Sleep and Trading Relationship

Article by the great trader – 🐦DoerXbt

Like most representatives of free professions and business, a trader rarely lives according to a measured schedule. Most often, in order to settle this schedule at least a little, you have to learn the principles of time management. But usually, efforts are aimed at optimizing the workflow: having time to do the maximum and, accordingly, earn more. But we usually think about quality rest last.
A typical problem for traders is working at night, during trading sessions on another continent. The market is not sleeping! In advanced cases, a trader can hypnotize the chart for days

How long does it take for an adult to get enough sleep? Experts from Harvard Medical School claim that 7-9 hours. Other studies give similar numbers. The problem is that the need for sleep is influenced by the characteristics of the body, as well as the state of health at the current moment, so scientists cannot yet give recommendations to humanity with an accuracy of up to a minute. But from my own experience, I will say that I need to sleep about 10 hours to feel good.

In case of regular stress that we get during trading, we need to sleep 9-10 hours

If you are a woman trader, then you need to sleep for an hour more. This is a physiological factor of the female body.

A common belief that with age the need for sleep increases, but young people can walk longer because the body is strong, – falsely young people, need to sleep more and if everything is ok now, then it will be worse, my age is 25 years old and believe me, I know about than I say because I am a workaholic and have slept very little in my life but did not attach any importance to this because I felt good but lack of sleep has a cumulative effect

At the age of 10-15 years, you need to sleep 9-11 hours, for 14-17-year-olds preferably 8-10 hours, and for older people 7-8 hours is enough, that is, most people on Twitter are people under 25-27 years old, that is, optimal sleep is 10 hours

In addition, if you read somewhere that some great trader or businessman slept 4 hours a day, forget this information. These are phenomena, you should not take them as an example because our physiologists are different, I also want to note that be careful with experiments such as polyphasic sleep, sleep deprivation, etc. The benefits of them are extremely doubtful, but the harm is very likely experienced on imagining it. Sleeping too long is also bad. Instead of sleeping for days after a marathon of wakefulness, it is better to get enough sleep every day. I used to try to work for wear and then sleep off, the result was that I was in a state of squeezed lemon and I couldn’t trade, I didn’t even want to open the charts.

However, scientists also do not deny the existence of chronotypes. Everyone knows the simplest division into “owls” and “larks”, an extended classification adds “pigeons”, and the most complex includes seven chronotypes. But there are not so many biological “owls”: no more than 20%, and according to some estimates, even less. In most cases, falling asleep late is the result of a habit, which means that you can successfully deal with this. And it’s even necessary if you have to get up early (“larks” and “pigeons” are much easier to adapt to the working rhythm accepted in society). For those who work on a free schedule, it is best to find your ideal sleep and wake schedule, taking into account both circadian and individual rhythms.

Now let’s go over the health and sleep points.

•  Sleep and health. Lack of sleep negatively affects the nervous system, metabolism, and heart function reduces immunity, and provokes the onset of diabetes and a bunch of other diseases.
•  Sleep and performance. Many studies have shown that a sleepy person has a sharp decrease in activity. Yes, you yourself know perfectly well what it is like to crawl like a sleepy fly.
•  Sleep and motivation. Yes, what kind of motivation can we talk about if there is only one desire – to collapse on a pillow?
•  Sleep and concentration. A huge number of accidents occur due to the fact that a sleepy driver leaves on the road, hoping for the action of a cup of coffee or a can of energy. A lot of accidents at work are due to lack of sleep. Well, a sleepy trader makes more mistakes.
•  Sleep and thinking. Well-sleep people, as experiments show, are better at solving problems where you need to find patterns. Sleep improves information retention. Laying out information in a dream on the shelves, the brain finds solutions to the problems that torment us. And with a lack of it, all cognitive abilities deteriorate. Acute lack of sleep can even lead to confusion.
• Sleep and appearance. Bruises under the eyes, bruising – a reflection of the internal state. And female traders will certainly be interested to know that quality sleep improves skin condition.
• Sleep and weight. If you have a profession that involves a sedentary lifestyle, the risk of gaining extra pounds increases. And if you don’t get enough sleep on a regular basis, the risk is even higher, since a lack of melatonin leads to weight gain and prevents it from being lost.
• Sleep and stress. Do you want to burn out quickly, increase your level of anxiety, or earn neuroses and phobias? Sleep less! I personally know such people and I myself belonged to them.

And now to my story, March 2022 came to trading, I didn’t sleep at all, although if sleep at 3 o’clock can be called sleep, then yes I slept, I studied trading, I tried to achieve results, and the result is that I got neurosis, I was just like a cannonball I I could break loose at the moment, I could be rude to say too much, I wanted to delete everything and quit trading, but I realized that the problem is that my body simply does not have enough sleep, I began to explore the topic of sleep and health, restoring sleep is not as easy as they say do not sleep for 24 hours get up on the alarm, but get up on the alarm during the deep sleep phase and you want to kill the whole world is a great idea, but about not sleeping 24 you will jump out the window rather than restore sleep, besides I know people on Twitter who also have problems with sleep and believe me, they are not happy about it!

Let’s go through the problems in my case

•  Nerves are very strong breakdowns
•  Constant apathy
•  Phases of depression
•  Procrastination
•  Negative reactions to everything
•  In my case, loss of appetite, although they say that I want to eat more, again, physiology
•  Scattered attention
•  Loss of focus on everything
•  Headaches
•  Seizures
• Bad skin color

This is a small part of what overtook me and yes, I am a healthy person, if I may say so, all this came to me with a lack of sleep overtime over the years, not only for trading but for other professions in which I worked

In addition, I want to note that the loss of motivation to trade is a very significant thing when you open a chart and you understand that you are disgusted to look at it and you are not at all interested in trading!

How to get optimal sleep?

• Strict sleep timing
• On a PC or laptop, turn on the warm light according to the schedule around the evening when it gets dark outside so that you do not get an excess of blue light because it affects sleep
•  Put your gadgets away
• Create physical activity during the day with some light exercise.
• Get outdoors more

In general, this is a summary of what can overtake you with a lack of sleep, it is worth considering that you care about a six-figure amount in the account or a six-figure hospital bill for your health.