#96 - The Importance Of Staying Physically Active To Avoid Mental Fatigue
Hey everyone. This is Kirk here again at optionalpha.com and welcome back to the daily call. On today’s call, I want to talk about the importance of staying physically active to avoid mental fatigue. I think this is really important because to be honest with you, physical activity and working out, being healthy, fitness, it all really relates to options trading in so many different ways. I mean, just the core concepts and the daily activities and the consistency, but also because I am somebody who struggles with continuing to stay physically active. Now, I'm 100% blessed with really good genes and I’m not talking about like the old navy jeans that I wear. I’m talking about like the generics that I have in the family history that I have. I’m just really honestly blessed with it. I know people are not and I get that, I understand that. I have enough self-awareness to understand that I’ve got really good genes where I stay pretty trim, pretty physically fit. If I work out a couple of times a week, I don’t need to pound it at the gym and run a thousand miles and I appreciate that a lot. But at the same time, I want to improve my physical fitness all the time. My wife is a huge runner. She loves going to the gym. I mean, it’s like her second home or home away from home. She loves sweating and going to the gym. It’s just crazy and I’m not in that state yet, but I want to improve my physical fitness. I think part of the reason why I continuously want to improve that and hone in on that is because I know that it really affects my mental state of mind, the mental fatigue that I have. I have tracked before… And I did this a while back and so, I know that this happens for me and you should try to get for yourself too. But track just your level of alertness, track your level of tiredness, like how tired are you, tired and fatigued you can be during the day and whether you have been physically active or not. Most people would think – “I don’t have time for the gym or to go out and run or be physically active because it's going to drain my energy.” But it doesn't. It does the total opposite. It gives us energy, it motivates us, it releases all these endorphins and serotonins in the brain and that helps reduce stress. It helps take our mind off of what we’re doing. It helps us focus even more. And so, when I went back and tracked it, I could see and I would rank it on a scale of 1 to 10, basically like I used to do, like my fatigueness IV ranking skill basically. But I used to go back and track and I did this for like 30 days and I would track. Did I work out today? Yes or no. How do I feel? Do I feel mentally fatigue? I’m telling you, every single time that I didn't work out, I just always had more… I was just tired. I just felt like mush. I felt like I couldn’t get through things. That’s when people use things that are just fillers for energy. I don’t know about these fiber energy shots which never works for me. Coffee, candy, sugar, etcetera. It’s just like something that just props you up short term, but then you crash afterwards. And so, I think it’s really, really important that you find some sort of physical activity that you can do to avoid just mentally burning out. Look. Options trading is not something that's very easy. Look. If it was easy, everyone would do it. Options trading is very, very complicated, can be very intense. There’s a lot of terminology, there’s a lot of moving parts. I totally get it. It requires a lot of brainpower and you use up a lot of that brainpower. It’s important that you step away every day or every other day and do something physically active for your body and your brain to recharge the batteries. Many people know that our general activity and schedule with our girls right now is that in the morning, I’ll come in and do emails in the morning or record podcast early in the morning. I get up very early. It’s about 3:30 in the morning right now as I’m actually doing this call because I just generally get up early. I’ve found that that’s a really good routine for me and it's quiet because I’ve got two crazy screaming girls most of the time, so it's really quiet for me to be able to do these. But after the market is open and I monitor positions, we all go to the gym as a family. I mean, it’s now a daily routine for us and has been for a long time. Like about 10:30, we all go to the gym and I basically unplug from things during the middle of the day and I love doing that. I find it incredibly liberating, incredibly recharging of the batteries that I get, like I get clarity by going to the gym, I get clarity by jumping on the treadmill and running or lifting weights or working out or playing basketball or something because I’m just the type of person that I'm so ingrained in what I do. I need to disconnect to be able to not avoid that mental fatigue. I encourage you to do something. If you're at work, walk. If you have to make a phone call, go walk and make a phone call. Get a stand up desk. That’s another way you can do it that can help out too. When you go out for lunch, walk to your lunch destination. Workout in the gym in the morning before you even get to work or make sure to get to the gym in the evening before you go home. Make it a routine. Make it something that you have to do because I’m telling you, it helps improve it. Now look. There’s a lot of studies that have definitely found that exercise helps depression, so you can search on that. I’m not here to talk about all of those studies. But look. There’s a clear and direct correlation between exercise and a healthier state of mind. It is what it is. If you want the best mind possible, have the most mental energy possible to do trading or do whatever you need to do, you have to incorporate some sort of physical activity into it. And if you haven’t yet, start making it a priority now because we’re coming up on the New Year. This is a great time to set in motion things before the New Year, before the New Year which is really important. Don't start it on the New Year. Start it now, like today. Do it right now as you’re listening to this podcast. Go out walk, do some push-ups, jumping jacks, whatever you need to do to start that training in motion. As always, hopefully you guys enjoy these. Until next time, happy trading!
