I have always been a person that enjoyed learning new things. I have always been naturally inquisitive and keen to further develop my understanding in areas that are of interest to me, and it seems to me that this focus on learning has been the cornerstone of me achieving profitability in trading.
Learning institutions such as Universities are not meant to solely teach us the subject we go there to study. Their purpose is as much to teach us how to learn, and to develop in us the principle of the necessity of lifelong learning.
This is very important regarding your desire to become a profitable trader. From my understanding, you don’t get to learn the bare minimum and walk away, never to pick up a trading book again.
Your research and self-analysis needs to be ongoing and not stop until you wish to stop trading.
Change in life is constant, and even if you have found a relatively simple system to trade, you need to be learning and on your guard for changes in the market, your broker and your temperament. You can’t afford to approach trading in a lazy or haphazard manner.
So please take it on board, that profitability and success in any challenging endeavour will require an attitude of lifelong learning. My view is that anything less will not keep you in the mindset and position necessary to not only achieve success, but more importantly to maintain it.
Luckily for us these days there are some really affordable resources that can assist in the development of new skills. One of my favourites is Udemy. Udemy is the largest seller of video courses online - and most courses are at good prices and all come with a 30 day money back guarantee - so you can refund and avoid any average courses. I recommend that you think about what skills you wish to develop, and dive right in. Once you are in the platform, be sure to hunt around and find out which courses are currently being discounted.
The next side to the learning equation is the time that it takes to learn a new skill.
It is said by developmental psychologists that it takes 40,000 hours to master a skill.
Sounds scary right?
Let me firstly say this is a general principle and I don’t think it would take you anywhere near 40,000 hours to be a consistently profitable trader. Having said that, to master your trading skills 40,000 hours may be an accurate number.
The biggest issue about the 40,000 hour rule is that psychologists have come to an understanding that if you don’t have fun for the first 5,000 hours or so at least, you will most likely not be there for the 40,000th hour.
We can understand the principle most clearly in child sports. No professional basketball player that I know of started playing ball at 16 or 18, rather they invariably started their development as a younger child, whose primary aim would have been to have fun.
It seems pretty clear to me that if someone’s first introduction to the game was a strict NBA level training regime and timetable, that person would not stay interested in playing ball for very long.
The reality is that before professional athletes start seriously in their chosen field, they have most likely spent many thousands of hours first having fun in that field or a related one.
So it is an important point - that you should try and find ways to make your development as a trader interesting, engaging, and if possible - fun.
Find a trading buddy, an interesting forum, find different forms of education, learn which teaching methods best suit your psychology and preferences (because so many trading books are all kinds of boring).
There are many things you can do, and this principle is one that will filter through into all of the most complex endeavours that you attempt in your life.
It is powerful, so don’t ignore it, or you will likely walk away from trading at some point and not even fully understand why.
