Jared Tendler's Blog, page 5
April 18, 2023
Announcing a New Program: The Mental Game of Trading LIVE
I sincerely want every trader to have a personalized mental game strategy and am always looking for new ways to help make that happen. With that in mind, I’m testing out a new program for traders.
One of the best ways to solve your mental game problems is to get 1:1 coaching from me. But that’s not for everyone. So I wrote The Mental Game of Trading, which gives traders the tools to resolve their mental game problems on their own. The Mental Game of Trading LIVE is something in between – a more cost-effective, hands-on way to get advice from me on the problems you’re currently facing and guidance to figure out novel or particularly complex problems.
The program consists of two group “Strategy Sessions” each week, which offers more frequent interactions than my 1:1 clients typically receive and provides you with more timely advice to help you develop and nail your mental game strategy.
The initial group will be limited to only 200 traders and will take place over three months, from May 1 – July 31.
The Mental Game of Trading LIVE is designed for traders who have read The Mental Game of Trading or completed my Trading Psychology Masterclass. This will ensure members share the same language and have a foundational understanding of key concepts, making the whole program more efficient and effective for all involved.
The fee for the 3-month program is $300, which is a significant savings off my 1:1 coaching.
How To Sign Up
Enrollment will be offered on a first-come, first-served basis to traders who express interest in the program. To make the process as fair as possible, I am communicating this now, but the sign-up link below will be active beginning April 20 at 12:00 pm Eastern Time. At that time, you’ll enter your name and email address here to confirm your interest. Deadline to sign up will be April 23.
The first 200 interested traders will be invited to enroll, if you’d like to be notified when the link is live, add your name to the “Notify Me of the Launch” on this page.
If you have additional questions, check out my FAQs.
I’m looking forward to getting started!
The post Announcing a New Program: The Mental Game of Trading LIVE appeared first on Jared Tendler.
April 10, 2023
Increasing Size or Stakes
I recently checked in with some of the traders whose stories I shared in The Mental Game of Trading. As it turns out, several of them are currently working on sizing up their trades and it inspired me to focus on this topic, which, of course, also affects poker players as they work to move up in stakes.
Moving to that next level in trading or poker is a common goal that comes with some similar challenges. If you are having trouble making the jump, it becomes another mental game problem to solve. Work the process, use the Mental Hand History, map your pattern, and get to the root so you can continue to excel.
Before I talk about common issues, however, let me first point out a difference in sizing up in trading vs. increasing stakes in poker. In trading, for many of you, you’re taking positions in markets with enough liquidity that increasing size doesn’t change the game. You’re just adding size with the aim of making more money. And while this step is hard for some of you to make, you don’t need to acquire new technical skills.
In poker, on the other hand, you’re often playing against tougher opponents. Of course, you could also play in big private games vs. worse opponents, but most of the time, when you move up you’re not just playing for more money, you also need to adjust to the game and improve your skills to face tougher regulars. So in addition to the info I’ve outlined below, you should also be looking closely at the weak points getting exploited.
Stage in Career
Whether you’re a poker player or trader, you’re increasing size or stakes with the goal of making more money. Not surprisingly this move up the mountain causes problems that can often derail you. Moving up adds pressure, which exposes weaknesses. The issues those exposed weaknesses cause can be very similar across professions but will likely differ in the degree of severity based on the stage of your career. One thing to account for is how big of a jump is this really?
If you’re an established pro, sizing up may be noteworthy but it’s a move higher on an existing mountain that you’ve already climbed to a pretty decent height. For you daily wins/losses are more noteworthy either because you have to acclimate to bigger numbers, the utility of that money is significant, or you’re closer to reaching goals that you’ve long envisioned.
That’s different than for those who are not quite established but extremely close to being a pro or doing this full-time. For you, the money is important, but you’re also trying to prove yourself. If increasing size/stakes is tied to going full time, it is a two-fold event. You feel more pressure as you get closer to making that move because you don’t want to fail this close to the finish line, and that’s even more intense when you’re dissatisfied with your current situation and see poker/trading as a way out.
Lastly, if you’re just starting out, remember that moving up prematurely is a big mistake and often leads to blown accounts and bankrolls. Make sure you are ready.
To dive deeper on problems you might see, below are some examples of common issues that can show up at any stage.
Common Issues
When you are positioning yourself so that there is more money on the line, wins and losses stick out more in your mind. You pay more attention to the actual money and make comparisons to the utility of that money in other areas of your life. Thoughts like “That’s like making/losing a mortgage payment in one day” or “I could buy a car right now with that amount of money” can crop up. You’re thinking about it less from a pure business or performance standpoint. One tip to remember is to always think from a percentage or buy-in standpoint, otherwise you’re enticing your mind to think about the monetary value.
Working hand-in-hand with an increased amount of money is your fear of losing that money. This can cause you to lock up profit prematurely or quit profitable games when you are up a couple of buy-ins. The question is – why are you fearing the loss of money? Is it simply because you are losing more than you did before? Or does it relate to your goals and aspirations, as though losing more would be a step backward? Does it affect your confidence, because for you money equals confidence? Or is it related to your competitiveness and the pain of losing and losing more hurts more so you are trying to avoid more pain? Remember, no matter what, if you are going to correct this fear you must understand what the money represents to you and correct any flaws surrounding it.
You may also become too perfectionistic and put additional pressure on yourself to get it right. Should variance make an appearance and you get unlucky, you may find that anger is quicker to rise. And, last but not least, increasing in size or stakes requires confidence and you may need to boost yours.
The hunger that drives you to work really hard can drive you to want to make a lot of money fast. The play big or go home, the all or nothing style, feels exciting and heroic. But it’s risky. And it rarely allows you to develop the skills that will allow you to thrive long-term. We often hold up the rare few who were able to do it as inspirational figures that tell you it’s possible so then your attempts to replicate it become an unknown gamble.
Impatience is focused purely on the result and not on the skill that underpins those results, something that you can’t shortcut. And given the short-term variance in both trading and poker, if you happen to get lucky, make sure that you consciously step back, so your skills can catch-up.
Truly resolving a problem requires that progress can hold up under the most difficult circumstances that you want to be competing in. And as you are competing in different sets of circumstances, every level has its own challenge, whether it’s external or internal. That added complexity can bring out either different dimensions of an old problem or the same problem at this new level. Again this is why I like the term ‘Mental Game’ – there’s a never ending evolution that you need to account for.
At lower size/stakes, issues with perfectionism, anger, fear, etc., may have been resolved. You felt in command and that naturally led you to aspire to more. But it’s very, very common for there to be a resurgence of issues you had previously considered solved. The added pressure can bring them out so the best thing to do is to be prepared for them so that if they do come back you’re ready and, if they don’t, you’re happy.
The worst situation I see is traders or poker players who are unprepared, inevitably their issues come back, and they get angry, fearful, or lose confidence because they did. This feels like a big set-back, as though all of their prior mental game work was wasted, but that’s not true at all! They were just unprepared for another battle.
Next Steps
There is an element of conditioning to achieving this goal. You literally have to get used to the numbers. Your bet sizing and position sizing will be different than in the past and you will have to get used to the swings that occur in a session. Beyond that, you know what you need to do. Work the process. Get out those Mental Hand Histories. See what comes up for you and then work through the steps to identify and correct the hidden flaws, biases, wishes and illusions.
Lastly, the A to C-Game Analysis is also a great tool to rely on here because it keeps you focused on execution and process. This tool provides you with an objective way of measuring your day-to-day performance in a non-monetary way. The variance in trading and poker can wreak havoc with your mind, when winning and losing aren’t entirely thanks to your decisions. Plus, the A to C-Game Analysis keeps you pushing to maintain A-game performance, regardless of short-term results.
Increasing size/stakes can be an exciting and pivotal moment in your career. I wish you all the best!
The post Increasing Size or Stakes appeared first on Jared Tendler.
April 2, 2023
Where Are They Now?
It’s been about two years since The Mental Game of Trading came out and I’m thrilled by how many of you have found it helpful!
There are a number of traders who allowed me to share stories in the book of the work that we did together. I recently reached out to a few of them to see how they were doing and whether or not they were still using the system. Spoiler alert: I got good news!
I was happy to find that everyone was in a really solid place. While a couple of them have taken a break from direct trading, all are doing well and continuing to use the tools both in trading and beyond. Several of them stated their next big challenge is in sizing up, which is what inspired this month’s theme. You’ll hear more about that in my regular monthly blog and on Office Hours. But if you are interested in where they are now, here are the highlights….
Brendan was a trader profiled in the Confidence chapter who had struggled with a subtle belief that he could be right on every trade and expecting perfection, which he addressed. “I’ve been fairly successful in sustaining these changes. While I still occasionally slip back into old habits, I’m able to recognize them quicker and not let them have a lasting effect.”
Vlad, whose stories appear in both the Fear and Confidence chapters, was a trader and owner of a firm in South Africa that applies algorithmic trading systems to their own portfolios. Today he has shifted to building quantitative systems. “Although I may not be trading actively anymore, I use the strategies in my day to day life. In my mind, the methods apply to many disciplines – you just have to fine tune them to suit the specific need. As I work with other traders now as well, I have the capacity to understand their approach to trading and make decisions based off this understanding.”
Brian, whose story appears in Chapter 3, is a futures trader from Canada who worked on issues with greed and fear, as well as procrastination and focus problems. “I have sustained the progress but it was not easy. I found that I would stray away from using the techniques almost because I thought it would work instantaneously. In reality, it is a process over time. I have been able to make some good progress over the last couple of years using the process.”
When you met Nick in the Confidence chapter, he was an aspiring full-time trader in the U.K. working through FOMO. “I’ve had drastic improvement. The shift from comparing my results to ‘what if’s’ in the market to comparing my performance to what my strategy does has been huge. I am currently executing at about an 80%+ accuracy, compared to probably 20% when we first spoke!”
Max, a Forex trader from France who appeared in the Greed and Confidence chapters, is still trading on a full-time basis. “I’ve managed to keep my focus on my strategy rather than swaying around trying new things, keeping in mind the amount of work I have done to develop my strategy. That was extremely worthwhile for me. Recently I ran into a drawdown larger than I had anticipated, yet instead of looking to change my strategies, I decided to keep executing with a smaller size until the market changed, which it did, and enabled me to get back out of the drawdown.”
Lastly, Chris, whose story came up in the Greed chapter, told me: “Enhancing your mental game in trading is an ongoing evolutionary process. At the time we spoke, I was dealing with certain issues – that I was able to overcome, utilizing the systems and processes that we talked about (which was outlined in the book) – and now I’m using the same processes to overcome current and newer issues – which came about as I got to higher levels in my trading journey. The systems we discussed have been very powerful.”
Do you know what I found inspiring here? They’re all still using the system. So often you hear about overcoming or conquering your problems but don’t often think about what comes next after that. As an efficiency guy, I love the fact that you can both address a present set of issues while learning how to use a system that can apply to future ones.
Slipping back into old habits, as Brendan noted, or sustaining the work but it not being easy, as Brian called out, are honest assessments that I appreciate. Mental game problems can take longer than you realize to truly resolve. Also, it is common to go through phases where progress comes easily and you are not being tested as much, and then out of the blue you’re tested in a major way. It’s hard to stay vigilant during periods where a problem isn’t showing up. The key is that you’re able to quickly recognize when it has reemerged and use your mental game strategy to correct it.
I was also curious which tools they found most helpful.
“Recognize, Disrupt, Correct, Strategic is a process I follow daily when I get distracted or am feeling the nerves around bigger positions.” – Brian
“I use the Mental Hand History all the time! I have also adapted the ABC system to make recognizing my mistakes quicker and easier. I also now track performance to the same – if not greater – degree as I do my PnL, win percentages, etc. My journal is focused more on how I am performing and less on the outcomes.” – Nick
“The inchworm concept is something I continue to use and teach to our new recruits.” – Brendan
“The A to C game with the inchworm is very important. So is taking small breaks and resetting when things are tough. I remind myself to understand the amount of work I did and the impact it has on what I do today to avoid throwing hundreds/thousands of hours away.” – Max
“I have what I call a Mental Game sheet in front of me at all times. It lists my current, top issues that I’m dealing with – with a correction right underneath it.” – Chris
“I think the journaling method that we used was incredibly helpful. The fact that it was moldable and allowed me to apply my quantitative thinking to qualitative issues definitely helped even more than expected.” – Vlad
I hope you enjoyed this little recap. Once again, I am grateful these traders allowed me to share their stories with you, both in the book and via these quick updates. As they have once again demonstrated, the work can be hard and it evolves over time. I’m not sugar coating it. But the tools are available to you and the system is effective.
Lastly, I have a quick ask – if you liked The Mental Game of Trading, please consider leaving an Amazon review. They really help! And if you haven’t read it yet, there’s no better time than right now to get started.
The post Where Are They Now? appeared first on Jared Tendler.
March 6, 2023
Training Deep Focus
When it’s time to focus, it’s not always easy. Distractions are literally everywhere. Admit it, how many of you are reading this blog right now as a distraction from something else you ought to be doing!? I thought so. Luckily, this blog is all about training you to focus so deeply that distractions are no longer an option (or at least much less of one).
Followers of my work know that when you are having a problem, the answer is almost always to get to the roots and then correct the problem. But the other side of the coin can also play a key role – training and honing the skill you want to develop. Today I will offer you some practical steps on how to strengthen your level of focus and build endurance so you can focus for longer periods of time, because the potential distractions aren’t going away.
Social media is a huge contributor, with instant access to entertainment, news, and “research” or “studying”. Not to mention that true research/study can quickly turn into a distraction. As a trader you may start off researching a potential opportunity and quickly get sucked into a wormhole, reading about market predictions. Or as a poker player you can be watching quality videos/articles and then easily veer into clickbaity entertainment. And those are just the tip of the iceberg!
While distractions are real, you can train your focus so that you are less likely to get sucked in by them. I’ll present some ideas differently here but this is a topic I’ve talked about in both The Mental Game of Trading (Chapter 8) and The Mental Game of Poker 2 (Chapter 5) so if you have the books, you can refer back to them.
When Emotions Cause Distractions
Before you start training your focus, you have to first make sure that emotions are not the primary cause of your distraction. Fear, anger, overconfidence, lacking confidence can all create problems with focus. If you are easily distracted, the place to hunt first is the intensity of your emotions. The Yerkes-Dodson Law, a scientific principle, describes the relationship between emotion and performance. When emotions are too high or too low, you can’t hit your optimal performance.
If emotions are too high, you need to do the work to identify and resolve the underlying flaw causing them. Fear may have you obsessively checking twitter or searching the lobbies for a better game. Overconfidence might make you bored and less tuned in. To build better focus in that scenario, you have to first reduce that emotion and sometimes that’s enough, other times you still need to retrain your mind.
That’s where the Mental Hand History comes in, so you can dig into the issue and uncover the cause. Then use Injecting Logic statements to work against the emotion and develop greater consistency.
If emotions aren’t the cause, or you’ve done some work and seen progress, you’re in a position where you can train your focus. Training is also the way to go when your intensity is low – if you’re bored, procrastinating and low on motivation.
For some of you, you might need to train your focus because you have made a lot of progress emotionally and that progress has changed the mixture of what drives your optimal focus. This is the evolution of your mental game, and something I experienced first-hand with my golf game last season.
Having resolved my problems with confidence and fear, I found myself with too little intensity. I was flat in a couple of big tournaments and I didn’t realize it, until noticing that I was more easily distracted by what was going on around me vs. being completely immersed in my process and the shot. Historically my focus was driven by the nerves inherent in the situation or the tournament. Now that my confidence is a lot more solid, I feel less pressure/nerves and have to generate more intensity on my own, in other words, I need to train it. This is my primary mental game goal for this year for golf.
Deepening focus can be approached like training your muscles. First, you must assess your current capabilities. What is your baseline level of focus through the ups and downs you experience over the course of several weeks? Don’t just guess. Track how well you sustain focus, how often distractions arise, how quickly you can recover after being distracted, how many breaks you take, when and for how long. Once you know where you are, you can start training with these practical steps:
1. Take Notes: It’s easy to be distracted by things outside of poker, trading or golf. Before you start, do a cool-down for your life. Take notes about anything that’s on your mind and then put them aside, creating a bubble around poker, trading or golf that allows you to be fully immersed.
2. Preparation: As you turn your attention to your performance, start by getting really connected to your goals, both from an overall perspective and for what you are looking to accomplish today, or in a defined period of time. Determine the time period ahead of time, but be realistic. You may want eight straight hours of intense focus, but is that attainable? Start small and build up.
3. Build Over Time: To train your focus follow a similar process of Injecting Logic for an emotional problem, but tweaked slightly. When you find yourself beginning to get distracted, disrupt the momentum by taking a deep breath, standing up, doing some push ups, or whatever readies you to push yourself. Reconnect to your goals, using them as the force to drive more intensity in your focus.Then push yourself like you would in the gym, increasing the duration and quality of your focus.
You should look to be increasing week over week at a rate of 5-10% a time at most. Ultimately you may want to go from 1 hour to 6 hours, but going from 1 hour to 2 hours is a 100% increase. Be reasonable and work the process the right way so you can sustain your improvements long-term.
Strengthening both the endurance and intensity of your focus is definitely achievable. Follow these steps and strive for incremental progress. Before you know it, distractions will be more manageable and less frequent.
The post Training Deep Focus appeared first on Jared Tendler.
February 6, 2023
Suck Less
If you’ve read any of my books you know I often talk about how important it is to suck less in key moments. This idea is frequently mentioned by clients and readers as something that has been incredibly helpful, both for dealing with tough situations and for sustaining confidence, so I wanted to highlight it this month.
The advice is quite simple. When you are in a tough place, whether it’s a drawdown/downswing, lacking discipline, feeling desperate, having the urge to gamble, or feeling paralyzed and unable to make the right decision – basically any situation when you’re at your worst and feel miles away from your best – it’s in those moments when you need to find a way to suck less. When your C-game is more likely, pushing yourself to suck less is the key to moving your inchworm forward.
Trying to suck less immediately removes the burden of trying to be at your best. When you are not where you want to be, the strain of knowing how far off you are and wanting so desperately to just get back to your “best” actually makes the journey back there harder and longer. Sucking less removes the expectation of being at your best and gets you focused on how to be just a little bit better, taking the first step on the road to getting back to your best.
When the chips are down and you are struggling, things can feel pretty dark. You can feel stuck and unsure how you’re going to get out of it. But something as simple as just seeing the light at the end of the tunnel is enough to give you a boost. Too often traders, poker players and golfers give up control in these moments and hope it’ll work out.
Sucking less in these key moments is how you’ll find a way out. It’s a step you can always take that can move you forward, no matter how bad things get. Here are some ideas on how to go about it.
1. Define C-Game
Just because you have the idea to suck less doesn’t mean you automatically do it. While neither the idea or the application of sucking less is that complicated, to consistently do it well requires some prep work. First off, you need to make sure you have a clearly defined C-game, otherwise you won’t be able to recognize in real-time when to turn this strategy on. If you haven’t completed an A-to-C-game analysis, now is the time to do it.
Hindsight makes it really easy to know what you should have done differently, or avoided, or not done at all. But in the moments when your emotions are intense it is easy to get stuck in the repetitive cycle of the same bad behaviors, poor execution, or terrible decisions that characterize your C-game. That’s what is most likely to occur and when you know what you are up against you can prepare yourself to make different choices. It’s not a complicated task but it’s essential to taking the next step and devising a strategy to give you a chance of making progress.
2. Devise a Strategy
After you’ve defined your C-game, come up with a strategy to suck less in practical terms, and make sure to give yourself room to test and learn what ultimately will work best. Too often clients think they know what is going to work in these situations, and get frustrated, anxious, and down on themselves when it doesn’t work out. Until you know what works, you’re in the process of testing and learning.
For example, if you close out trades prematurely, sucking less might be holding on for 2, 5, or 30 minutes longer, whatever makes sense. Maybe you take 50% of the trade out and leave 50% in to manage your risk. The point is to scale it down to something you can actually do. Maybe you struggle with the discipline to do proper warm-up or cool-down around your poker sessions. You know you need to but can’t make yourself sit down and do it consistently, resulting in too many times when you skip your warm-up because you slept late, or avoid your cool-down after a big winning or losing session. So sucking less for you is doing both for just a few minutes.
The key is to specifically outline what you can do in that moment that is progressing you forward. It may be such a small step that it feels pathetic. That’s fine. Sucking less is not after perfection, it’s just after progress.
Importantly, if you are in a place where you are prone to gambling or desperation, make sure you protect yourself. The concept of sucking less can be risky when trying to improve upon such severe issues. Attempting to make even small C-game improvements could still be incredibly costly and might mean that you’re quitting far earlier and before you’re really tested. I talk about this in more detail in The Mental Game of Poker and The Mental Game of Trading.
3. Build Strength Around Your Weakness
Many of us don’t like to admit we have weaknesses, which is bullshit. Just because you have areas of weakness doesn’t mean you don’t also have areas of strength. Having a C-game does not negate the fact that you still have a B-game and A-game. And, as your C-game improves, your strengths improve as well. Sucking less allows you to build capacity to move forward. But it does take work.
Much like going to the gym, you want to start with what’s manageable and build on it over time. If you are new to weightlifting, you can’t expect to go in and lift 200 lbs. You start small, building strength and endurance over time while incrementally adding more weight.
As an example, if you are prone to tilt, that’s where you are mentally weak. If you are truly embracing your capacity in that moment, then you try to be a little better about not succumbing to your anger or catching it earlier before it becomes too intense. Repetitively making that effort over time is how you make permanent progress and build strength to sustain you going forward. It’s not always easy (unfortunately, it’s rarely easy) but it’s where real change happens.
Lastly, if you are struggling to even suck less, it means the issues or flaws that are causing your C-game in the first place are more intense that you realize and you have to go back to the Mental Hand History to ensure you are going after the right flaws.
Small steps matter. Your ability to be at your best is linked to how strong you are when you’re weak. Being stronger, or sucking less, in critical moments can be transformational over time. And, if you are willing to share, I’d love to hear more about where you are trying to suck less. Click here to answer.
The post Suck Less appeared first on Jared Tendler.
January 9, 2023
Finding Your New Why
Goals matter. They provide the structure for defining how you get from where you are now to where you want to be.
Last month I recommended that you spend time reviewing your progress so that your goals could be both sharp and realistic. And last year around this time I outlined why New Year’s resolutions are stupid and setting achievable goals was the smarter path. I am a believer that January is a great time to set goals, and you can even use my goals worksheet to make that process easier.
But while I’ve clearly talked about goal-setting before, I haven’t spent as much time on a big question that underpins your goals: Why are you a trader, poker player, or golfer? Actually answer this question right now.
Is that a question that you can answer easily, or is there some hesitation and fumbling over your words to clearly articulate your reasoning.
There is a reason you chose to spend your time in this arena. And you are still choosing it. When you lose track of all of your reasons, or it naturally evolves without you realizing it, a host of problems can pop-up: motivation is inconsistent, focus wanes more easily and lacks the usual intensity, and guilt and overthinking pops up more as you’re critical and unsure of how much you should be trading/playing or working on your game.
When your reasons are all defined and clear in your mind, however, you automatically have better structure and organization, are more at ease with the amount you are working and satisfied with your results. There is a greater acceptance of how your life is balanced (even if it feels extremely unbalanced because you’re obsessed and this is all that you do).
Why Do You Do What You Do?
Three of the most common reasons I see in the fields I primarily work in are freedom, challenge and competitiveness.
Professionals who choose non-traditional paths like trading or poker often value the freedom to set their own schedules and be their own bosses. They prize independence and autonomy. An example of recognizing this “why” and bringing it in alignment with goal-setting was one of the traders I included in The Mental Game of Trading.
Michael was burned out. He felt trapped having to trade all day, particularly when nothing was going on. His motivation went through big ups and downs. He stopped going to the office as much, and felt guilty about it.
What made the difference for him was a commitment to go hard for the first three hours of the trading day and then, if nothing was happening, he could take the rest of the day to follow other pursuits with zero guilt. A core reason he had become a trader was freedom. This strategy ensured that he had the freedom to trade without being imprisoned by it, and that revitalized his passion for trading 20 years into his career. (You can read more of his story in Chapter 8).
Another common “why” I see is those who love the challenge of constantly becoming better. Personally, that’s why I put as much energy as I do into golf. I’m not a professional but it remains a large part of my life and I spend a lot of time on my game because it teaches me more about myself and what it takes to be successful and improve. I view it as a playground to test ideas that make me a better coach and author. It’s also an important physical outlet and ties in, for me, to the third theme that matters to me – competitiveness. When I have success in tournaments I know I’ve achieved something unique and rare and that excites me.
That desire to compete, and to be among the most successful in their fields, is something I often see in my clients and why they continue to find joy in their jobs.
Another example of defining your “why”and keeping it in alignment can be found in some of my poker clients who still loved the game but found the grind of constant travel to be interfering with the rest of their lives. To achieve more balance, they created seasons for themselves where they cycle between periods of intense playing and studying, with times when they’re off doing something else.
Mind you, being in alignment doesn’t always equate with stepping back from constant work. While the examples I gave here were seasoned professionals, particularly when you are early in your career it is OK to be obsessed.
The mark of the best performers in any of the fields I’ve worked in is that they always have a deep love and passion that drives them to work harder, to learn as much as they possibly can, and to constantly be thinking about ways to improve. It’s easy to see how this could be perceived as an unhealthy obsession. But when you are happy, fulfilled and successful it’s hard to call that unhealthy. It’s all about what you want and how that aligns with your values.
Whether you need to find more balance or are at that stage where you want to work all day doesn’t matter. What you need is alignment and synergy, because without that everything gets harder.
Get Clear for Yourself
If I know you well, you didn’t actually take the time to answer the question above. Well now is the time to do it and get clear on why you trade, play poker or golf.
Write a list or paragraph, as short or long as you want it to be. Be honest and as deep as you want to get and give yourself 7 to 10 days to nail it down. Keep it on your mind, have conversations with people that know you well, think about how you’ve grown, how you’ve changed in the last year, and how those changes may impact why you are here and doing this.
Once you’ve got something solid that clearly reflects your reasons, you can use it on a daily basis to create greater clarity for your motivation.
Successfully accomplishing your goals over the course of 12 months is A LOT easier when you have consistency and stability in your motivation. There inevitably will be peaks and valleys with your motivation over that long of a time period, but you can use your “why” to push you higher when you get deflated, and on the flip side, keep your motivation lower when you get too inspired.
I know this doesn’t sound sexy or exciting, but you’ll thank me when we get to December and you’ve achieved more and grown more than you did the year before.
The post Finding Your New Why appeared first on Jared Tendler.
December 5, 2022
You’re Evaluating Progress Wrong and It’s Costing You
There’s a common saying that you shouldn’t compare apples to oranges. Why? Because when you are comparing two items that are inherently different, it’s impossible to recognize the differences that may actually be relevant and meaningful.
This is especially true when evaluating your progress, which, when done correctly, is essentially comparing you to you – the you of yesterday to the you of today, or the you of 2021 to 2022. When evaluation is done incorrectly, however, a host of problems affect you not only on a day-to-day basis, but on a cumulative basis and your perception of what you accomplished during the year will be inaccurate.
This in turn, causes your confidence to take a hit – it feels to you like you are not doing enough, that you are failing or underperforming. (Although the opposite will happen to some of you as you get ahead of yourself and become overconfident.) More significantly, a faulty evaluation of progress causes a drop in motivation. You feel like all of your efforts are wasted, you’re working on the wrong things or missing something. You’re stuck and uncertain of what will get you on the right track.
All of this chaos is costing you. And fortunately, it has a straightforward solution.
Making the Wrong Comparisons
Traders and poker players often default into a one-dimensional way of evaluating their performance. It’s good or it’s bad. They are not accounting for progress. Nor are they seeing the natural variation that defines their current ability. They’re either feeling it, and doing really well, or they’re in a slump and looking for a way out.
I commonly see clients being overly hard on themselves after having poor results mixed with poor performance. They are not only upset to be underperforming, it also feels like their hard work isn’t producing results. They immediately ask “How could I still make these mistakes?” and lament that they are not on their A-game anymore.
Their first reaction should instead be to compare their C-game to a prior version of their C-game from 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, a year ago, or longer. Progress is not just a measure of how well you can sustain your A-game. It’s also measured by how well you are able to improve your C-game. That comparison is often missed, even with clients who have been working at this for years. It’s just not intuitive to think this way. You need to train it like anything else.
Ideally, you want to compare apples to apples – compare your current A-game to your previous A-game, your current B-game to your previous B-game, and your current C-game to previous C-game. That kind of comparison, A-to-A, B-to-B, C-to-C, provides you with a closer look at how much progress you have made.
If you’ve never done this before, you can get started simply by estimating how your current A, B, and C-game ranks vs. previous versions. Yes this isn’t ideal, but I’d rather you start somewhere. Or you can take it a step further and complete an A to C-game Analysis, which you can download here. Then you’ll have a measuring stick to rate day-to-day performance. And as you progress throughout the year, it gives you a reference point to evaluate progress over time.
Mind the Gap
Another common error in recognizing progress is a false feeling that because the gap between your A-game and C-game has stayed the same, you’ve made no progress. That’s not necessarily true. It’s very possible that both your A and C-games have moved forward at a similar rate.
This shows up mostly when you feel like your C-game is still too weak relative to your A-game. When you’re on, you’re on, but when you’re off, you’re as off as you’ve ever been. Or so you think. This misperception happens because you’ve failed to see how your entire range has moved forward.
Remember how the Inchworm moves. Improvement comes from taking a step forward from the front (A-game gets better), followed by a step forward from the back (C-game sucks less). As you improve on both sides, the entire Inchworm moves forward. (If you need a refresher on Inchworm, check out the second half of my “The Cost of Perfectionism” blog).
When your Inchworm moves forward, you have made progress, but the gap between your best and worst can stay a similar width. If you feel like that gap between your A-game and C-game is too wide, that may be a legitimate concern. But it’s a different problem to solve, not an indication that you haven’t made any progress.
Evaluating progress is critical so you can make the right next steps, and as we near the end of 2022, it’s a good time to reflect on your year. What kind of progress have you made? And if you didn’t make as much progress as expected, why not? Spending time on those types of questions and answers will inform your decisions for 2023.
For example, if your C-game has made major improvements and your range has narrowed, you may want the next year to focus more on consistent execution. 2023 might be about leveraging the work you have done without feeling like you have to make big strides. Instead, you’re fine tuning your performance day-to-day or week-to-week.
Or, you might be in the opposite situation. Perhaps you have worked really hard and your A-game has gotten better but your C-game hasn’t kept up. If your C-game is stuck, this is a sign that you haven’t found all the problems holding you back. Don’t get discouraged. Sometimes it’s really hard to get at all of the roots causing your mental game problems. This is the area where my clients often come back after a break looking for help again.
An example that often is hard for clients to find on their own happens when their A and B-games have moved up while their C-game has lagged behind. The tension between their frontend and backend is stretched like a rubber band and causes their issues to come up in bigger form, like larger blow-ups and messier situations.
While that can be confusing, it can also make the underlying root easier to spot. Sometimes the underlying flaw is tied to a more personal issue, and it’s hard to see when you’re mired in the problem. Getting an objective, outside view can help you get unstuck. Occasionally, even just a couple sessions with a client can serve as a catalyst to help them figure out what’s really holding them back.
No matter where your A, B, and C-game are, the key is that understanding where the points of growth have and have not occurred can help you formulate where your focus ought to be. Plus, going forward, evaluating your progress in this way on a monthly, weekly, or even daily basis, can help you find the weak spots in your process or skills sooner.
And as you’re evaluating your progress, don’t forget to look at the wins. As I wrote about at the end of 2021, acknowledging those wins is important for your confidence. Evaluate your progress correctly, celebrate the wins and keep at it. You’ve got this!
The post You’re Evaluating Progress Wrong and It’s Costing You appeared first on Jared Tendler.
November 19, 2022
Upgrade to the Trading Psychology Masterclass
I worked very hard to create what I believe to be the most comprehensive trading psychology course on the market today – and now it’s been upgraded. Plus, through the end of November we’re offering a big discount. Don’t miss your chance!
The course expands on the material from The Mental Game of Trading and makes it easier for you to personalize a mental game strategy that can take your trading to the next level.
You’ll get to see tons of examples of my tools in action and hear my take on user-submitted Mental Hand Histories, Maps, A to C-Game Analyses, and other templates not available elsewhere. You’ll also observe mini-client sessions as I work 1:1 with students to work through their problems and recommend next steps.
After recording the original webinars for this Masterclass in 2022, we have gone back and added a different way to work through the material and bring it to life, creating 6 distinct modules that correspond to my system. Each module builds on itself and is designed to help you develop a complete strategy for fixing your costly errors.
You can also watch the full recordings for an uninterrupted experience if you so wish. However, we recommend you pace yourself and follow the path that we have set in the modules.
Here you can see the new modules at the top, and the full recordings still available to view:
I’m not saying that this course is a must for all of you. I wrote the book with the intent of it standing on its own, and the feedback that I continue to receive confirms that.
But I also know that many of you want more. You’re looking for clarity on how to use the worksheets effectively, how to identify the details that really matter, and how to truly leverage the system. You want to see real examples and hear from other traders like you about what is tripping them up and how to fix it. You might also want to feel less alone, that you’re not the only one struggling. The good news is this is exactly what the course offers and participants told us how helpful it was.
“During the course there was so much content that I could relate to that it felt like Jared was talking directly to me. I had many moments that opened up a deeper understanding of what I was experiencing.”
“I already had the audiobook and physical book. Jared gave examples of the worksheets and then reviewed the submitted worksheets. It was eye-opening how to use them in real-time. It also gave me ideas on modifying them to fit myself and the specific situation.”
“Jared provides a clear and actionable system for addressing mental game issues. Put in the work and you will see the progress.”
If the book has helped but you want more, or if it’s tougher for you to jump from the page to real life, this course can help and there’s no better time to get started.
Click Here to Get Started Today
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November 17, 2022
Mental Game Excerpt From GTO Poker Simplified
I’m happy to share an excerpt from a new book by Dara O’Kearney and my co-author of The Mental Game of Poker 1 & 2, Barry Carter. If you’re overwhelmed by the idea of learning to play a Game Theory Optimal strategy, this book has been billed as a great entry point – a GTO for Dummies of sorts. This excerpt is focused on the mental side of the game. I encourage you to take a look at GTO Poker Simplified.
It is true that an exploitative poker strategy will make the most at the small stakes. So many big mistakes will be made at, for example, a $1 MTT, that you can quickly crush those levels by pouncing on these errors. If, for example, your opponents are over folding on Ace high flops. The most profitable course of action would be to always bet Ace high flops regardless of how wide your range is, and probably betting quite small so you can get away cheaply when they have hit. A GTO approach might see you check back some of the time and would limit the number of bluffs you have if you use a small bet sizing.
The problem is that exploits at one level don’t work at another. Players might overfold on Ace high flops too much in $1 MTTs but bluffcatch too much on the same flops in $5 MTTs. If you moved up to $5 MTTs with the same strategy you would end up exploiting yourself if you carried over the strategy of always c-betting in these spots.
An exploitative player has to take time to figure out the exploits when they move up. The old exploits don’t work anymore, and if the player doesn’t adapt they will themselves get exploited. They have to learn how to beat each level over and over again. Not to mention that different players have different leaks in the same games. The UTG player might call too much, the Cutoff might fold too much, the Button might pot control too much and the Small Blind might have inconsistent bet sizing. Not only do you have to figure out the exploits for each player pool, you have to figure them out for each player.
There is now a new school of players who refuse to diverge from GTO poker, even when they could make more money in the short term. It might take a little longer to move out of the small stakes, but the benefit is you learn a strategy that can beat any game. If you learn how to play fundamentally sound GTO in $5 MTTs you might not be winning the maximum, but you could get parachuted into a Super High Roller tournament and be a winning player. This is a bold claim that might surprise you, but it is true. There is, of course, the mental game element that might make some players crumble under the pressure in these games but if they can stick to what they have learned they will be winning players at high stakes tables.
The new roadmap for a professional poker player is to prove they are a winning player using GTO principles, even if it is at small stakes. With a big enough sample, that can get you staked to play in bigger games. A $5 MTT grinder who plays GTO can easily get staked for $100 MTTs and win. They can make much more money playing GTO in bigger games than the old method of game selecting and shot taking the larger stakes. I don’t think we are far away from players creating staking threads based on their average rating on the DTO app instead of their SharkScope or Hendon Mob ranking. It might already be happening.
Another reason to use the GTO approach to small stakes is that it is much easier mentally. If you know you made the right play by calling 40% of the time on the river you can find resolve in the fact you did the right thing. If a hand bothered you, you can study it in a solver and you will either feel better because you made the right play or at least you learned something. If, however, you had a read your opponent never bluffs, then they bluff you, it’s harder to deal with, because exploits are much more instinctive.
Be warned that some players do use GTO as a crutch from a mental game perspective. There are times when it is blindingly obvious that an exploit is the way to go (let’s say the player in front of you is drunk and calling everything) but you refuse to diverge because of the uncertainty that playing an exploitative strategy brings. Also, GTO is only as good as the initial assumptions you make. You have to get the opponent’s range and betting tendencies right for the information to be useful. If you don’t revisit and question your own assumptions a few times you could be making big errors and protecting yourself from having to deal with them.
There is a bandwidth benefit to the GTO approach, you have to think about fewer things. A good exploitative player has to think about GTO, exploits, what their opponent thinks they are thinking and possibly live reads like physical tells, which is a lot of information to juggle. I once eavesdropped a conversation at breakfast between three of the top players in the world and one of them expressed the view that this is why Alex Foxen plays so slowly.
GTO, while perhaps harder to learn initially, is much easier to manage at the tables.
Exploitative players will make more money when their reads are correct, but GTO players do not need to worry about their reads being correct, they can just play in any game. Another reason to sacrifice short term EV to play a GTO style is because it is generally much easier to play GTO from a mindset perspective. I am reminded of a quote from Bertrand Russell which sums up the benefits of being a GTO player, he said “what men really want is not knowledge but certainty”.
Exploitative players have to deal with much more uncertainty because so many more things can go wrong. Their assumptions about their opponents might be wrong and they find themselves diverging very far off the game tree. Opponent A might diverge in one direction, Opponent B might veer off a completely different part of the game tree. If an exploitative player thinks their opponent is under bluffing, then that player shows them a bluff, it can be stressful. Were all their assumptions wrong, or was it just the one time the player bluffed out of hundreds of missed opportunities? Exploitative players have to be very forgiving of themselves.
GTO players do not have anywhere near the stress of this, because they can usually run a sim and get an answer as to whether they made a mistake. GTO by comparison is a one size fits all approach where you were either correct, or you are provided with an answer to correct an error for the next time.
There are mindset issues that come from this, however. Because GTO involves mixed frequencies it means that often most plays can be right a small percentage of the time. You might run a hand where you made a seemingly bad hero call and discover, for balance purposes, that the solver does it 12% of the time. You might use this as a crutch to justify all of your bad play.
Just because something is allowed, does not mean it isn’t a mistake. In the example above, if you do the hero call 100% of the time, it is still a massive punt. Do you really call there just 12% of the time? Probably not. So to thrive from GTO you need to be able to make genuine assessments about how often you really are doing the minority mixed actions. As a baseline starting point you should try and stick to the more favoured actions the solver takes.
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November 7, 2022
Learning More Efficiently
When I talk about improving performance over time I often turn to the Inchworm concept, which I discussed most recently in the second half of my blog on perfectionism. Inchworm is a great illustration of what progress looks like, the ups and downs, and the fact that C-game improvement must match A-game improvement so your entire skill set and level of performance rises.
Well none of that happens without learning. Your A-game is not getting better without the acquisition of new skills. Your C-game is not getting better without learning how to correct your mistakes. Learning is at the heart of mental game improvement.
And, if you can be more efficient in your learning, you can be more efficient in your progression. To that end, I want to tell you about a well-known theory that might be helpful in giving you perspective on what the learning process looks like: the Adult Learning Model.
The theory itself is not overly complicated – as you are learning a skill you move through four distinct stages on your way to mastery. But once you understand what you’re really aiming at, the Adult Learning Model can make you aware of some shortcomings in your approach to learning in general. I’ve described the stages and an example below.
Stage 1: Unconscious Incompetence
This is your blind spot—the part of your trading, poker or mental game that you don’t know is weak. Actually, you don’t even have enough knowledge to understand where the weakness is yet. You truly don’t know what you don’t know.
Stage 2: Conscious Incompetence
Reaching this stage means that through reflection, analysis or education /advice you’ve identified an area of weakness. Now you know where you’re weak, but that does not automatically mean you develop skill or competency. A common mistake here is assuming that simply identifying the problem means that you know how to correct it. While that can happen at times, most often recognition of weakness is an important first step and then you’ve got work to do.
Stage 3: Conscious Competence
At this stage, you have made progress in correcting the weakness. There are varying levels within this stage and the stronger your competence, the easier it is to think about the concept or the correction. If you are tired or tilted and revert back to incompetence, however, it is an indication that the skill remains at this level and you must do more work to truly master it and move to the next stage.
Stage 4: Unconscious Competence
Once you’ve reached this stage knowledge is applied consistently, instantly, correctly, and without thinking—even under the most extreme circumstances. The power of reaching this level of competence/skill cannot be understated. Unconscious Competence is the holy grail of learning and all your work both technically and mentally should be aimed here.
These levels make sense when you begin to think about your own experiences in learning. An example that shows the Adult Learning Model in action is learning to drive a car.
Remember when you were a small child thinking about driving a car. You barely knew what a car was, let alone how to drive one. This is Unconscious Incompetence. Then as a teenager, you became much more aware of driving and perhaps were frustrated by the fact that you couldn’t drive. You became conscious of your incompetence.
Now think back to when you got behind the wheel for the first time. In order to drive a car, you first needed to learn how to: steer, step on the gas, watch the road, and change music all at the same time; parallel park; adjust to the speed of highway traffic; and deal with thousands of unique situations. Then, you needed to concentrate and think about all of these things so you didn’t kill yourself or others. This is Conscious Competence.
After driving for years, you no longer think about every single action needed to drive a car; your skill comes naturally and with little effort. You can handle driving, listening to music, talking to passengers, and extreme situations that arise, such as adverse weather, all without much thought. Driving is a skill now trained to the level of Unconscious Competence.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting that as a trader or poker player all of your decisions and actions should be like driving a car. Autopilot is not the standard we’re after. Rather, you’re like a professional race car driver, who certainly can’t autopilot a race.
Unconscious Competence provides a higher base of knowledge/skill to operate from. This is the backend of your C-game moving forward, and it frees your mind from the burden of having to think about skills that previously required conscious attention. That makes it easier for you to perform at a higher level, including your absolute best.
Common Mistakes
Now that I’ve described the stages, let me say a quick word on learning styles before I explain a few common mistakes. For some learners, they do best when reading. Others like to listen. Others need a combo, which is why so many purchasers of my audiobooks tell me they go back and get the softcover as well. There’s also video and direct experience. No matter the style that works best for you, the stages stay the same. The mistakes also stay the same! Two of the most common mistakes are trying to do too much at once and getting ahead of yourself.
Top end performance only happens when your mind is clear, focused, and energized. That generally means you don’t have a lot of things you are actively trying to learn at once. When you are trying to do too much at once – whether that is learning technical aspects of trading/poker/golf, or trying to work on multiple aspects of your mental game simultaneously – you will actually slow your progress. Finding the right amount is important and understanding the Adult Learning Model helps you understand why.
When you involve consciousness (stages 2 and 3), it’s taking up bandwidth in your brain that you eventually want freed up. It’s why we work so hard towards resolution on mental game issues – so your mind can be freed up to just perform in your area of expertise (trading, poker, golf, etc.). When mental effort is required to manage emotions or apply skills, that means your mind is not able to work on something else.
The other most common mistake is getting ahead of yourself, meaning you prematurely think you’ve achieved mastery. Let’s say you go on a two-week vacation and when you get back, you’ve actually forgotten more than you expected. What happened there is you got a little overconfident because you weren’t aware that you were relying so much on preparation and energy to be in a good mental state. You felt like the new skills were mastered but true mastery is only proven when the skills are still there under intense pressure, or when you can come back from breaks and it’s all still accessible.
Reaching Unconscious Competence
So if Unconscious Competence is the holy grail of learning, the important question is what’s the fastest way to get there? The good news is it’s conceptually quite simple, you just need a lot of repetition in a variety of challenging situations.
There’s no shortcut for consistent effort and time dedicated toward mastery. But you can certainly speed up the process by being more organized in your warm-up and cool-down. Preparing to be at a high level gives you the opportunity to learn at a high level too. Then reflect, review and analyze your performance to direct your focus the following day.
Reaching Unconscious Competence or mastery can also come faster by working from a different perspective. When working on your mental game, joining or watching Office Hours is a great way to hear me talk about concepts in slightly different ways. Or for the traders out there, the Trading Psychology Masterclass I recorded provides multiple examples and stories that will help you get a firm grasp on the material so you can drive towards mastery of your mental game.
Another important way to speed the process to get to Unconscious Competence is connected to what you do before and after a break. Breaks are seemingly disruptive to the overall learning process. However, if you know you are going to take time off, write notes and consolidate what’s in your mind first. That allows you to clear your mind while you’re away, and also provides a roadmap for when you come back – reminding you where you are and what you need to focus on.
At the end of the day, the stages of learning are the same for everyone. How you move through them and how fast you’re able to do it is where you can gain an edge.
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