I went about ten years with no weekends. Now I not only take weekends, but sometimes I skip out Thursday and Friday as well. Here's the real kick: When I finally figured out what it was that would work for me, it was an approach I had toyed with off and on for about ... Ten years lol.
Just be mindful of the ahh shits - as you're heading into next week They're always lurking right around the corner - for all of us RN
Usually when I taken a few days off, I actually do sim an hour before I start trading, it relaxes me cause no matter how long one trades for a living, there is moments of forgetting simpliest things after just few days off, of course am old fart, but have been known to hit sell when I want to buy after days off.
This seems to be very frustrating - but the sweetener is in being successful enough not to care too much that you didn't get there quicker.
My sense of humor about what a fuck up I was for as long as I was and the fact that the answer to "this trading question" was known to me for most of that time has been a great source of enjoyment for me and my friends. However, my wife is still pissed that it took me so long. She'll probably never get over it. There is a big difference, you see, between knowing the answer and recognizing that it is indeed the answer (and I know you know this). For example, I see many others here at ET who also do seem to know the answer, but most of those I see who know the answer have not yet come to recognize it as the answer because they have not yet learned (and may never learn) what the real question is.
I think what you write is true. Human nature to over-complicate. We impose our own view of what trading should be on the market. And this can have unforeseen consequences. Probably better to start with a few logical ideas, test them against data, build a strategy around it and execute than waste months (years?) "learning" all the while becoming more confused. Yes there is a lot of skill and nuance required to trade very successfully, and yet it should be possible to put together something low frequency and moderately profitable fairly quickly; or do something else. This profession has a similar payoff profile to pro sports. Need to find out quickly if you can hack it, otherwise you're investing too much in a lottery ticket style DOTM call. And this is contradicted in a few exceptional cases I know who took the better part of a decade to get and stay profitable, and are glad they did. Of course their (improbable?) success isn't a good reason for others to follow the same long, painful path filled with opportunity for crippling self doubt. I like this. And I respect the comment about your wife. You did your thing. Too many successful men I know aren't in the least bit free, as despite their accomplishments and abilities they are ruled by their wives. You're an interesting and rare man if you can keep your wife despite an initially unproductive decade long foray into trading. Kudos. Interested if your "answer" was similar to mine. And what caused you to over-complicate...
Why did I over-complicate? I think I know, but there is no value to me and certainly not to others in going into it here as the reasons/causes for my mistakes are highly personal and relevant to me alone. As to our "answers," I suppose that the answers for most who have found his answer would be similar to one another. Without going into more detail than I would like, I'll explain my answer like this: I can now categorize each trade I take as exhibiting one of three forms of market behavior. Each occurs near a market turn of some degree. I noticed these very early on in my attempts to become a trader. I strayed from them, but repeatedly came back to them. I can now identify these situations any number of ways: a few specific yet simple chart patterns, a combination of technical indicators, I can see it transpiring in the DOM, and by observing order flow/watching the tick stream. During my wandering in the wilderness days, I tried all of those methods/approaches, and I failed miserably and repeatedly at each one. All of those approaches are an epiphenomena of the thing itself: each arises out of and exists only as a result/by-product of the market itself and the logic/illogic of those who are participating in it at any particular moment. I failed as a trader so long as I labored under an understanding or set of assumptions that was the mirror image of this reality. That is, so long as I expected the thing itself, the market, to conform to what the epiphenomena were "saying" it should do, rather than use the epiphenomena simply to help tell me what the market was at that moment doing, I failed. My answer to the problem of trading was the realization, or rather the recognition of which was the tail and which was the dog, and by my coming to respect the fact that the dog did indeed wag his own damn tail.