:: The In Side ::

:: From the Archive: Chick Sent Me High "in the Zone"
The entry Chick Sent Me High: Trading "in the Zone" was posted over at my actio-et-reactio site in April 2005, just before I created this page to better focus on "inner" issues. "Chick Sent me High" is Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, whose work on Flow has earned him much acclaim, including a Wiki entry.

Although you'll see various lists of how to recognize "flow", I found the list Brett Steenberger adapted for his article Find the Zone (Word document) the most concise and observable:

• There are clear goals every step of the way;


• There is immediate feedback to one's actions;


• There is a balance between challenge and skills;


• Action and awareness are merged;


• Distractions are excluded from consciousness;


• There is no worry of failure;


• Self-consciousness disappears;


• The sense of time becomes distorted;


• The activity becomes autotelic (pleasurable in its own right).

The very first characteristic is not only observable, but actionable. Setting goals must, however, be kept bite-sized so as not to overwhelm or discourage, and conversely, not so tiny that the monitoring of them becomes the task. Another word for goal would be "trading plan", that grouping of patterns, setups, and risk control items that you must have before and after each trade, at the end of the trading day, and for periodic assessment.

I spent a good bit of time today at Brett Steenberger's site, reading his many articles on trading and trading psychology. What a wealth of knowledge he shares! There surely is something for everyone, something perhaps even for what is needed right now for you.

Labels: attitude, history, trading