Professional Trading and Life: Looking for Equilibrium
Poor work-life balance is the biggest pain of all committed professionals. When engaged, people tend to dedicate all their resources to the work forgetting about other aspects: family, hobbies, relax, etc. A novelist doesn’t sleep and doesn’t eat working on a magnum opus, a top manager answers calls and check email 24/7, and a pro trader ignores everything and dives into the deep of charts.
Is it right? Probably. Such an approach may be profitable. A writer will publish his book to get worldwide fame, a manager will double the company’s revenue, a trader will earn more money. But is it efficient? Not at all. This working model leads to professional burnout, problems with close people, and even dangerous diseases. People need rest just like they need food or water.
This article tries to answer one essential question: how a professional crypto trader can set and maintain a strong work-life balance?
Being a Pro Crypto Trader
There are different understandings of pro traders. You can say that all institutional traders are professionals. Or that people with a net worth greater than $1 million are professionals. Or even that investors who know Warren Buffet personally are professionals, whatever.
But let’s get things straight. While professionals may work for large banks or trade millions per deal, these signs aren’t the most distinctive. Among marks like emotional stability and trading strategies for any occasion, a certain mindset is the main feature of all masters.
Professionals consider trading as work, no more, no less.
According to Merriam-Webster, a professional is a person who’s engaged in a specific profession — a calling, vocation or employment that may require training or education. Put very simply, pro trading is a job, that’s it.
The Importance of Work-Life Balance
The problem with pro trading is in pretty high flexibility. Often, investors who don’t work for institutions are bosses for themselves. They’re freelancers. Scheduling, planning, work hours and leisure time — all these aspects depend on the desires of one person. And it can be tough to maintain the best equilibrium.
Let’s understand the concept of balance. In a nutshell, it provides for more or less equal time spent on professional activity and other things like hobbies or pub crawls with friends. Good balance is must-have for long-term success.
Here are three reasons why you need to find your perfect work-life balance:
- To become healthier mentally. Crypto traders need to control their emotions and accept losses. Strong mental health is necessary, especially because of the high markets’ volatility.
- To manage stress. Respectively, losses and problems lead to increased anxiety and stress. These problems can affect trading results. By balancing work and life, you’re able to relieve stress quicker.
- To take a break. Finally, regular pauses are wonderful as they come with all types of detox: physical, digital, and data-based. Being away from charts, traders get rid off problems with long sitting and recharge their analytical batteries.
Various organizations like Psychology Today and Mayo Clinic prove that quality rest is required for happiness and healthiness. But how to reach this ideal state of mind? Read on!
3 Steps to Your Satisfaction
Undoubtedly, it can be difficult to achieve the desired equilibrium. When crypto hamsters make hundreds of deals per day in pursuit of large gains, professionals risk being drawn into a routine.
Still, we have three basic steps to start paving your way to the balance.
1. Prioritize
This one requires a high understanding of your desires and objectives. Try to understand how important is crypto trading and how it relates to other spheres of your life. Is it the only source of income? Are you happy with the current schedule? Probably, close people or relatives want to spend more time with you?
It’s all about each trader’s personality. While some people can spend days and nights studying charts and placing orders, others want to have some spare time. For professionals, we can suggest using automated trading terminals such as Superorder. These systems execute custom strategies automatically so users can sleep tight.
TL;DR: determine how much time you can dedicate to trading and when.
2. Make a Plan
Don’t forget that crypto markets never sleep. As well, they never forgive mistakes. That’s why getting a proper schedule and trading plan is required for everybody, not for professionals only. Define the trading hours, design a strategy, and provide some flextime for market-changing events that occur when you relax, normally.
By the way, automation can help here, too. Customers can use crypto trading bots to get tested and optimized strategy without delays. Of course, when a machine trades on your behalf, it’s barely possible to screw up the plan due to emotions. All you need is to launch the plan and make necessary changes.
TL;DR: think when you want to trade and create a trading strategy.
3. Know When to Stop
The third step follows the second one. In this case, trading is similar to gambling — professionals always know when to stop. Whether it’s the number of deals or certain win/loss percentage, you should stick to the limits. This idea lies in the basement of elaborate risk management strategies. Obviously, with automated platforms, this point is also handled by machines because you don’t trade, actually.
TL;DR: set trading limits and don’t exceed them during a session.
Wheel of Life
The last question we want to cover sounds as follows: how to understand when you reach the needed work-life balance? Psychologists suggest different exercises but Superorder team loves Wheel of Life.
This self-assessment tool allows you to evaluate and compare different work-life aspects. Generally, it requires defining the most important areas like health, career, personal growth, friends, and so on. Then, you rate each field from 1 to 10 and get the final shape. If you’re satisfied with it, keep the pace as it is. Otherwise, focus more on categories that you want to develop. By completing the exercise regularly, traders can reveal where their life’s going and change priorities set during the first step.
You can make your own Wheel or find online tools here and here.
Other Useful Hints
As a bonus, we’ve prepared a few tips and tricks for experts. It’s likely that you already know all these rules but why not to refresh them once more? Moreover, try applying the suggestions right now!
- Do physical exercises in the gym or at home.
- Fight distractions by focusing on trading during work hours.
- Forget about work when you relax, as well.
- Organize workspace to always have data at your fingertips.
- Set boundaries between work and life always.
- Use dead time by reading news or educating yourself.
Trading Is a Profession, No More!
At the end of the day, remember that being a pro means treating trading like any other job. Masters of crypto are similar to managers, accountants or clerks except for higher creativity requirements. Respectively, traders should rest from their work just like other employees do after long 8-hour workdays.
Be sure to maintain your work-life balance. It’s the main key to long-term efficiency and profitability of trading strategies.
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