In this video I present some of the highlights from my latest book, 8 Ways to Great - Peak Performance on the Job and in Your Life. It’s now available in print, audio and Kindle editions.
Posts Tagged ‘peak performance’
8 Ways to Great Highlights
Thursday, February 10th, 2011Do You Really Want to Get Lucky?
Thursday, January 6th, 2011
Investment Psychology and Luck
Is it better to be lucky or good? You make a key stroke error and a trade ends up a winner - that is just luck; but the money you made from it is real. Is that such a bad thing? You probably don’t think so or at least you will feel some sense of pleasure because you profited from it. My guess is you are not going to give the money back or even spend too much time thinking about your stupid key stroke.
You also won’t put measures in place to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Why would you? After all, you made money from it so there is nothing to really worry about. You just got lucky and that’s a good thing, right?
Wrong.
Here is the problem with this lucky event. Because people (and traders especially) respond best to punishments and rewards, then getting lucky and making money actually reinforces bad behavior. It causes you to continue a poor process the next time. Not only are you resistant to learn from this mistake but you actually increase your chances of having it happen again, perhaps with less happy results.
Let’s turn the situation around for a second. What if you made the key stroke error, but this time you lost money and gave back your profits for the month. One stupid, careless mistake and all your hard-earned efforts get wiped away by a single fat finger. Do you feel lucky now? More importantly, you probably will take some time to examine the mistake and put corrective measures in place so it never happens again.
In the first scenario, you benefit from luck and therefore have no incentive to change your behavior. And luck does run out. In the second scenario, you get hurt from the lack of luck and are punished.
So is it better to be lucky or good? From a psychological point of view, I’ll take good over luck, any day of the week and twice on Sunday.
Think better, trader smarter.
Winning Gold When You Take Home the Bronze
Sunday, February 28th, 2010You know what Greatness is?
It was watching Canada’s Joannie Rochette, win the Bronze medal in women’s skating in the 2010 Winter Olympics. Actually, it wasn’t just that she won the Bronze, it was that she did this less than a week after her mother’s sudden death.
Joannie was an only child. Her mom was her biggest fan and her closest friend. She could have crumbled. She should have fallen apart. Most people would have. Even elite athletes lose focus and self-destruct from time to time like Dan Jansen did in the 1988 Olympics in Calgary when he was heavily favored to win Gold and tripped during the 500m speed skating race; earlier that day his sister Jane Beres died from leukemia. No one blamed Dan for his failure to deliver his best when it mattered most. How could he have? The Olympics are just a game and his sister’s death was the tragic loss of someone he dearly loved. In a recent interview, Dan acknowledged that it was not until years later that he realized how much his sister’s death had impacted his ability to focus that day. A focus he regained eight years later when he won the Gold medal in the 1000M men’s speed skating at the 1994 Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway.
For Joannie, no one would have blamed her if she was unable to deliver her best over the past few days in Vancouver. She could have under-performed and been completely justified in doing so. But she didn’t. She focused. And she did it under extreme personal stress while competing against a group of skaters that could arguably be considered the greatest talents women’s ice skating has ever seen in Olympic competition at one time. Japan’s Mao Asada, who was the Silver medal winner and the first women in Olympic competition to do a triple axel in her routine. Except Mao didn’t just do one; she did two of them. And, of course Korea’s
“ice queen,” Kim Yu-Na took the gold while setting a new world record score of 150.06.
What does it take to be a champion?
Effort? Yes.
Talent? Of course
Desire? Yes
Passion? Yes
But most of all, as Joannie showed us, it takes mental toughness.
Congratulations Joannie for showing us what winning Gold looks like even when you take home the Bronze.
Dr Doug
Tiger Woods: Lessons For Great Risk Management
Thursday, December 3rd, 2009(Watch the video online: Market coach Doug Hirschhorn, PhD, discusses the lessons that can be learned from Tiger Woods’ handling of this week’s events.)
So this week, we learned that Tiger Woods is human, after all.
And for the rest of us, his situation is an excellent reminder about how to execute Great Risk Management
Here are Four things I think we can learn from Tiger.
1) Quickly Take Responsibility for your Actions
a. Sometimes you make good decisions and sometimes you make bad ones.
b. Either way it is yours now and you have to deal with it
2) Choose the Lesser of Two Evils
a. When forced to choose between two bad options like whether you should
take a loss on an investment or hold onto that bad investment, choose the less bad option
b. I know it’s hard – but you will live to fight another day
3) Cut Your Losses
a. For Tiger, the hardest thing to do was that first admission of guilt.
b. For the rest of us, the hardest loss to take is the first one.
c. Once you do that, managing the risk of the situation gets a lot easier.
4) Learn From Your Mistakes
a. Mistakes are part of the game. Tiger is not perfect and neither are you.
b. All that matters is that you learn from your mistakes
and move on to the next opportunity.
Tiger is going to be a better golfer, a better person, and even a better dad as a result of what he is going through.
And you know what, if you learn from your mistakes, then you’ll be better too.
If you want to learn more about how to become GREAT, then visit my website at DrDoug.com or pick up a copy of my new book 8 Ways to Great.
Manage Your Risk or It Will Manage You
Monday, July 20th, 2009
To become great at anything,
1) You have to have PASSION for what you do
2) You have to have unwavering INTERNAL CONFIDENCE
3) But you better have GREAT RISK MANAGEMENT in place, or Passion and Confidence just wont matter
Two great athlete’s recently reminded us of this
* Bernie Kosar and Lenny Dykstra
Bernie Kosar
Smart, talented, hard working, generous and an over-achiever.
Now in his mid 40’s he is divorced, body is falling apart and filing for bankruptcy.
He may be broke but he is not broken. Why? because he is a winner and he knows it.
He says adjusting to regular life is what is hard, not making money, he always knows he can make money.
He has worked hard in the past to win and he is going to do the same again to get back on top.
Lenny Dykstra
What more needs to be said than the guys’ nickname is NAILS.
No one in recent times played cleaner, harder baseball then “nails.”
Is he a genius? Nope. But he did start a car wash franchise and sold it for tens of millions.
He is an entrepreneur, a winner…and like Bernie is now filing for bankruptcy.
Again,
You can have Passion and Internal Confidence but without Great Risk Management failure will always be a likely outcome.
Dr. Doug
