, I would never have a chance to win. Improving your play like all others said is a goal to grow your bankroll. Learn from your own play and you can be a sucess.

This should be printed out, enlarged to 60-point font and posted above every Internet player's computer screen (or carried in the B/M player's pocket).