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Fit to trade? A simple check for days when you're ill, tired or distracted

Most of us have a rule about not trading when we're emotional. Fewer of us have a rule for when we're physically off: tired after a bad night, coming down with something, or distracted by things going on outside trading. Those days can be just as bad for decisions.

The tricky part is that you often don't feel impaired. You feel a bit slow, maybe irritable, but you assume you can still follow your rules. The mistakes tend to be small: missing a news time, misreading a level, entering a size you didn't mean to, or not noticing that a setup is incomplete.

What I use is a short check before the session, a few questions I answer honestly. Did I sleep reasonably? Am I feeling unwell? Is there something on my mind that's going to pull my attention? If two of those are a problem, I either don't trade or trade at a reduced size with fewer setups. If all three are fine, I trade normally.

It doesn't need to be complicated. The point is to make the decision before the session, when it's easy, rather than in the middle of a trade.

Skipping a day costs nothing. A run of careless trades costs money and confidence.

One addition that's helped is writing the answers down in the journal, not just thinking them. Over time you can compare your days where you flagged something with days where you didn't, and see whether your mistakes cluster on the flagged days. If they do, it's evidence that the check is worth taking seriously. If they don't, maybe the threshold is too strict. Either way, having it written down turns a vague feeling into something you can actually review. It can also show if certain kinds of distraction are worse than others. Tiredness might hurt you more than a busy head, or the other way round. That's useful for deciding which days to skip outright.

Think about medication and caffeine as well. Some cold and allergy medicines make people drowsy or foggy, and too much coffee can make you jittery and impatient, which in trading often shows up as entering too early. I'm not suggesting anyone change their habits, just that it helps to be aware of how those things affect your attention. If you notice that a certain level of caffeine coincides with rushed entries, that's useful to know. Same goes for skipped meals. Hunger makes some people impatient in a way that shows up in their entries, and it's an easy fix.