Not a huge fan of starting with a generalization, but I think it’s fair to say most people don’t think about the mental aspect of trading. There are a million intricacies, nuances and caveats that can be talked about when talking about a person’s mental, but I think one that most of the time goes unnoticed is burnout.
Most people have a generalized idea of what burnout is, but it’s difficult to understand whether you’re burnt out or not. I didn’t understand what I felt was burnout until recently and it’s somewhat dangerous to go on like that. People think that if you’re doing well financially, have good relationships and have an ‘objectively good life’ that they can’t be burnt out. At times it can feel like you don’t have a right to complain about things because they’re going pretty well. The problem with burnout, especially in terms of crypto, is that it’s not one-sided. Burnout is derived from external factors, mostly out of your control, and unless you’re a gigawhale or Do Kwon, you probably don’t have much control over it.
The first thing you’ll notice if you’re burnt out is a lack of energy and most people try to rationalize this by trying to compensate in other ways. You’ll feel tired, but you can still do everything you normally do, it’s not like clinical depression where it inhibits your ability to do things. It’s more like things are just flat and nothing is that exciting. With that also comes a lack of empathy regarding others cause you can’t really be bothered to care about them. This lack of enthusiasm combined with muted feelings for others results in a cynicism that is both somewhat self-deprecating and pessimistic about work and life in general.
We have such a life-changing opportunity before us with crypto in terms of revolutionizing self-sovereignty and ownership of assets that burnout is often overlooked because we choose to devalue it by telling ourselves we’re lucky to be able to even have this chance. The issue is we tell ourselves to stop complaining as a result of that lack of empathy. People with burnout also tend to lose their temper pretty fast due to a lack of energy. Patience and understanding of other people’s perspectives and even our own issues take a decent amount of energy.
A large part of what I experience during burnout is this strange lack of fulfillment and enthusiasm no matter what I do. Hit a 10x trade, feel nothing. Nuke my whole account, feel nothing. I feel pretty detached from what happens to me. I do think that if you do feel like that, part of it might be alexithymia, which is difficulty expressing emotions that are generally deemed socially appropriate like making money and being happy or losing it and feeling like shit. The symptoms of alexithymia are closely interlinked with burnout and I think it’s only somewhat coincidental.
The main cause of burnout seems to be people who want to make an impact and work but have some kind of limiting factor which is typically external. Something is stopping them from doing what they want to do and depriving them of autonomy or capability. You could also describe this as the difference between how much effort an individual puts in vs. how much they get out of it. If someone is putting in a lot of effort, constantly making charts, observing the daily close and doing research, but is still on the losing end, it can get pretty taxing emotionally. Eventually you kind of snowball into the cynicism previously mentioned and as a result, there’s a self-fulfilling prophecy making them just keep losing trades over and over.
There’s also the social aspect where if you have expectations of how others see you or your relationships with people and they’re not going the way you want or you tweet zero bangers, that can also induce the symptoms of burnout. Most people care about being valued and when they can’t necessarily find a means to fulfill that, it’s detrimental to their emotional state. Most people also want to do meaningful work, usually for a sense of self-fulfillment, but also gratification and validation when someone recognizes the work that they put in. I think that’s why Twitter shitposting is sometimes very addicting because it’s very easy to create a benchmark for engagement and as long as you hit that you feel like you’re being validated. Shitposting can be a bit more shallow compared to working on projects or doing research but I think it can actually be a decent cope and provide some relief from burnout as long as the burnout isn’t related to social validation.
I think the takeaway I got from this was basically to constantly monitor your emotional state; just because you don’t feel a particular emotion doesn’t mean your brain and decision-making aren’t being affected by it. A lot of the time there’s this invisible tilt that is associated with burnout and with the way trading works, if you click the wrong button once, you can do a lot of damage to yourself and that’ll usually unfurl into your relationships, work and general performance. You should be doing some kind of analysis of your mental state and I think this screenshot from CL’s stream is pretty succinct.
tl;dr
If you have a lack of empathy and energy and feel cynicism towards the things happening around you, you could be burnt out even if things are going pretty well and you think you don’t have a reason to complain. Burnout stems from a disproportionately large effort-yield ratio and a lack of meaningful work. If you’re taking multiple Ls in a row, consider chilling out for a bit and reassessing your mental state. Try not to feel like you need to prove anything to other people, you don’t need to larp as successful, just do your own thing.