One path to mastery is learning from experience. That is why coaches sit down with teams after a contest and review game film. Watching the film in slow motion and keying on what team members did right and wrong helps cement goals for improvement in the minds of the players. That intensive review is common among chess champions. It is also something I've seen among successful traders. They will replay the market day after a long day of trading and walk themselves through the "game film", noting areas of good trading and areas needing improvement. That review turns every day of experience into a day of learning, doubling our exposure to key patterns that might set up the next day. Learning from experience also takes place among traders when they share their lessons. This occurs among the teams I work with at trading firms and is also shared online as learning lessons by the teams at SMB. Online trading communities, such as those mentioned in my recent post, are also great forums for learning from the experience of others.
In short, the first path to mastery is accelerating our learning curves by reviewing our performance and viewing the performance of others.
A second path to mastery is increasing our overall capacity for learning. Again, we can turn to athletics for an example. Much time is spent between games doing physical conditioning and running drills. When we hone our skills and improve the shape we're in, we can make the most of our experience. Recently we've seen an explosion of brain training applications for athletes, helping them master their psychology and also master actual brain functioning. We're in very early days of understanding the brain activity that contributes to successful trading. By conducting exercises to increase our attention/focus (such as meditation) and our processing of information, we create drills that can prepare us for "game time". Again to use an analogy from sports, we can develop the best plays and review them but we won't win if we're out of shape. Drilling the right brain functions may be the next edge in performance mastery for traders.
I've often mentioned that successful performance professionals spend more time working on their game than in actually playing. Years of preparation and training go into the making of an Olympic athlete, dance pro, chess grandmaster, or basketball star. For every hour of game time, there are many hours of practice, drills, and review. That is how we achieve mastery. We often focus on what we're doing during market hours, when it's the hours outside of competition that make us champions.
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