Hello everyone!
Wishing you a Happy New Year!
This newsletter is open to all subscribers. It will be a yearly recap of the best posts from 2023, a personal note, and a short reminder to better manage your time in 2024. If you missed any posts or want to revisit them to start this year right, find the list at the end of this post.
I hope you had a fantastic holiday season! The last few weeks were a mix of good and tough for me. I spent time with my family and met some old friends I hadn't seen in a while – it's always good to be back in my home country, Portugal. In mid-December, we also found some health complications with my mother, which was tough to deal with. Thankfully, it was nothing too serious (now that we know the results), but it was still a stressful time. I was feeling the pressure of writing this week's newsletter build-up day after day. I have a strong work ethic, and I always strive to deliver consistency in everything I do. When I started The High-Performing Trader I made a promise to myself - to deliver one newsletter per week (now two) and before that, I made sure I could keep up with it long-term. I have never struggled with consistency before, but this week, that work ethic was becoming difficult to fulfill - I couldn't write anything logically, I was forcing myself too much and it was frustrating me. That's when I stopped and asked myself, "What are you doing, Sara? The reason for the paid newsletter was never to feel stress and negativity but rather to have fun, purpose, and deliver valuable content. What are your priorities after all?”
I then realized I was putting too much pressure on myself and mixing up urgent with important, blindly… and I decided to not let the pressure of writing this week's newsletter take precedence over personal matters that hold higher priority. So I wrote a shorter version without audio. Sometimes, we get lost in the most urgent stuff, and we end up forgetting about our priorities. This is exactly what makes us deviate from our long-term view and it happens all the time.
To kickstart this year, I want to share a helpful tool to keep your priorities in place and not fall for the same trap I did: The Eisenhower Matrix. It was created by Dwight D. Eisenhower — the 34th President of the United States and a highly awarded army general in WWII — and popularized by the book "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen R. Covey (which I recommend reading). This chart simplifies decision-making and it guides you according to your core values and long-term goals.
You can never go in the wrong direction when you’re following your values and life principles.
The image below is an adaptation of this concept to the trading realm.
Important vs. Urgent
To make things clear, let’s dismantle the trap that makes you deviate from your priorities.
Here's the difference between urgent and important:
Urgent: Needs immediate attention to avoid consequences or gain quick rewards (short-term satisfaction/dopamine bursts).
Important: Contributes to your long-term purpose, values, or goals. It doesn't have immediate rewards or consequences.
A study found that people often choose urgent tasks over important ones, even if the important task offers a bigger reward in the long run. This is called the Mere Urgency Effect, which tells us that we lean towards tasks with a shorter completion time because they give immediate results, unlike important tasks that take longer.
This bias can mess up your goals and life direction. If you let it control your life, you're at the mercy of urgency (brands use this for their marketing).
In trading, execution is urgent and important; journaling and analyzing your trades is important but not urgent, so the trader ends up skipping it and spending more time on the screens than necessary. You might want to delegate some tasks that are urgent but not important, like paperwork for your trading business.
I suggest you define what’s important to your goals in 2024 and categorize each task in quadrants I, II, or III. Equally, outline the stuff that gets you busy, but it’s neither urgent nor important. As Sahil Bloom puts it, these can be outlined as your anti-goals—the distractions, pointless meetings, the trading chatroom that hinders your execution, the phone notifications that disrupt your focus, etc. The only thing these do is put you further away from your goals and priorities. These belong in quadrant IV, and you need to remove them from your schedule ASAP!
Non-Negotiables
Another crucial thing is understanding your non-negotiables. Sure, you might have the goal to earn a certain amount through trading this year, but at what expense? If it means trading 12 hours a day, skipping family dinners, or having less time with the kids, maybe it's time to rethink that goal. Some of what you thought were short-term goals might belong to quadrant IV, and removing those from your list is essential. Ultimately, you want to live as intentional with your priorities as you can. This requires you to get outside of the autopilot mode and spend some additional energy into doing what aligns with your goals and saying “no” to what doesn't align.
Learn to prioritize by deprioritizing.
The other day, I shared a tweet asking you to list your priorities and values for 2024 and compare them with what you prioritized in 2023. What do you spend most of your time and energy on?
The goal was to see if you've lived up to your core values and priorities. You want your reality to align with the first list. Otherwise, you're just going with the flow, influenced by the sea waves and winds. Achieving your best potential requires being in the driver's seat, which often means stepping outside your comfort zone—the courage to say “No”; to draw boundaries and intentionally follow your values in all situations. I’m not talking about being inflexible with your beliefs, we all need flexibility, which positions us for adaptability. What I mean is not losing sight of those non-negotiable core values. We all have them but often trade them for acceptance, recognition, money, or a quick win.
So, list these core priorities and values that will guide you where you want to go. As James Clear says, you can't achieve your goals without becoming different and building a new identity. Before dreaming about any goal, consider the 'becoming' part. Then, with that in mind, complete The Eisenhower Matrix to organize your time effectively. Each minute counts.
You can download a template of The Eisenhower Matrix here and use it.
Your life revolves around your core values and whether you stick to them. Life circumstances and our natural biases can lead us away from them, and before we realize it, we're far from our priority list or the values we want to embrace. Don't let your goals take you hostage. Know yourself. Set boundaries. Lead a life that honors them! Even if you don't exactly achieve your goal, you can be confident that you made the right choices and stayed true to yourself. That's a much bigger reward in the long run.
Final Note
It's been a year of The High-Performing Trader, and I want to express my gratitude to all of you for being part of this community. In mid-September, I decided to go paid to create accountability for you to read each post intentionally and go through the week's tasks. Reading alone can only take you so far; real change is in applying the theory. That has been my main goal since the beginning.
My promise for 2024 is to continue delivering both the free and the paid edition of The High-Performing Trader. Some surprises might be announced soon but it’s still a bit too early to talk about it.
The free edition — Thursday Trader’s Tip — with to-the-point trading psychology advice that can be read in under 5 minutes.
The paid edition with long-format posts that go in-depth about particular trading psychology topics, designed to give you a mental edge in your trading game.
If you already have a trading system and are dedicated to elevating your performance, the paid subscription might be a good fit for you. If you're still a beginner, you can still benefit from the paid content, keeping in mind that it's not about sharing charts, trading ideas, or technical strategy specifics but growing your trader mind for peak performance.
Best Posts Recap
Let's now take a look back at the standout posts from 2023. Whether you missed some or want to revisit them, it's a great way to kickstart 2024 armed with the right knowledge:
Feel free to read them and share them with your audience!
If you’re ready to put the effort into becoming the best trader you can be, consider becoming a paid subscriber:
If you have a trader friend who might benefit from this newsletter, you can gift him/her a subscription:
Whenever you’re ready to elevate your trading performance, here are 3 ways I can help you:
My E-Book: Includes practical activities, a private community of traders, access to past and future live classes, and a library of trading journals.
Peak Performance Trading Program: Various packages with different time frames and prices are available. See if you qualify here.
12-Session Coaching Package: If you’re looking for long-term accountability and flexibility in call scheduling, this package is for you.
Get well soon, Sara. It's good to see you again. I can feel even from Turkey that you are a very strong woman. I hope 2024 will bring you all the good things.
I’m glad your mom is doing ok. This is a nice adaptation of the Eisenhower Matrix to trading. That’s cool it helped you center again. That’s true brands do use urgency as a weapon. There’s a psychologist named Robert Cialdini who talked about the principles of influence, and I think scarcity is the one used by businesses to create that feeling. Journaling is important for sure but something I neglected when it mattered most. Can’t believe it’s already been a year you shared a lot of good stuff