#674 - Great Starter, Poor Finisher

The "Daily Call" From Option Alpha

Hey everyone. This is Kirk here again from Option Alpha and welcome back to the daily call. Today, we’re going to be talking about those people who are great starters, but poor finishers. And look, I admittedly put myself into this camp as well because we all have been down this path where we try to start something and we are super, super motivated, we do all the right things, we set ourselves up for success and then for whatever reason, we just fall off the man wagon, right? And so, I’ve done this before a number of times with definitely meditation in the morning. I do really good for a couple of weeks and then I start to fall and then I have to get back on the horse if you will and regroup and start building new habits again. That’s a continuous one for me. I know a lot of people who have the same thing with eating and going to the gym or physical fitness and especially in the world of options trading, it’s very easy to get very excited and then quickly just fizzle out.

And so, when I talk about this, it’s mainly for the options trading, but again, you can apply it to anything and so have I. This idea though is that when we get started with something, our energy level and motivation is insanely high. That’s what allows us to actually make the conscious shift from what we’re doing currently to something new. We have to have so much energy and so much motivation for our brain to be willing to start doing something new which creates a lot of stress and it creates anxiety and that’s not what the brain wants. We have to have enough energy just to make the switch. The problem is that we have an unwillingness to maintain that high level of energy and fortitude that you need to get you to the point at which it creates a habit and that’s really the struggle point. Some people say 30 days to create a habit. I think it’s probably longer, more like 60 or 90 days and you got to really, really work at this thing before it becomes a subconscious habit that you just routinely do, that your brain puts on autopilot. In the world of options trading, this really means that you’ve got to pay extra attention and force yourself in some cases. Whether you feel like doing it or not, you got to force yourself to come in every single day for 60, 90 days and start analyzing and making trades and if you don’t do that, it’s just going to quickly fizzle out.

We have a lot of people at Option Alpha who will email me and say, “Kirk, I just went through all the tracks in five days. They’re amazing. I just placed two trades.” And I email right back and say, “Look, there’s no way you absorbed everything anyway.” And placing a lot of trades right upfront is just a very quick way to burn out because what many people do is they just frontload everything. They do all the training, all the education, place all the trades right upfront and then they have no fortitude to actually continue with it moving forward. I would much rather see someone take one small step every day. That’s why I say 30 minutes a day literally keeps the black swans away. One small step every day allows you to take consistent action and gives you enough motivation to keep you going. Hopefully this helps out. As always, if you have any questions, let me know and until next time, happy trading.