In This Episode
- The diet that helps you sleep better
- Supplements that help
- Blue light blocking glasses
- Neurophone
- Hypnosis tracks for better sleep
- 5 Apps that reduce blue light
- Oura ring
- Inner Talk Subliminals
- LibriVox
Sleep is Essential for High Performance Trading
Since the Forex market is open 24 hours, there can be a tendency for newer traders to stay up late and not get enough sleep. This can also be true in the crypto markets, which never close.
We share what works for us, when it comes to getting a good night's sleep. There are some solutions that you may have heard of before, but there's at least 1 solution that you probably haven't heard of.
…and it's pretty funny.
Read the Transcript
Hugh: Hi, Walter. How did you optimize your sleep or do you even optimize your sleep? Has that helped you in trading?
Walter: I did and then I had kids. Actually, I am thinking a lot about it. These are the things I do. I will give it to you quickly. So what I used to do before kids, is I really had a good schedule where I would just wake up naturally. Check the charts because the New York candle was close between seven AM and nine AM over here in Sydney. Depending on the time of the year.
Here in winter, the New York candles close at seven AM and then in summer, it is like nine AM. There’s a month where it’s actually eight AM when there is, you know, between time changes in the States and Australia.
Anyway, what I used to do is just wake up. I would check the charts to make sure everything is good. If there is anything that needs to be managed like move to breakeven or whatever and then I would go for a run and then come home. Eat and maybe go surfing first in the afternoon like that.
At night it is when I would put my orders in because around six o’clock or so, five to six or seven, that is when the market is open over in London. And that is why I wanted my orders to get triggered like London or New York and then I would just go to sleep.
The next morning again, check and make sure if I did get stopped out, that I am not going to be stopped out. Should I move to breakeven or whatever. So it is pretty simple. It was pretty good. Now I have an alarm clock. It was awesome. I have to get up at a certain time.
Then you have kids and they’re up in the middle of the night and a lot of stuff happens. So now what I have learned to do is supplements and watch the diet. There’s a couple of things that I like to do. I do not eat late at night. After about seven or eight o’clock is when I stop eating for sure. I do not want to be eating at ten o’clock or whatever.
The other thing I do is I take magnesium. It is actually magnesium, calcium and Vitamin D mixed but I mixed it up and it is like a liquid thing then you drink it. It is like powder and you mix it to drink it.
What I found out is that having the magnesium before you go to sleep about thirty minutes or so before you go to sleep is amazing. It makes it so much easier to sleep. The other thing that is really good especially for traders is you can get these blue light filters on your phone like these apps and stuff.
I do not know if it works for Apple. I heard that it might not work for the iPhone, I am not sure. What these things do and they have the downloads too. Actually, we’ll put some links in the show notes for people who are interested.
What that does is it cuts down the blue light. The reality is, I saw a talk the other day from a Psychologist. He was talking about how, if you have blue light within an hour of the time that you go to sleep, which is for most traders, it is going to be the case. Let’s face it you are probably going to check the charts before you go to bed.
Especially where I am because it’s New York or London like the markets are raging. So she said the blue light from the screen, if you do that within an hour going to bed, it actually impacts your REM sleep. REM sleep is the deep sleep. It is the most important sleep of the night. You get less and less of it as you get older.
When you are a baby, you almost go straight to REM sleep. It is the deep regenerative sleep. It is good for everything. It is good for your body, your brain’s connection to everything.
So what she said was that if you blue light, within an hour before you go to bed, that will drastically reduce your REM sleep. So I was like how do I go around this? Viola! Blue light filter.
So you can use these blue light filters that change your laptop or your monitor screen definitely for your phone and that sort of thing so that you are not getting that blue light right before you go to sleep.
The other thing that you can do is if you get good at this kind of imagery. Listen to some guy in imagery stuff about relaxing your whole body. It is a kind of self-hypnosis; it is very similar. If you listen to those for a while then you get really good at kind of relaxing your body so when you are lying in bed and cannot go to sleep.
Just getting good at relaxing you know from the toes up to the head slowly kind of each part of your body you are putting it to sleep. So that is another thing. Those are the things I would say.
You can look at supplements. Obviously, you do not want to have caffeine. I am off the caffeine. Definitely not before, like if you are going to bed let’s say you go to bed at eleven pm, you do not want to have caffeine at six.
If you can stop not having between six to eleven that is ideal. If you go to bed at nine, you do not want to have it at four or whatever. That is a killer too.
Hugh: Hey there! I hope you find this episode useful. I just want to let you know that Walter and I give away something valuable every month that helps traders improve their skills. You can enter to win by simply leaving an iTunes review and leaving a comment on our YouTube videos.
At the end of each month, we'll look at the comments and reviews from the month and we'll pick a winner at random. Each comment and each review counts for one entry during the month that it's pitted.
So, if you're interested in that, be sure to enter after this podcast is over. Alright, back to the episode.
Walter: Vigorous exercise is good but you don’t necessarily want to do it right before bed either. Vigorous exercises are really good in the morning or in the afternoon but not so much around the evening time. So those are the things that I have learned over time. What about you? What have you got going on?
Hugh: Probably do four things like I found, I set up an Oura ring. So it measures your heart rate and all that stuff for your sleeping. I tried that for a while and it basically said I need about ten-hour of sleep to really get a good night's sleep.
Walter: Can you tell me a little bit more about it? Is that like being connected to an app or something? Is that how that works?
Hugh: Yeah, it's Bluetooth connected to your phone and then it gives you a sleep score at the end of the night.
Walter: I thought it was a mood ring when you said Oura ring. I was thinking it was something you picked up from a hippie but you know this is like a new technology. It is like technology. I got you.
Hugh: It was actually pretty well-built.
Walter: I believe it.
Hugh: I mean, it said ten-hour so I kind of used that as my gauge. If I get ten hours, I know I had a good night's sleep and I feel good. If I cannot get ten hours then I know I kind of have to push through it.
The other thing is, you mentioned the blue light and stuff. I wear these blue light blocking glasses.
Walter: Gaming goggles. You can get gaming glasses, those are good too.
Hugh: Yeah, definitely and then we tried, recently this thing called NED. It is like marijuana droplets. It’s got marijuana and CBD in it. That helps me sleep if I cannot sleep and then basically just earplugs and eye masks have been huge for me as far as the biggest things. I just sleep all night when I do that.
Walter: Really interesting.
Hugh: That’s about it.
Walter: I just found that you could also use a routine where you listen to subliminal. So the sound of the ocean on the subliminal like the inner talks subliminal. I’ll link those up too in the show notes. Those could work too.
Routines are really good with kids. They do certain routines they know like, “Now, it is time for me to go to sleep”. You could do that too. What was the other thing I was thinking? Your Oura ring reminded me of this. Probably because I know I am a sucker for this.
I saw some ads because I love these sorts of things, kind of like the Oura rings and stuff you know, I saw some ads where they said it is like a breathing analysis. You’ll blow into a thing and then it tells you like what was your last meal, have you heard about this? Have you seen it?
Hugh: No.
Walter: So you blow into it, it is like a breathalyzer. Similar to what the cops have but you blow into it and then it’ll tell you, your last meal had too many carbs and this and that and here’s your body metabolism.
Basically it gives you all this information about your body based on just breathing into the thing. I thought that was insane. It kind of reminds me of the Oura ring. It kind of gives you some feedback on where you are at and what you should be doing. I do not know if it tells you if you are sleep deprived or anything like that or if you need more sleep or this and that but it was really fascinating.
It sounded more kind of like along the lines of diet. It is kind of gauging where you are now versus what you ate recently. It is telling you that you probably should not eat that many calories because you probably had too many carbs. You probably needed more fat or something like that.
It sounded like that was kind of the thing but there might have been other stuff that evolved. I hope I’ll see another ad because I want to check it out. I didn’t really have time to check it out at that time but I wanted to learn more about it.
Hugh: That sounds cool, super cool. I see.
Walter: I know. I was like you know, all these things that you and I are both kind of into like news, the Oura ring and the — what’s the thing with the…?
Hugh: Neurophone.
Walter: Yeah, all those things. Subliminal and all that stuff. I just saw it is pretty cool and I wanted to mention that to you because I know you are like me. You kind of like things like that.
Hugh: Cool.
Walter: Sounds really cool.
Hugh: I’ll check it out. I will look into it. One last thing on the, you were talking about music before going to sleep. I found the books, listening to audio books is probably one of the best ways to fall asleep but then I always lose my place in the books so it does not really work well.
Walter: It is so true, especially if they are monotonous. Have you ever heard — just for scenes and sights — have you heard of LibriVox?
Hugh: No.
Walter: It is free so I’ll put a link down. LibriVox basically is a free audible like audible, the Amazon one. It is audible but you’ve got to download these MP3’s of books. There are a lot of classics and stuff. One time we’re on this massive road trip and we were listening to the Count of Monte Cristo.
It is long but here’s the problem with LibriVox. The problem is you can volunteer, I can volunteer. You can volunteer. Anyone can volunteer to read a chapter of a book. So what ends up happening, you are listening to the Count of Monte Cristo. What ends up happening is you’ll get like Chapter One. We have Dave from Utah reading the book.
Sometimes, they’ll even say, “This is Dave Thomas from Utah reading you Chapter One of the Count of Monte Cristo”. And then you get Anastasia from Russia reading the next one and there is kind of like a disconnect. Do you know what I mean?
So we’re listening to it on a road trip. My wife and I and we’ll be like, “Oh no! Not Tim again, he’s awful.” Sometimes people are really good like they give characters and stuff. There will be a little bit of you know, they use kind of a different voice or something. And then sometimes, people are just so monotonous.
They’ll just read the book like, “They busted down the door” but really good for putting yourself to sleep. So tip, if you like listening to books that you do not care about losing your place, you can download some really boring LibriVox chapters.
Hugh: Sounds great.
Walter: That could work. Find a nice boring one.
Hugh: I’m just picturing the Russian accent versus the Southern draw like all in the same book.
Walter: It is terrible. It is so bad. Literally, it is like Russian recap. It is like every chapter you do not know what you are going to get. It is like, “Oh, Chapter thirteen is Dave again. No!” It is just crazy and you just keep wishing that if you have a good reader on a chapter, you keep wishing, “Please, please do the next one. Please do the next chapter.” It is kind of funny. That is with LibriVox.
Hugh: Alright. Thanks, Walter.
Walter: See you!
Hugh: All the information in this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and is not trading or investment advice.
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