..Or should I say, the gambling / life balance. I've always known there was an importance to maintaining a good balance to life, but I hadn't realised the real reason why, how the mechanism works, until this week.
The importance of how I live my life away from the computer and how it affects my gambling and trading has always been obvious to me. Having a life away from gambling keeps perspective and reality in
check, staying healthy and fit maintains trading stamina and a clear
head. The importance of how and when I should take time away, and why that matters has been less than clear, in fact, not something I've spent much time considering.
I've always been into figuring out how our heads work, how the various thinking mechanisms tick, inputs and outputs. Though obviously nothing is ever clear cut with the human brain and our emotions, we're hardly a rational species at times. But happenings this week made a few things clearer as to why it's important to do things away from gambling, and I'm not just saying this because I had a few losses! ...I have losses every week...(though fewer than my wins - if I'm fortunate!)
This week saw plenty of work on offer, and I was in the mood to work, but I've had my eye on an event I wanted to attend this week in the city, nothing to do with work at all. Now I could have gone on Thursday, in fact I had planned to do so when I woke up, but of course, there was work available, good work at that and so I stayed home thinking I would head out later... time kept ticking of course and I ended up staying in later and later, in the end, not going out at all.
All the while, it was playing on my mind that I really wanted to go out. As I worked I had a few losses - the quality of which got worse as the day progressed. The first losses were of the acceptable kind, good bets, well thought out and staked accordingly, fortune transpired that my player simply didn't win and that's fine. But as time progressed, and I began thinking more about wasting my time staying in (especially as the sun was shining), I became distracted. Unknowingly, I was becoming more preoccupied with making my day pay it's worth for staying in.
Whenever you want to make gambling pay, more specifically - the time you spend gambling, you are instantly going to commit a heap of mental errors. You place impatient bets, you get concerned about losing, enough to be tempted to chase losses, decisions aren't arrived at in the same way they would normally be, the list is endless. We all know there's a million ways to lose in this game, not many ways to win, this situation is not exactly helping your cause.
The more I reflected on this on Thursday night, the more I realised how simple this really is. If you don't want to work, if there's somewhere you'd rather be, stop working and go! Clearly "work" in this case means gambling, I'm not suggesting you leave the office because you'd rather be playing golf, not unless you want to lose your job. What I am saying is, if you'd rather be doing something else than gambling, you should do it. The alternative opens the door to too much concern with time and it's wastage.
Come Friday morning, I decided a clear plan was called for. The event I wanted to attend was still going on, I decided I would work until midday, then go, regardless of work. Maintaining my life balance was of higher priority than placing a few more bets. I have to say, it worked great, I was relaxed in the morning, I knew what I was doing and had a few hours in which to focus properly. Equally as important, I avoided betting in a weakened mental state in the afternoon - avoiding losses. Not only this, but my work / life balance was restored, perspective regained and I was ready once again to focus on Saturday morning with a clear mind.
There's two parts to this then, the 'time' element - anytime you are placed in a situation where you feel you 'have to' make the time you spend gambling pay, you are operating in less than optimal mental state. And the other part is to do with maintaining perspective, recharging the mental batteries and reminding yourself of why you work, and why you focus properly when you do. So much of our gambling and trading mentality is about positioning yourself in the right situations to think properly, doing stuff you want to do away from gambling, when you want to do them, is vital to our success.
Time, in gambling, is to be spent doing things properly and not meant to be used as some yard stick to measure whether you are finding it worthwhile or not - you can figure that out after a meaningful number of bets have been placed or time has passed, ie. several months. Kind of paradoxical I know, but that is the correct attitude - 'staying in the present' is a more commonly used, easily understood description. If you find you can't spend time doing the right things, then reduce the time you aim to spend, and commit to work properly for the entire time.
The difficult thing in gambling,if you are losing then you feel like spending even more time, working even harder until you have the money back. But where does it end? To what end are you going to spend all this time? I have a friend who after having some losses, withdrew himself into work to such an extent that he stopped going out, ceased to keep up with friends and worryingly, was close to not even looking after himself. Clearly, it could be easy to say he has a problem with his gambling, I'm not really commenting on that here - he may or may not, I'm reserving opinion, but what is apparent, when you analyse the time spent, is that he is not making any progress at all - just the opposite.
He was going round in circles, he would win for a while, then the amount of time he was spending gambling would begin to preoccupy his mind and add 'pressure', he would then begin to rush to make money, sure enough, losses would follow - more than he won previously. He would then work even harder than before and so on, in an ever deepening circle.
As silly as this sounds, it's probably unnervingly easy to get involved in. We've all got to be smart in this regard, keep a balance between gambling and life, overbearing pressure coming from spending too much time gambling will then cease to be a potential problem.
