Overthinking Your Trading Day?
Here’s Why You Shouldn’t

A Lesson from Sleep Science That Applies to Trading

I was listening to a podcast the other day, totally unrelated to trading.

But this guy was talking about sleep.

And he said that he was following all these protocols to improve and track his sleep;

  • Special glasses
  • Brushing his teeth in the dark
  • No lights
  • No devices
  • Perfect room temperature
  • A thorough wind-down routine
  • Sleep tracker on and charged

All in an effort to get the most perfect sleep.

But you know what happened?

No Sleep For You

He started stressing out so much about his sleep score for the night ahead that he couldn’t fall asleep!
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​The very thing he was trying to improve got sabotaged by his protocol.
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The mere thought of having a bad night’s sleep screwed up his mind right before bed.
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Now, we’ve probably all done this to a lesser extent.
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You can’t sleep because you know you’ve got to be up early for something important, so you toss and turn, stressing over how tired you are going to be.
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When you do eventually drop off, the next day is never as bad as you thought.
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​(I remember doing a day trip from the UK to the Netherlands once, on 2 hours of sleep. It involved lots of walking, airports, delays – a very long day. Was I tired afterwards? Yep, but I enjoyed it despite convincing myself the night before that I would probably die of sleep deprivation and fall into a canal…)
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​This is so very similar to trading…

Trading Stress

Sometimes we can worry so much about our upcoming day’s performance that we turn ourselves into a ball of stress.

  • Worrying so much about being red.
  • Over-preparing.
  • Double-checking, no, triple-checking! charts.
  • Econ calendars

We carefully plan the trade, see the setup, and pull the trigger.

The trade moves against us, and that little voice says;

“I told you so, you knew you would f it up today”

And of course, you then manage that trade from a place of emotion and ruin the rest of the damn day.

When in fact, if you’d been less stressed and less concerned, you may well have managed that trade totally differently… Perhaps it was a winner that just took a little heat.

But you’d never find that out if you were so desperate to perform.

You get the point.

Relax.

  • Do your checks.
  • Generate your daily roadmap.
  • And don’t worry about the outcome of one trade, one day, or even 1 week.

Lift your head up and focus on the month.

You don’t drive a car staring at the road right in front of your bonnet, do you?

No, you look ahead, make small adjustments along the way, dodge hazards, and navigate to your destination.

If you can take your focus off very short-term performance and stretch that view a bit, then mistakes, missed trades, and losers won’t bother you.

Because you are looking at the bigger picture.

Try it.

Take that burden off your shoulders, look up and ahead, and don’t worry about one day.

You can have several pretty bad days in a month and still end up nicely green….