Everybody, this is Michael Martin. So another thing that happens that doesn’t get spoken enough, spoken enough about is your environment. And that can be anything that you can pick up on your senses. It could be things that you see, things that you hear for sure. It could also be you have a neighbor who likes to cook, so you’re constantly smelling things that they’re out on the barbecue. If they’re grilled onions or steaks or chops or whatever, you know, can smell that. That could trigger a response perhaps even subconsciously. So what I like to try to do is I know that I don’t want to hear other people talking when I’m trying to be in the zone, especially when I’m doing my preparation. I don’t want music on, I don’t want the TV on. I don’t want the TV on muted. I don’t want to hear any or see any other type of stimulus than what it is I’m trying to focus on.
That’s puritanical. I understand, but that’s just how it works for me. I grew up playing guitar. I’ve been playing for almost 50 years now. So I don’t need to hear music to take me in a different direction. I don’t need to calm myself or love myself with music. I don’t need a fucking diet Coke sitting here. I don’t need to love myself with food. I’m just trying to zone in and do my research so that I can be prepared. And I know what that feels like. I know what it is to do it, but I know what it feels like to have done a thorough job and to know that I come into tomorrow with the peak confidence. So that’s what I mean when you say, I say control your environment. If there’s a person who talks too much because they’re a nervous talker, tell ’em to shut up or find another spot, right?
Because that’s how I’m built. As you can imagine. I don’t make for a great employee talking to people that way. So that’s why I work for myself because I don’t want to have to take into account what somebody else’s needs are when they’re trying to do their research. It’s none of my business. So I just know that I’ll be as amenable as possible to make sure that I don’t encroach on someone’s boundary to adversely affect them. But in the same breath, I do a lot of work to make sure that nothing infiltrates my space when I need to do that preparation. Because in my way of thinking to me, the preparation is the key to all of my success. It’s not sitting there and watching a level two or watching time in sales. I know people like to do that. I just don’t see the wisdom in it from my style. So I’ve created an ecology and an environment for me that helps me thrive. And I control that and watch that with great discipline unto itself. And no one gets in the way if someone says, Hey, I have to talk to you. And I’m the same way with the things that I’ve taken on in my life.
So for example, every night, except for Saturday, because the class is in the day, I have Jiujitsu class at six o’clock, and I don’t care who you are. I don’t care where you live at six o’clock Pacific time, I’m in the GH and I’m in my class and I’ve been doing that six days a week for five years and nothing gets away. Someone says, let’s go out for a drink or say, I see you at seven 30. I don’t drink, but I’ll meet you. I’ll meet you out at seven 30. Can’t do it. And Saturdays, the class is at 11 till 1230. And so then there you have it. But most weeknights, I can’t meet you for dinner, can’t meet you for drinks unless I can see you at seven 30 because nothing gets in the way. I don’t book calls, I don’t take calls.
Not from anybody, not from prospective people who want to work with me, not even from existing clients. So I lock in that time and I protect it. I actually put it in my calendar six every night, 11 o’clock on Saturday so that there’s nothing that gets in the way of the things that I need to do to have a good life and hit my goals. So the same thing comes down when I’m trading or when I’m doing my preparation for the next session and I’m looking at everything and I got a lot of stuff to go through. So we have systematized stuff, we have screeners, but then all that stuff has to be broken down. Then we have to compare and contrast and make sure that we are not getting style drift where you might have anything where you’re on the same side of the trade, whether it’s a directional trade and an underlying stock, or whether it’s an option strategy with that particular same underlying stock, or if it’s a multiple option position, like a spread for example, or a broken wing strategy.
Using options on that same underlying. So net, when you look at all that stuff, you have to say, okay, well what’s your net exposure? What’s your portfolio heat? Which is something I spend a lot of time on. What’s your portfolio heat? And then with the futures, it’s the same thing. You might have trades long and short in a particular commodity, but then you have seasonal spreads. You have things that most people don’t know how to look at. So we look at that as well. Cause it’s harder to systematize. We’re kind of systematizing it more and more. But it’s harder to put three different evaluation tools together when we don’t own them and then bring it all into one place. So there has to be a requisite amount of work on my end to kind of pull that all together. But again, excuse me, when it comes down to my environment, I need to keep my environment as clean as possible because to me, where I perform, I don’t worry about the execution because that’s easy. You type in, it’s basically sending an email. What’s the ticker? What’s the quantity? What’s the price? Time enforced, good for the day, good to cancel. So it’s like sending an email. You get the recipient, you get your subject, then you get the body. Maybe there’s an attachment, three or four
Fields hit go motors in. Nowadays you can adjust your stop by just dragging something on the screen. So it’s easy peasy to me. The work is done in the preparation. That’s where you’re culturing your pearls. And so when I get to doing that work, that’s where I don’t want to be involved. And I actually used to wear, this is the funniest true story. I have lots of different headphones and things and earbuds, but one of my earliest pairs of bows, quiet comfort, noise canceling headphones, I’d actually put them on, turn them on, but without the cord, right? Cause at the time, they weren’t Bluetooth. You had the damn cord that would come in and put the jack in your device. So I just sit there for the noise canceling part. Cause I didn’t want any background noise to infiltrate what I was trying to do to work on.
So they call that focus man. That’s extreme focus. So you should do everything you possibly can to protect that space because that has a lot to do with the level of the quality of work that you can do within that timeframe that you’ve set out for yourself to be prepared for the next day. If you turn that into a fuck all, then so be it. But then you’re going to get those types of results. So draw really good boundaries with yourself and don’t give yourself permission to let any idiot come walking through your space because that’s when you have to be your most focused, right? Anyway, please like and subscribe to show. You can send a comment in. I appreciate that. I see everything myself, and if you want to suggest the topic, no problem. I’d be happy to address. Unless as long as I have something intelligent to say about it, I can give you my take on it. Or maybe where you can find a more resourceful answer. Happy to help you. Either way. That’s all I got for you folks. Have a great weekend and I’ll see you Monday.
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