Daily disciplines - A bit about where I got the idea of 'daily disciplines'. 2 years ago I became involved in a business forum set up by some University friends to discuss their respective businesses. One of the founder members introduced me to an idea called Daily Disciplines. The concept of the daily disciplines is to break down your long terms goals and targets into identifiable and managable daily tasks, that you have control over. He recounted a story which describes the benefits if daily disciplines perfectly. The below example is my recollection of the story (some of the numbers may not be 100% factual, but the person involved and his real successes most certainly are!)
In the early 1970's a young American swimmer set his sights on representing his country in the pool in the 1976 Montreal Olympics. He was a good swimmer, but would need to improve to stand a chance of taking the gold. He knew that there was little he could do to control the quality of the other swimmers in the race, but he recognised exactly what he did have control over - his own development as a swimmer.He decided to develop a set of daily tasks that were in his control;
He set aside 5 mornings per week to train. Each session would last 2 hours.
He would spend 10 minutes warming up, 10 minutes racing (so he could record his time), 20 minutues on his starts, 20 minutes of straight line speed, 20 minutes on his turns, 10 minutes of finishing another 10 minutes racing and 10 minutes to warm down
He calculated exactly how much he would need to improve on a weekly basis to get his time down to a competitive level and he recorded his times each and every day.
This regime continued for a number of months. With the information he was collecting, he soon realised that he would need to improve at a quicker rate. So he decided to change his daily tasks. He reduced the amount of time in the pool and introduced a session in the gym, building muscle. He also decided to run once a week to improve his anaerobic capacity.
He continued to monitor, improve, monitor and improve. He qualified for the Olympics with ease and proceeded to re-write the record books at the games with 4 Gold medals and 1 Silver. His name - John Naber. If you google him, you'll find he now makes a very good living as a motivational speaker - you can certainly see why.
As traders we must recognise the elements of trading that we have control over, and those we do not have any control over. We can not control the markets, we have no idea whether they are going up or down. We can not control global politics, we have no idea how these will affect the markets. However the elements of trading that we can control and how well we control them ultimately define our success or failure. Here's a list of what we can control;
- Which markets we trade
- How we analyse these markets
- How long we spend analysing these markets
- Whether we go long or short.
- Whether we book a profit or leave it marked-to-market
- How much of our trading capital we risk
- When we stop trading
Some of the items above will have been covered in your Trading plans, and some should be addressed in your daily disciplines plan. This is by no means a definitive list, indeed your list may be totally differant. It's not the content of the disciplines that are important, its their existance and your ability to follow than, that will ultimately define your success as a trader.
