How to name your trading state in one word before every session
Diagnosis comes before the protocol. The cheapest diagnostic tool in trading is one word written down before you place a trade.
Why one word and not a journal entry
Long journals get abandoned because they cost minutes you do not have at the open and they produce narrative instead of data. One word costs ten seconds and it is sortable. Flat, wired, tired, angry, eager, foggy, calm, rushed — pick from a short fixed list so the entries are comparable across weeks.
Log it three times
Once before the session starts, once after any loss larger than your average, and once at the close. Three words per day, nothing else. After twenty sessions, put them next to your P&L and your rule breaks. The pattern is almost never a surprise once you can see it — wired mornings oversize, tired afternoons stop filtering setups, angry re-entries cluster inside ten minutes of a stop.
Then match the protocol to the word
Arousal after a loss is tilt, and it wants a timer and physical movement. Hesitation before an entry is fear, and it wants a rehearsal drill on smaller size. Sizing up after green days is overconfidence, and it wants a governor on how and when size can rise. Fatigue wants a hard session end. The point of the log is that you stop guessing which one you are in.
Takeaway — Twenty sessions of one-word logs will tell you more about your equity curve than twenty hours of reading.
Work it through with the Coach
Describe your last bad trade and it names the state, picks the protocol and gives you the exercise to run before your next session. Free to use.