Back after break - Got distracted

Like in all initiatives- be it business, exercise, job, hobbies or any passion- Consistency is what differentiates winners from "wanna-be" winners. Theoretically all of us have potential to learn and implement the learning, but practically only few achieve what they want to achieve.  With the advancements in information technologies like Youtube, udemy - learning is democratized- whoever has time and inclination can learn at their own comfort and at their own speed. 

So when anyone can learn- why not all who learns cannot implement and win. Partly because they do not have required resources be it time or money or support  and if they have all the resources, then it is because of lack of discipline to implement. 

However, most of the impediments of implementation is used as filtration criteria even before learning. For e.g: If i do not have agricultural land or have no intention to buy one in future - there is no use of learning about agriculture and you will not learn. Then it means that if i filtered well and have chosen a field to learn then it means that i have already addressed impediments on the resources piece or have plans to address the impediments in future. then why is that we do not implement. lack of sustainable passion and strategy is one of the reason why we fail in implementation. I would not call it as lack of passion, because when we have already shown willingness to learn and have consistently spent time in learning it, then it means that we had passion at the time of learning, however that passion has not sustained through implementation. Partly because during learning, it is fast paced and we get to see fairly visible incremental progress whereas results during implementation are slow paced and there will also set backs / losses jeopardizing the progress made. 

Most of us give up in implementation because our passion is not sustainable enough and (or we get distracted to other passions) dies out because of set backs or slow progress for which we do not have patience. Majority of us have felt this in our jobs that our passion or interest in the job goes through ups and down - for e.g. during the first few months - our passion is high as we go through training because we are learning something new, but as we start doing jobs and keep repeating the same thing day in and out- the excitement starts coming down and after certain period when there are changes in the nature of job, like new products, new solution for which we are made to learn - our excitement again increases or when there is appreciation or rewards given for our good work - our excitement and interest in the job increases 

Organizations have their own way to keep the excitement or motivation level high by improving the team culture through team building activities, conducting training (bringing role changes) , regular promotions and rewarding employees. This is what makes the employees to stay on track - even through there are ups and downs, employee on an average tend to deliver productivity that keeps the organization afloat. And moreover, employees are also under watch from their seniors / management which creates pressure and expectation and that pushes them to deliver work. while the manager himself may not be motivated or hardworking like the employee, but he can make the employee reporting to him to work- which is the power of supervision that organizations adopt to deliver productivity. 

Having said this, this level of sophisticated and well orchestrated system is not in place for a small business owner or self employed professional to deliver productivity like big organizations. This is  why the sustainability and dependability of big organizations are much more than smaller organization 

This makes it important for this category of people (small organization and self employed) is to self impose certain systems, processes and routine on to themselves which will bring in discipline to deliver work irrespective of mood swings, distractions and set backs, slow paced growth etc. 

Whenever there was so much stress on the topic of discipline in schools - i never paid heed, thinking teachers stress on discipline, so that it makes their job easier when we are acting disciplined. i also thought discipline boxes our thoughts within limits and it kills our creativity and its only required for people who wants to follow orders and work in military. Little i knew about the importance of discipline and focus which now i'm able to appreciate. Hence its important to cultivate the habit of discipline, to plan our implementation and stick to implementation plan.

Coming to Options trading  - Learning options selling strategies over last 2 months have given me fairly good understanding  on trading - I have been doing trading on trial basis and have seen fair amount of success in that although it was very conservative trades. With analytical bent of mind and high capital - i feel i have good level of resources to implement what i learnt.  However, time availability during the trading hours is a challenge which can be mitigated by choosing passive strategies that does not involve close monitoring of markets. However, goal setting and lack of plan / strategy to implement these option selling strategies is missing . 

How do I motivate myself  to implement:

1. Dedicate specified time (Sunday evening) to chart our trading plan for the week    

2. Come up with trading plan that is sustainable to implement along with day job - implementation of trade not to take too much time during regular working hours or does not require monitoring 

3. Dedicate specified time during the working days to implement the trade 

4. Have tools in place to help reduce the manual processing and automate activities    

5. Take stock of the profits made and publish on weekly basis so as to motivate your self that the time spent on implementation is worthwhile 

6. Set success criteria and toll gates to increase the capital and prepare model to estimate benefits   

7. Dedicate 1 hour / day to Learn continuously on new strategies and factors that are impacting the markets   - this will help keep up the excitement through learning  

One more aspect that causes impediments in implementation is that we are all susceptible to frequent distractions in life. With the advancements of technologies and information overload and digital addictions, it is very easy to get distracted and it is very important to keep these our-self purposely away from these distraction not only to find time for implementation but also to avoid mistakes that are caused by these distractions .  Worst part is that these distractions happen without our notice and engulfs our mind and eats our attention span and time even before we realize it. For e.g: Binge watching movies at the night before going to sleep when our will power is low- I tend to sometime watch couple of movies back to back that will push my sleep time to 4 AM which leads to sleep deprivation and lack of attention and it takes entire week to get back to normal. this distraction not only killed my time that particular night but also made me to repent the entire week and left me with low concentration power 

Ways to avoid distractions 

1. Prepare to-do list for the entire week, and at the beginning of day and stick to those activities- frequently see it atleast once in an hour 

2. Find the sources of distractions (mobile, TV ) and implement tricks to alert our mind that you are getting distracted. like timer in mobile that alerts you if you cross certain threshold spend time

3. Sometimes you may have to do your productive activities on the system where your source of distractions is also there, like watching options trading in youtube - you may tend to click on unwanted videos and take time 

4. Don't spend time on activities that feeds / satisfies your ego - this is very difficult to practice but do realize that level of ego is subject to change time to time and its subject to how others take it. e.g of this activities is taking revenge on someone who has disrespected us or putting up status and checking on likes - These activities are absolute killers and it does not serve any purpose