Everyone growing up tells you that all you need to do is work hard, hustle, and you will eventually get what you want in life. How many times throughout school were you told to just study harder to get better results?
Everyone has the same 24 hours in the day. There are hard-working billionaires and hard-working people stuck in poverty. What are they doing differently?
The difference is not the quantity of effort. Working hard is important. But without direction and efficiency in your efforts, you will not be able to climb the ladder.
This article is not saying that you shouldn’t work hard in order to succeed in trading. But that working hard isn’t as hard as important as working with direction.
Neither alone will get you to your goal, but there is nothing worse than working hard for a while to find out you chose to take the slow lane to your destination. Today we will talk about how you can work smarter in your trading journey to expedite your learning curve:
Working Hard vs Working Smart
Let’s imagine that you had to mow the grass of a 1-acre farm. You can use clippers to trim the grass, and you would certainly be working hard for a whole day. Or you could buy a lawnmower and get it done in 20-30 minutes. It’s the same result, but one took much less time and energy.
Succeeding in trading and entrepreneurship isn’t quite as straightforward. But it requires a similar type of mindset. Be on the hunt for the most efficient way to achieve the outcome you want. Don’t assume that the path you are already on is the fastest or the best way to get what you want. Don’t assume that a path other people layout for you is the best way to get what you want.
The path to success in trading is not quick or without hard work. But there are paths that have a much higher probability of leading to success in a shorter period. We’ve talked in the past about the 6 steps a trader should go through on their journey to success. This article will talk about how you can expedite this journey.
Are You Working Smart?
One of the biggest issues we see in struggling traders is that they don’t know WHY they keep losing. They understand they are failing, but they don’t know why, or what to do to fix it! One of the most common issues is that they have no one to tell them HOW to work smart.
Your friends and family will tell you you are crazy for trying something like day trading. They will be no help. You can spend 5 hours a day looking at charts, but if you don’t know what to look for, aren’t you just wasting your time?
A major component of working smart is cutting out what’s not working, and scaling up what is:
So many traders want to study the markets a ton before they start trading. They read a ton of books, watch a bunch of Youtube videos, and even buy some DVDs. But they still cannot make money. They assume that just by learning more about any aspect of the markets, they will increase their chance of making money from the stock market.
What is “Working Smart” in Trading?
The best way to “work smart” in trading is to learn from a mentor with a proven track record. The right mentors will show you what you are doing wrong, and put you on a path to resolving these issues. Many traders waste time learning a bunch of different systems instead of focusing on mastering one. They try to learn it all through their own mistakes. This is the definition of taking the slow lane on the journey to successful trading.
There no reason to make all the mistakes yourself instead of learning from others. Getting mentorship in trading is not signing up for someone’s alert service or buying their DVD’s. It is joining a community of traders committed to helping you shorten your learning curve. It takes a lot longer to learn how to trade without personalized attention and feedback about your performance and system.
It is like going to the gym on your own, vs having a trainer who pushes you, corrects your form, and puts you on the right diet and workout regime for your goals. It is possible to get in good shape on your own but is way easier and faster with a trainer. Our goal at BOWS is to provide not just an education for aspiring traders, but ongoing support and mentorship to keep them on the most efficient path to achieve their goals.
Resilience
In trading, you will have numerous setbacks on your journey. There is no simple or easy path trading consistency. Hard work will help keep you in the game, but if you give up easily, all the hard work goes to waste. You need to be able to survive to make it in the long run:
Most traders give up after the first setback. Maybe it’s a big loss. A blown-up account. A margin call. Whatever it is, you have to keep pushing. Out of the thousands of students we’ve trained since 2008, the most common trait of them was their resilience and ability to recover from setbacks. We always tell them to focus on the big picture:
What’s wrong with a few years of struggle to build a skill set that will create a lifetime of freedom for you?
