WORK SMARTER

Trading is often about how to take the appropriate risk without exposing yourself to very human flaws.
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stueytrader
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Joined: Tue Dec 15, 2015 6:47 pm

Nice chart Kai.

I'm guessing that complacency arrow could arrive at any point there also, even at lower levels.
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Kai
Posts: 6092
Joined: Tue Jan 20, 2015 12:21 pm

stueytrader wrote:
Wed Sep 11, 2019 11:40 am
Nice chart Kai.

I'm guessing that complacency arrow could arrive at any point there also, even at lower levels.
If one could be somewhat successful at lower levels then sure, I guess. I think success breeds complacency by default, it can spread like wildfire inside a comfort zone, not sure anyone can really be immune to at least some level of complacency, there aren't many true perfectionists around even many like to call themselves that. When the question of "will I make a profit here" becomes more a question of "how much profit will I make here" I think you're already getting complacent :mrgreen:

But I think that's very normal and very human, we all want a break at some point otherwise all of the hard work would probably be pointless. I love psychology and it seems like a fascinating and endless topic, haven't really looked into it too much but I guess complacency is present in all walks of life, you see England getting complacent last night after 5-1 at halftime or you see people start gaining weight and stop caring much about their appearance after getting married :D
eightbo
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Location: Malta / Australia

stueytrader wrote:
Tue Sep 10, 2019 2:31 pm
eightbo wrote:
Sun Sep 01, 2019 10:46 pm
I was actively working on my discipline, so I thought I'm improving... right?! And I was. A little. That's the painful thing about it. But my results vs. effort ratio was garbage. By not having an awareness of this concept my growth was massively hindered. I thought maybe I just needed more time, I just needed to become a bit more disciplined. You all know the saying "If it ain't broke, don't fix it.". I'd like to challenge that idea today and say that's an inefficient way to look at things. Instead, I propose we stay hungry for more. That we probe and tweak into the unknown. That we challenge what we think we know and believe there is a new way, a better way - if only we'd look.
A lot of great posts in this thread, but I thought I'd like to comment on this specific section above. One thing I have found true over the years is that improving discipline in one aspect does not always do so in another.

This relates to a finding I once read - wisdom in people is not uniform. A person can be seen to be incredibly wise in one area of life, or activity, and incredibly dumb in a different area!

This may explain why trying to exercise your discipline in other activity was less productive for trading in returns? In the past I have been simultaneously perfectly well disciplined in some of my employed work, while behaving like a ragged gambler in discipline terms in the betting markets. I was a wise man and a fool across different areas. I've balanced a lot more recently, just working on getting to a reasonable level of psychology for all activities in my life...it's always a work in progress though.
It's easy to mistake the things which appear next to each other at ground-level as being closely related. I think the reality of the situation is that concepts which can often look neatly arranged / categorised are actually REALLY MESSY below ground — tying to all sorts of differing beliefs and expectations which we hold at a subconscious level and that we really don't have an easy way of accessing. Once we realise this disparity (as it sounds like you have), we still can't necessarily identify what's going on down there right away, but just by opening ourselves up to the idea that those concepts could be rooted in a whole manner of seemingly unrelated things, we're then able to begin the process of narrowing in on the true source, rather than working within a framework of incorrect assumptions that we didn't even know we were making.

This ties in nicely to Kai's mentioning of the 4 competencies framework. It's funny you should mention that actually Kai as going from conscious competence to unconscious competence is what I'm focusing on right now in my trading. In fact just last night I watched this presentation titled "Becoming an unconscious competent trader". Personally I didn't find a crazy amount of value in this one but it was useful as an aid to brainstorm off. I mention it because it presents this idea of a fifth stage of competency: 'Reflective Competence' — something you can research if you're into that sort of thing:
◘.png

Even in my notes from yesterday, I commented on how I felt I was in the Conscious Competence stage in my trading ("Learned" Section) and I'm quite happy with that. It's been a long and bumpy road up to this point. It's not quite been a month yet but here's a sneak preview of what I'll be releasing for anyone interested in my trading: https://i.imgur.com/sEYPiok.png
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Kai
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eightbo wrote:
Wed Sep 11, 2019 12:41 pm
This ties in nicely to Kai's mentioning of the 4 competencies framework. It's funny you should mention that actually Kai as going from conscious competence to unconscious competence is what I'm focusing on right now in my trading. In fact just last night I watched this presentation titled "Becoming an unconscious competent trader". Personally I didn't find a crazy amount of value in this one but it was useful as an aid to brainstorm off. I mention it because it presents this idea of a fifth stage of competency: 'Reflective Competence' — something you can research if you're into that sort of thing:
◘.png
Don't think I've heard of reflective competence yet, looks interesting and it does makes sense, thanks for sharing that. I think the stages get progressively harder, but at the same time if you go through this process more than once then I think it gets progressively easier, because you're basically repeating more or less the same process and you also get progressively more confident that you can do it again.
eightbo wrote:
Wed Sep 11, 2019 12:41 pm
Even in my notes from yesterday, I commented on how I felt I was in the Conscious Competence stage in my trading ("Learned" Section) and I'm quite happy with that. It's been a long and bumpy road up to this point. It's not quite been a month yet but here's a sneak preview of what I'll be releasing for anyone interested in my trading: https://i.imgur.com/sEYPiok.png
I am not easily impressed but that is an impressive level of detail, you're much more meticulous than I am :D Not looking to add any pressure but I really don't see how anyone can fail with this type of approach, if they truly persist that is. In your case it certainly won't be for lack of effort.

If someone is struggling to understand what "stage" they're actually in, it may help to look at their trading results as a rough guideline. For example, if you barely make a profit at the end of the day but you feel like you've performed well and pulled off some fantastic trades during the day, then that suggests that there is probably a lot more work to be done. Likewise, if you end the day with a good result despite butchering all of the best opportunities or completely missing out on them, then you very well may be performing at a very high level already, if even your sub-optimal performance is already good enough to make the losing days highly unlikely to occur. This is where everyone wants to be ideally, producing good results for very little actual effort, whilst getting rewarded when they knock one out of the park when at their peak performance.
stueytrader
Posts: 863
Joined: Tue Dec 15, 2015 6:47 pm

eightbo wrote:
Wed Sep 11, 2019 12:41 pm
It's easy to mistake the things which appear next to each other at ground-level as being closely related. I think the reality of the situation is that concepts which can often look neatly arranged / categorised are actually REALLY MESSY below ground — tying to all sorts of differing beliefs and expectations which we hold at a subconscious level and that we really don't have an easy way of accessing. Once we realise this disparity (as it sounds like you have), we still can't necessarily identify what's going on down there right away, but just by opening ourselves up to the idea that those concepts could be rooted in a whole manner of seemingly unrelated things, we're then able to begin the process of narrowing in on the true source, rather than working within a framework of incorrect assumptions that we didn't even know we were making.
I think that's very true, and key too. Like many traders I have often floated along in my development thinking in general terms like 'I must work on my planning/research/discipline' etc etc...

A lot of this was vagary, and little help to me really. I needed to actually tease apart a lot of detail about how I was functioning in my trading specifically, rather than congratulate myself about feeling generally well focused (which included many other activities than trading) as a person.

Like you suggest, I used to conflate achieving such general things as a well organised day (including all my other commitments) with being well enough focused and aligned to do well at trading specifically.

Just to confuse this slightly more though (sorry), there is also a higher level of function though that does conflate more general function with specific trading function - that is how trading fits with your other aspects of life (work, social, financial). So, the interlinking can't be entirely ignored either.
eightbo
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Joined: Sun May 17, 2015 8:19 pm
Location: Malta / Australia

Thanks Kai & nah no pressure at all. It's my own take on Mike Bellafiore's "Daily Report Card" which is an improvement tool used by the guys at SMB Capital from the beginners right the way up to the guys doing 7-8 figs. It's less effort than it looks once you have your templates set up. My journal does all the hard work and the text I add is stuff I'd only go away thinking about in my head after each session anyway. A lot of value is lost when we forget a key thought, insight, or idea so it's good to record them somewhere.
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