Self-Control: The key to trading and the key to success in life

I was just reading this article in The New Yorker and I am impressed by it so much so that I’d like to log this in my trading journal.

The article is about a simple study done in the 60′s with hundreds of kids being asked to resist the temptation to a table-full of candies while waiting for the researcher to come back into the room.  Years later, the researcher find that those that is able to delay instant gratification are more successful later in life.

I’ve read about this study before, but this article is a lot more comprehensive than what I’ve seen.  Anyway, read the article for the details.

So what’s so special about having self-control?  The article and the researcher puts it poignantly.

For decades, psychologists have focussed on raw intelligence as the most important variable when it comes to predicting success in life. Mischel argues that intelligence is largely at the mercy of self-control: even the smartest kids still need to do their homework. “What we’re really measuring with the marshmallows isn’t will power or self-control,” Mischel says. “It’s much more important than that. This task forces kids to find a way to make the situation work for them. They want the second marshmallow, but how can they get it? We can’t control the world, but we can control how we think about it.”

And how are some of these 4-year-old doing it?

At the time, psychologists assumed that children’s ability to wait depended on how badly they wanted the marshmallow. But it soon became obvious that every child craved the extra treat. What, then, determined self-control? Mischel’s conclusion, based on hundreds of hours of observation, was that the crucial skill was the “strategic allocation of attention.” Instead of getting obsessed with the marshmallow—the “hot stimulus”—the patient children distracted themselves by covering their eyes, pretending to play hide-and-seek underneath the desk, or singing songs from “Sesame Street.” Their desire wasn’t defeated—it was merely forgotten. “If you’re thinking about the marshmallow and how delicious it is, then you’re going to eat it,” Mischel says. “The key is to avoid thinking about it in the first place.”

So what does this have to do with trading?

In adults, this skill is often referred to as metacognition, or thinking about thinking, and it’s what allows people to outsmart their shortcomings. (When Odysseus had himself tied to the ship’s mast, he was using some of the skills of metacognition: knowing he wouldn’t be able to resist the Sirens’ song, he made it impossible to give in.) Mischel’s large data set from various studies allowed him to see that children with a more accurate understanding of the workings of self-control were better able to delay gratification. “What’s interesting about four-year-olds is that they’re just figuring out the rules of thinking,” Mischel says. “The kids who couldn’t delay would often have the rules backwards. They would think that the best way to resist the marshmallow is to stare right at it, to keep a close eye on the goal. But that’s a terrible idea. If you do that, you’re going to ring the bell before I leave the room.”

In other words, we need to identify our psychological issues in trading and react to them before they destroy our accounts!  One way I’m doing this now is using a set of clear and objective rules.

Related posts:

1. What to do when life gets in your way of trading?
2. How to Draft Your Own 3 Rules of Trading