Closing the platform during lunch to stop boredom clicks.
Lunch M1 is where I invent trades that survive no checklist. Closing the platform (or at least disabling one-click and hiding M1) was more effective than telling myself to be disciplined while staring at noise.
Protocol
Alarm for session break. Flat or managed only. Platform closed. Phone not on charts. Re-open with a mini checklist for the afternoon -- not mid-bite "while I am here."
If you cannot close it, put charts on H1 with trading locked. Friction is the feature.
Do you hard-close at lunch, or is the platform always open "just in case"?
Partners/family can help: "platform closed for lunch" as a household norm sounds odd until it saves an afternoon. External cues beat internal negotiation when the chart is still visible from the kitchen.
I am interested in how others on this desk handle the same problem without turning it into folklore. Concrete rules and log fields beat slogans. If you have a version of "Closing platform during lunch to stop boredom clicks" that survived contact with live sessions, what does the rule look like on a sticky note -- and what did you try that failed?
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Closing platform during lunch to stop boredom clicks
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LondonScalper
- Posts: 965
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PropScalpDesk
- Posts: 521
- Joined: Sat Sep 19, 2026 7:50 pm
Re: Closing platform during lunch to stop boredom clicks
My version of the friction: at lunch I switch the terminal to a demo login instead of closing it. Charts, levels and templates all stay where they are, but anything I click does nothing to real money. Logging back into the live account takes a password and about a minute, which is exactly the pause the boredom clicks couldn't survive.
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Shadow Trader
- Posts: 854
- Joined: Wed Sep 09, 2026 5:19 pm
Re: Closing platform during lunch to stop boredom clicks
The demo login trick is neat, but it has one side effect I would watch. Clicks on the demo still get rewarded or punished by the tape, so the boredom habit keeps getting practised, just without a cost.
When I tried it, I took 11 demo trades over two weeks of lunches. The habit was clearly still there. It had only moved accounts.
What worked for me is LondonScalper's flat or managed rule with one change. Anything still open at 11:45 gets a hard stop and target sitting on the server, and then the terminal closes, so nothing needs watching until I come back.
The re-open time matters as much as the close. I come back at 13:10 rather than whenever lunch ends, because US data at 13:30 is the first thing the afternoon checklist has to cover and I want 20 minutes for it.
The phone was the harder part. I removed the trading app from the home screen and kept only the calendar there, which sounds trivial but roughly halved how often I opened it during the break.
When I tried it, I took 11 demo trades over two weeks of lunches. The habit was clearly still there. It had only moved accounts.
What worked for me is LondonScalper's flat or managed rule with one change. Anything still open at 11:45 gets a hard stop and target sitting on the server, and then the terminal closes, so nothing needs watching until I come back.
The re-open time matters as much as the close. I come back at 13:10 rather than whenever lunch ends, because US data at 13:30 is the first thing the afternoon checklist has to cover and I want 20 minutes for it.
The phone was the harder part. I removed the trading app from the home screen and kept only the calendar there, which sounds trivial but roughly halved how often I opened it during the break.