Flowing While Trading

Have you ever experienced that creative moment as you are about to figure out a winning trade setup? A day you wrote a difficult trading blog post and the time flew by? A moment when you could do no wrong trading, although the indices were extremely chaotic and challenging? An instant you pulled the trigger on a big investment even though a severe bear market screamed at you not to do it, but relying on your own conviction and research, you decided to go for it? A period after a long losing stretch when suddenly you turned the corner in positive ways as if your subconscious had finally resolved it?

If you answered affirmatively to any of these questions, you have experienced flow.

Mihaly Csikszentmihaly wrote in his fabulous book titled Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience:

I developed a theory of optimal experience based on the concept of flow—the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.

The best moments in our lives…are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times… The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen.

During our ascent to becoming better traders, taking the right course of action for improvement will lead to an increased experience of flow. Achieving the optimal trading experience will enrich a trader’s life in more than a monetary way. A trader could gain satisfaction from being challenged, from the act of creating, or just from the pleasure of doing the work.

As traders, are we paying enough attention to how we flow and how we lengthen our experience of flow?

I am currently working on a book about flow and trading. It would be awesome if you could share some of your flow experiences with me. Thank you in advance.

BTW...I wrote this post about flow a few months ago. You might find it interesting.

Written by Michael Bigger. Follow me on Twitter and StockTwits.

Comments

[Renita Kalhorn]

All of us live in a world of distraction and information overload but traders particularly so. I firmly believe that learning how to get in the flow on a regular basis -- to calibrate challenge with ability, to stay in the moment, to enjoy an activity for its own sake -- would help them feel more engaged in their work, which in turn would lead to better decisions and consistent peak performance. Then again, I am a flow junkie. ;-)

As you point out, one of the characteristics of flow is the “loss of self-consciousness” – the merging of action and awareness. One way to get there, says Csikszentmihalyi, is through empathy, whether with a person, task or inanimate object. Do you remember the story of Joe, a welder who had worked for 30 years on a loud, dirty assembly line manufacturing railroad cars? It doesn't get more tedious than that.

But Joe achieved the seemingly impossible, transforming the work experience into an enjoyable one through his fascination of discovery. I love his explanation of how, since childhood, he had been drawn to things that didn’t work because it epitomizes the unself-conscious nature of flow: “I ask myself, if I were that toaster and I didn’t work, what would be wrong with me?”

Silly as it may sound, I think traders could ask a similar question to tune into their own intuition: "If I were this stock/company/trade, what would I be doing next?"

[Michael Bigger]

Renita,

This is an awesome comment. Enlightening actually.

Michael