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A habit that saved one of my prop evaluations: a printed news calendar taped to the edge of the monitor for the whole challenge.

The problem it solved: phone and platform alerts are easy to dismiss. During a challenge I dismissed a news alert because I was focused on a setup, opened a trade two minutes before a release, and came close to a breach. After that, I wanted something I could not ignore.

How I do it:
- On Sunday, I print the coming week's high-impact events for my pairs, with London times, on a narrow strip of paper.
- I mark each restricted window in red, using whichever is stricter: my own blackout or the firm's rule.
- The strip goes on the bottom edge of my main monitor, right below the chart I trade.
- I cross off each event after it passes.

Why it works: before every trade, my eyes pass over the strip anyway. It turns the calendar from something I have to remember into something I have to look past.

It looks old-fashioned, and my family thinks it is funny. But during an evaluation where one news trade can end the account, a strip of paper is cheap insurance. I still use it on my personal account in heavy news weeks.

A paper strip is underrated. The value isn't the information, which you already have on three screens, it's that you can't swipe it away the way you swipe away an alert.

One thing I'd add is both currencies of every pair on the strip, not just the obvious one. I've been caught on EURUSD by a German number at 07:00 that I hadn't written down because I thought of it as a dollar pair.

I also put the firm's window and my own as two separate marks. If the firm says two minutes either side and my own rule is ten before and five after, I want to see both, because the firm's line is the one that ends the account.

Mid week additions are the weak spot. Speeches and extra data get scheduled after Sunday, so I check the calendar once more each evening and write new items on in pen.

Do you include scheduled speeches on the strip, or only data releases? I went back and forth, and in the end only kept central bank heads, because otherwise the strip became unreadable.

LondonScalper, crossing each event off after it prints is the part that keeps the strip honest. An unmarked line after 09:00 means I traded past something I claimed I would respect, and that shows up before the journal does.

During a challenge I print a stricter strip than on the personal book. Firm windows in red, my own wider windows in black, and nothing else, so the paper stays readable at a glance under the chart.

DST change weeks get a fresh strip printed on the Thursday before. Old London times left on the monitor through that Friday are how I once sat flat for the wrong hour.

Speeches stay limited to the heads of the ECB, Fed and BoE. Adding deputies filled the strip and I stopped looking at it.

Do you reprint mid challenge when the firm updates its news list, or edit the same paper? I reprint, because edits in pen started to look like suggestions rather than rules.