Thursday Trader's Tip: The Power of an Optimized Environment
Thursday Trader's Tip editions offer quick trading psychology advice that can be digested in 5 minutes.
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"I know what I need to do, but for some reason, I'm not doing it."
This is one of the most common things I hear from traders.
One major reason for the size of the gap between knowing and doing is that traders attribute their failure to a direct source. They think the solution is to push harder during trading sessions:
Push harder against old patterns
Perfect their strategy
Analyze more trades
Journal more
This is all great! — improving your processes should be a major priority, but what’s worth it if your ecosystem is playing against you?
Fixing any problem pattern requires looking at the whole ecosystem:
Your environment
Your daily habits
How you interact with others
How you see yourself
It’s about optimizing the entire setup, not just focusing on one part of the problem.
There was this client who had a full-time job, two kids and was the founder of a business. On top of that, he was also trading.
This guy embodied resilience. However, his lack of sleep and high-stress levels were pushing him toward a breaking point.
Surprisingly, his trading performance was not catastrophic—he managed to be profitable in some months—but was it his full potential? Absolutely not! And that was because is environment was working against him.
Fighting so hard against the tide works up to the point where you get so tired that now not only your trading but your health condition also needs attention.
You can succeed by demonstrating incredible resilience to fight your environment, but you won’t experience what you’re truly capable of in an environment that actually enhances your performance.
Instead, think of how you can display your environment to facilitate inner change. Doing this involves a deep understanding of yourself as a trader:
The mental states that bring out your best performance
The actions that put you in those same mental states
The environmental factors that potentiate those actions
If confidence and positivity are crucial mental states for your performance, what actions help you achieve those states?
Perhaps reading your strategy before each session, reviewing your action plans for improvement, and repeating positive affirmations are beneficial.
Now, consider how your environment needs to be aligned to facilitate those actions.
A clean desk might help you focus better.
Having your strategy paper on the desk, ready for you to read the next day, could make your preparation smoother.
What can you put in place, eliminate, or add to your environment to bring out the very mental states that favor your best performance?
External stressors work as noise; it’s like a superficial layer of challenges that minimizes space to focus on your inner skills.
When you aim to improve yourself by just 1%, the cumulative effect leads to significant improvements. And that requires you not only to look inwards but outwards.
Set that environment up for success and see how that transforms your performance.
Peaceful trading,
Sara
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Great post here. I find that most traders undervalue how important good sleep and a clean desk setup is to success. If you feel sloppy and your surroundings are sloppy -- it will undoubtedly translate over to your trading performance.
I am enjoying reading your stuff and reflecting . thank you . curious of how many years you been doing this .. only 2018 it says ?? Anyway great insight . thanks