How to Stay Motivated When Learning to Trade
Staying motivated when learning to trade will require focusing on intrinsic rewards rather than external ones like profits.
To keep motivation high, break down your learning journey into small, achievable goals centred around skill mastery. Celebrate progress, no matter how incremental, as each success fuels momentum. Explore trading topics that genuinely spark your curiosity, and give yourself some autonomy by incorporating personal interests into your routine.
This approach will help you maintain focus, build competence, and stay driven even when the process gets challenging.
What is Motivation?
Many people want to learn to trade, but why do some commit while others give up? What drives some to success while others fall short? Let’s start by defining motivation.
Most people think of it as a short-term burst of energy, like feeling pumped up to do something. They believe that when they face resistance, they need to “motivate” themselves, which is why motivational videos are so popular.
In 1985, psychologists Deci and Ryan introduced Self-Determination Theory, which suggests we are driven by the need for autonomy, mastery and connection. These three factors lead to intrinsic motivation which come from within us, and tend to be more powerful than external ones.
Steven Kotler, a performance expert, expands on this, viewing motivation as a mix of drive, goals, and grit. Drive gets you started, goals show the path, and grit keeps you going. Our emotional drivers create powerful motivation:
- Autonomy
- Mastery
- Connection
- Curiosity
- Passion
Let’s go through practical exercises to help you stack these drivers.
Curiosity and Passion
Neuroscience shows that passion can be built by starting with curiosity, which is an intrinsic motivator. Our curiosity causes us to seek information and stimulates dopamine, a neurochemical that narrows our focus, fuels motivation, and even drives our obsession with learning.
Curiosity alone may not be enough to sustain long-term passion but stacking curiosities can amplify this drive. Here's a simple exercise to help you direct this process toward areas of interest that matter most to you, such as trading:
- Make a list of things that you find interesting. Begin with things directly related to trading, then expand outward to topics that may have indirect or unrelated connections. Be specific in your descriptions, as this will help your brain recognize patterns and connections between different areas.
- Once you've identified these intersections, spend time exploring them each day.
This stacking of curiosities increases dopamine, which improves focus, enhances pattern recognition, makes learning enjoyable, and boosts memory retention. It creates a positive feedback loop where the more connections you find, the more curiosity and passion you build.
Control and Autonomy
Autonomy, or control, is a powerful driver of motivation. When we feel in control of our actions, we become more confident, work harder, and overcome setbacks more easily. Research shows that autonomy triggers a neurochemical boost, making us more effective.
We should also have autonomy in trading. However, there are often two obstacles:
- You have a limited amount of time and can’t really choose what to focus on
- There are tasks you don’t enjoy which need to be done
To overcome this, introduce choice into your routine. Even small decisions can boost motivation. Researchers have found that the act of choosing something, regardless of the outcome, reinforces our sense of control and keeps us engaged.
One way to introduce this is to spend 15-20% of your time exploring personal interests related to trading, and you choose when you do that. Like innovative companies that give employees time for passion projects, this balance of structure and autonomy will keep you motivated and engaged in your learning and trading journey.
Mastery and Momentum
Competence-based motivation is also needed for ongoing learning. Feeling competent along the way helps drive progress toward mastery, with each small success building on the last.
David McClelland’s 1950s research on the Achievement Motive showed competence can be a stronger motivator than autonomy. Today, we know this as mastery, the desire to get better.
Each small win releases dopamine, giving us a sense of momentum. This feeling of progress is one of the biggest motivators, while the lack of progress can drain motivation, especially in traders. Trading is difficult, and many traders lose focus when their progress is solely based on profits rather than learning.
To stay motivated, you should focus less on money and more on mastering skills. Set small goals that won’t take long to hit, but are focused on improving your skill. Hitting multiple goals helps you achieve momentum, and improving skill increases your mastery.
You Next Moves
Based what we’ve been through, here’s how you can increase your motivation:
- Curiosity Exploration: Make a list of topics related to trading that spark your curiosity and explore them.
- Set Short-Term Skill-Based Goals: Break down your learning journey into small, skill-focused goals. For example, aim to improve one area of technical analysis.
- Track Your Progress: Create a progress journal to log your daily or weekly goals and improvements. This will help you see improvements over time and maintain a sense of mastery.
- Introduce Autonomy: Set aside 15-20% of your time to explore personal interests related to trading. Decide when and how to use this time to increase your sense of control and engagement.