...when you are flat and looking for action? You don't get paid sitting there watching the screen all day.
You answered your own question. You have to be focused on executing your "system" based upon the rules that you, yourself, created instead of merely craving to have an open-position on. Otherwise, randomly take a flyer in the eMini-S&P and take a one-tick profit as soon as you possibly can.
Patience is the name of the game. Sitting and waiting is the hardest part of trading. Better get used to it.
I had trouble with that too in the past ... I'm going to 'paper' trade alot here before I start playing the market again. Define my rules more; play the game rather then gambling
imagine you are in april of next year, doing your taxes. imagine you are looking at your P & L, winning and losing trades imagine that one by one, you are deleting losing trades, trades that were made under exactly the conditions you are talking about, when you were flat, but looking for action imagine the P & L bottom line changing upward, with each deleted trade. and you'll begin to understand, how not needing to be paid right now, is in fact some of the highest pay there is the work you are doing, is called 'maintaining readyness', and it is real work it's what the military does in peacetime
A extremely succesful trader once told me, "we get paid to wait". It took me a while to believe it, but it is true. It's closely related to discipline. Now having said that, yes there are times I get inpatient and jump into an impuse trade, usually with negative results.