Professional Boredom

"The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom. We get bored with habits because they stop delighting us. The outcome becomes expected. And as our habits become ordinary, we start derailing our progress to seek novelty."
— James Clear, Atomic Habits

When I read this, I immediately thought of trading. Because if there's one field where normal human behavior works against you, it's trading.

As humans, we naturally seek novelty, excitement, and stimulation. The moment something becomes predictable, restlessness sets in. We start doubting, tinkering with what works, or looking for a trade that feels just a bit more exciting. That's not a character flaw. That's human.

But the market doesn't always reward human behavior. In fact, often the opposite is true.

The longer I trade, the more I come to the conclusion that successful traders are masters of professional boredom. Objective. Mechanical. Calculated. As few question marks as possible. As much confidence in the process as possible. Not because they know a trade is going to work, but because they know the same approach is profitable across dozens or hundreds of trades.

That means a good trade can result in a loss, and a bad trade in a profit. The outcome of a single trade ultimately isn't relevant. The quality of execution is.

Tom Hougaard touches on a similar truth in Best Loser Wins. Successful trading often requires the opposite of what feels natural. Most people look for confirmation that they're right. The professional trader looks for a process they can repeat indefinitely.

And that's exactly where the challenge arises. Because the moment a method works, it becomes predictable. The moment it becomes predictable, it becomes boring.

And the moment it becomes boring, the temptation arises to do something else. Like taking a trade that doesn't actually qualify.

That might be one of the biggest paradoxes of this profession. The trader who keeps searching creates uncertainty. The trader who works systematically and embraces professional boredom creates freedom. In the end, whoever keeps doing what works, consistently, for the longest, gets rewarded.

Which brings me to the development of my DYC strategy.

The results of the past two weeks are encouraging. A total of 17 trades were taken: 12 last week, including a few trial attempts, and 5 this week. Together, they returned +12.5R. Of those, nine trades were winners, four closed at break-even, and four were losers. Excluding the break-even trades, the win rate was about 69%.

Had I not exited too early, the result could easily have been about 3R higher. At the same time, several losing trades were entirely avoidable. And yet the result remains encouraging despite technical and emotional mistakes.

The key lesson, then, isn't that I need more setups, but actually fewer. More focus. More selectivity. Less interpretation. And that's exactly where I went wrong on the last trade of the week.

Sometimes progress isn't adding something new, but continuously stripping away everything that isn't necessary. Less is more.

Below, two recordings:
1. Asia-box, London-box: trading the high/low of the respective sessions
2. US500 / NASDAQ outlook + remaining DYC trades
Regarding the last recording: the first 8 minutes cover the outlook, the rest covers the remaining 3 DYC trades. In this recording the first 2 DYC trades of the week were discussed.