Whether you dedicate the whole day to trading or share it with your usual job (in this case, it has even more reason to be), a routine applied with discipline will eventually achieve the desired results after a period of consistent application.
You have to allocate the approximate time you have each day (as if you have to make a "schedule" like the one you had in school) among the tasks to be performed.
We are going to focus on the time dedicated to trading.
As you can imagine, trading is not just about operating in the market.
You need to refine the technique, research, seek opportunities, read, practice, prepare psychologically...
In short, although the trader should tend to simplify everything as much as possible, there comes a point where you cannot reduce it any further.
I have a trick for this.
_Trading rules_
At first, I divided everything into sections. For example:
In one section, I noted everything related to the psychological aspect. What worked for me and what I should not do. A series of indications that, of course, I read every day as a way to guide my mind along the right path.
In another, I noted what technically (on the chart) worked best for me.
NOTE: I always prefer to note the positives. Negative indications only if they are very important. I want the brain to assimilate only the good. Enhance the strengths. But well, each trader must know what works best for them.
In another group, the catalysts: macro news that offers better signals.
In another, psychological rules or behaviors.
Well, and so on.
Then I found myself with a series of rules classified by sections.
I must also say that in the process of simplifying there is one more step, and it is decisive:
Having the rules in sections made me read one day one, another day another... It was tedious. That wasn’t what I was looking for. I had to simplify it more so that the routine would be easier and quicker to perform. I needed to have everything in one list.
Therefore, the next step was to mix all the rules from all the sections into one.
This way of acting was indeed effective. All in one.
It does not matter if they are mixed together.
It is not about having the different indications separated. It is not about remembering the 10 money management rules separate from the 10 psychological rules.
No, this is not effective. For everything to flow properly, the whole must be taken into account so that it works like a perfect gear.
It's not about the wheels going one way, the steering wheel another, the body going backward, and the mirrors forward, but rather that everything goes "in sync," all together in the same direction.
Therefore, when you combine all the rules from all the sections into one:
It's easier to read them.
It's easier to carry out the routine.
They are easier for the brain to automate.
They are easier to modify.
They are easier to apply.
They are easier to mix, to mesh everything into one piece.
The progression is much faster; you just have to add when modifications are needed to perfect and eliminate anything that isn't working as it should.
In the end, from 100 rules, you will end up with a dozen.
And that dozen will be the foundation of your trading system.
Now pay close attention, because each of the individual rules will have the power of all those you have concentrated in it to simplify them.
Remember what Albert Einstein said: "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
You are looking for the essence, the fundamentals, and when you have them, it usually happens that with a few rules you achieve the same results as with 100.
I want you to understand that this way you have the fundamentals of the profession you want to master. Everything else is unnecessary. It's the Pareto principle: 80/20.
Afterward, you just have to keep trading with the resulting rules to refine them even more, to make them excellent.
What are you waiting for then? Write down all your rules, read them every day, modify what you need to modify, and never, ever skip them when you are trading. (It is very common to practice one way and when the moment of truth comes, act another way, which is why the results are never good since you don't have a way to act, you don't have a stable or consistent system. (Well, you do have one, but when the moment comes, you ignore it. Your psychological part has a lot to say about this. When you trade in real, the market makes you falter, hence the importance of good mental preparation, for example, visualizing what we should do).
Regarding visualization, I will briefly relate my 2 favorite examples on the subject:
They kidnapped a person whose hobby was golf. He was an amateur. During his days of captivity, to avoid boredom, he visualized the course where he used to play and practiced mentally, with his eyes closed, from the first hole to the last.
When he was released and returned to play, the scorecard he signed was the best of his life.They selected 20 people who had never played basketball and randomly divided them into 2 groups of 10.
The first group trained x hours in the gym shooting free throws.
The second group trained with their eyes closed in an armchair, shooting free throws, but mentally.
When it was time to test the accuracy of both groups, astonishingly, they had a similar shooting percentage.
And it is proven the great power of visualization. It turns out that the brain doesn’t know if you are actually doing it or if you are imagining it, which is why both types of training are equally valid.
And going back to the beginning, the trader must know how much time they can dedicate to trading daily, and as I said before, like in school, make a schedule with a routine for each task.
If you have 5 hours a day, for example:
1 hour to observe the market.
2 for trading.
1 for reading.
1 for researching.
Everyone must know what they need, what they should enhance, and the time they have for it.
In the end, as always, there will only be results if there is consistency. If you do the routine for 1 month and then stop, it will have served no purpose.
It is common for people to set aside what they are doing if they do not achieve good immediate results.
What matters is repetition, doing the same thing for as many hours as possible, perfecting the technique more and more each time.
Also think that a successful routine is the sum of all the small parts that compose it.
