"What is the most honest thing I could say about yesterday's trades, if no one were watching?"
"Name one moment yesterday when my emotion influenced an entry. Describe the emotion in one word."
consecutive days of journaling. Slow and unbroken is what we are after.
Most beginners think the chart is what they are studying. They are wrong. The chart is the easy part. What they are actually studying — without knowing it — is themselves, under conditions of uncertainty and small money. The journal you keep here is the only reliable record of that study.
When you re-read your entries six months from now, you will be embarrassed by some of them. That embarrassment is the lesson. The trader you were six months ago made decisions that your present self would not make, and you will only know this because you wrote them down.
So: write plainly. Do not perform. The entries that begin "I followed my plan" are usually the least useful; the ones that begin "I knew I shouldn't but I did anyway" are gold.
Lesson 4.2 — Keeping a trade journal
26 min · Stage 4
"The unexamined trade is not worth taking."
— A reasonable paraphrase