Most activities, I’d rather stay in bed, eat almond croissants, and watch The Sopranos. That’s the honest truth. But I don’t want to be fat, slovenly, and slow. So I do it. Feeling like it was never part of the deal.

I use an app called Todoist. When I wake up, my entire day is already laid out in front of me. There isn’t much time to sit around thinking about whether I feel like doing it, because the next item is already staring back at me. The structure does the deciding so I don’t have to.

Some days are magical. I’m in the flow, and the universe seems to grace me with divine insight and easy accomplishment. Most days aren’t like that. My legs hurt. I don’t want to do my breathing exercises. I don’t want to write another newsletter. I don’t want to risk my capital on another trade. But I do it anyway. It’s not how I feel that matters. It’s how I feel afterward, and that depends entirely on whether I executed.

That’s the whole discipline in six words. Tired isn’t an exemption. It’s just the condition you’re required to work in on a lot of days. The market doesn’t check your energy level before it opens.

Traders wait for the setup to feel right the same way artists wait for the muse. Close’s point is that the work itself produces the ideas, not the other way around. You don’t find your edge by waiting to feel inspired to look for it. You find it by sitting down and looking.

The key for me, doing it when I’m tired like Kobe, or doing it when I’m not inspired like Close, is having a vision for my future. I believe in having a crystal clear vision for what you want this year, next year, and in ten years. That vision won’t allow me to stop when I don’t feel like it. Take some time and figure out what you actually see for yourself. It matters more than people think.

I use Gemini to build an elaborate wallpaper full of images that inspire me and remind me of what I’m going to achieve. I see it on my computer and on my phone, every single day. I also set up a shortcut that reads me a two minute speech I wrote, at the beginning of every trading session. Constant reinforcement. How can I stop when the vision is in front of me before I even sit down to trade?

I have one day when I’m allowed to be tired, and that’s Sunday. Every other day, the vision runs the show, not my mood.

So that’s the technology, if you want to call it that. Create a vision. See it all the time. Set up a schedule that supports achieving that vision. And most important, take the actions. No matter what you feel like.

Trade safe,
Jay Cradeur
Founder, Day Trader Dojo

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