I once broke a world record.

When I was in the beginning stages of learning to trade, I'd spend almost all day staring at charts.

Outside of eating and sleeping, I basically never left my desk.

Although I was locked in, I found myself in a predicament.

When considering what I actually accomplished each day, I could think of maybe one or two things.

14 hours at my desk and I…

Took one trade…

Moved my stop loss twice…

Changed my entry criteria mid-session…

And uhhhh… watched YouTube videos about "advanced" strategies I guess.

This shouldn't take longer than 30 minutes.

Where did the other 13.5 hours of my day go?

And how the hell did I manage to not follow my trading plan once?

I was a master at inefficient trading.

No one could spend as much time as me "analyzing" without making any money.

This is a discouraging feeling.

A couple days ago, a student inside IFT told me this is exactly how he felt.

He wants to be profitable but…

He'll get caught up doing random analysis all day.

One quick chart check turns into a four-hour session.

A quick insta scroll turns into missing the London session entirely.

Then he feels guilty for not executing his plan, which leads to revenge trading, and the cycle continues.

If this sounds familiar, congratulations.

You're a normal trader with normal emotions and obstacles.

Here's what I told him:

Stop being a victim of your own habits.

Make a clear daily routine with dedicated trading blocks. Highest priority setups are during your best session (London for me). Everything else is noise.

Use tools to limit distractions. Close Twitter. Turn off notifications. Put your phone in another room. The market doesn't care about your FOMO.

Understand that your negative thoughts aren't reality. When you execute your plan instead of listening to doubt, those thoughts lose power over you.

Habits outweigh willpower. Make discipline easy - give yourself a reward after following your rules. After I take my planned trade, I close the charts. No exceptions.

Focus on the feeling of executing perfectly, not just the profits. The money follows the process, not the other way around.

Two days after I gave him this advice, he said "Liquidity sweeps are easy to spot now" and hit his first 3:1 winner in weeks.

The difference wasn't strategy.

It was focus.

I realized I wasn't trading. I was procrastinating with charts open.

Real trading looks like this:

Check daily bias (5 minutes)

Wait for liquidity sweep (however long it takes)

Execute entry (30 seconds)

Close charts

That's it.

Everything else is just expensive entertainment.

The market rewards execution, not analysis paralysis. 

You don't get paid for watching charts. You get paid for following your plan when it matters.

Everyone thinks the edge is in finding better setups.

It's not.

The edge is in executing the setups you already know work.

Consistently. Without hesitation. Without second-guessing.

Most traders know what to do. They just don't do it.

They get distracted by noise. 

They overthink simple concepts. 

They turn 30-minute trading sessions into all-day chart-watching marathons.

In here, I'll show you exactly how to trade efficiently instead of just staying busy.

But fair warning - it's not about doing more. It's about doing less, better.

Talk soon,

Atif

P.S. The student I mentioned? He's now passing prop firm challenges because he learned to execute instead of analyze. Sometimes the breakthrough isn't learning something new - it's actually doing what you already know works.