Do you know what the secret to life is? And trading?

Bear with me for just a moment as I tell you this story because it relates to trading and it relates to you. I recently realised that after reading a book called The One Thing, through my entire life I have only really excelled when I focused on just one thing. I grew up in Melbourne, played footy in winter and water skied in summer. I had a goal to play VFL / AFL footy but because I went water skiing in summer and didn't do pre season training I never got picked to play at the elite level.  I chose water skiing as my career of choice when I left school and tried to combine trick skiing, slalom skiing and jumping. I was in the top few guys in Australia but internationally I rated outside the top 30 overall.

When I was trying to multi task as a skier and trick, slalom and jump I never really excelled on a world stage at any of them. But then something happened. I broke my leg jumping and due to a 12 month layoff I was only able to train and compete in slalom skiing for the rest of my career. I only had one thing to focus on, one thing to train for, one obsession every day and only one vision. To be the best I could be at this one thing. The result was within 2 years I won the National Championships, I was competing on the World Pro Tour and at the Moomba Masters in Melbourne I almost beat my childhood idol Andy Mapple, the greatest slalom skier the World has ever seen who only every focused on ONE THING.  I wonder what my water skiing career would have been like if I had just focused on one thing from the start.

My career today as a trader is no different. I think back over 13 years now and consider what I have traded, the multi tasking I was trying to do, the early results I achieved and wonder what would have happened if I had of known that I should have just stuck to one thing and stuck to it.

At one stage I was investing in stocks, futures and currencies and using a different strategy on each market. Each market has taught me different lessons but the one lesson I have learnt is that I needed not have traded them all because the results overall were average. Thankfully a few years ago I realised that I needed to do what I had done in my skiing career. Just focus on one.

Andrew Barnett is a Professional Forex Trader and Co-Founder of LTG GoldRock one of the leading Forex Training Providers.