A lot of traders believe that simply showing up every day is enough.
They sit at their desks, watch the market, place a few trades, and repeat the process the next day. But being present isn’t the same as making progress.
One of the biggest differences between traders who eventually improve and those who remain stuck is how intentionally they use their time.
You need to develop what I call a sense of urgency—not an urgency to place more trades, but an urgency to become better.
Trading With Urgency Doesn’t Mean Trading More
When I talk about urgency, I’m not telling traders to rush into positions.
It’s about showing up every day with the mindset that you need to improve. Every trading session should have a purpose, and every mistake should provide information you can use going forward.
There is also a limited window in which you can dedicate your time, money, and energy to becoming a trader. Trading has an opportunity cost. Every hour spent learning this craft is an hour that could have been spent earning money elsewhere or with friends and family.
Treating your development as open-ended can make it easy to become complacent.
A deadline, target, or defined goal creates focus. When time feels limited, you’re more likely to eliminate low-value activities and concentrate on what actually moves you forward.
Hours Alone Don’t Create Expertise
One of the biggest misconceptions in trading is that simply spending more hours in front of the screen will automatically make you better.
It won’t.
Improvement comes from deliberate practice—having a specific skill you’re trying to develop, getting feedback on your performance, and intentionally correcting your mistakes.
Think about two golfers at a driving range.
One hits a bucket of balls without thinking about what they’re doing. The other is working specifically on their grip, swing path, or contact and evaluates every shot to determine what to change on the next one.
They may spend the same amount of time practicing, but they’re not getting the same quality of repetition.
Trading is no different. (Read about how Lance uses Meta Learning HERE)
Stop Going Through the Motions
Many traders spend their entire day reacting to the market without having a specific objective.
They lose money and become frustrated. They make money and move on. Then they come back the next day and repeat the cycle.
Instead, every trade should provide an opportunity to learn.
Ask yourself:
What did I see? What did I get right? What did I miss? What should I do differently next time?
The goal is to extract as many lessons as possible from every trading session and immediately incorporate those lessons into your process.
That’s how you compress the learning curve.
Give Every Day One Clear Goal
Trading with intention doesn’t require a list of ten things you need to fix.
Pick one.
Maybe you need to improve your entries. Maybe you chase too often. Maybe you hold losers too long. Whatever your biggest constraint is, make that your focus for the day.
Then use a daily report card to evaluate yourself honestly.
If your goal was to stop chasing and you successfully avoided chasing all day, that’s progress—even if you didn’t have a profitable day.
Measuring your behavior gives you something much more valuable than simply looking at your P&L: feedback about whether you’re actually improving. (Read about Lance’s Daily Routine HERE)
Eliminate Distractions
Urgency also means taking the process seriously while you’re actually trading.
That means avoiding distractions like scrolling social media, browsing unrelated websites, or constantly checking your phone during market hours.
When I managed the Chicago office at Trillium, we had a simple rule: phones were away and random internet browsing wasn’t allowed during market hours.
The goal wasn’t to make traders miserable. It was to help them learn as quickly as possible.
The faster you get focused repetitions and meaningful feedback, the faster you can develop the skills required to succeed.
Slow Markets Are Still an Opportunity
Perhaps the most important time to maintain urgency is when the market is boring.
When there aren’t many opportunities, it’s tempting to sit around waiting for something to happen. But slow markets can become some of your most valuable learning periods.
Review old trades. Study charts. Build new playbooks. Research setups. Backtest ideas. Revisit situations you didn’t recognize in real time.
Instead of waiting for the next great trade, prepare yourself to recognize it immediately when it arrives.
The goal should be to capture a setup the first time you see it—not after you’ve watched it play out five or ten times.
Make Every Hour Count
This becomes even more important for part-time traders.
If you only have a few hours each week to dedicate to trading, you can’t afford to spend those hours mindlessly watching charts.
Use your limited time intentionally. Complete your daily report card. Review your trades. Study charts. Refine your playbook. Use weekends to do the work you can’t fit into the trading week.
The number of hours matters, but what you’re doing during those hours matters far more.
Small Improvements Compound
A trader who consistently approaches each day with urgency and intention can make dramatically more progress than someone who simply puts in the same number of hours.
One day of focused improvement may not seem significant.
But repeat it for a year, and the difference becomes substantial.
Repeat it for five years, and it can change the trajectory of your career.
Over a decade, the compounding effect can be the difference between someone who figured trading out and someone who is still trying to figure it out.
Final Thoughts
Don’t confuse time spent trading with time spent improving.
Showing up is only the beginning. Your goal should be to make every session count.
Show up with intention. Eliminate distractions. Choose one clear goal. Review your performance. Use mistakes as information, and take advantage of slow periods to build your future edge.
Instead of asking yourself, “How many hours am I putting into trading?”
Ask:
“What are those hours actually doing to make me a better trader?”
That shift in mindset can dramatically accelerate your learning curve.
Next read: “The overlooked key to trading success”
