Do you have a "quiet" room?

"Guy finds that he isn’t effective when he gets to the office because of external distractions. In his Zurich office he has a quiet room that he calls the library. It doesn’t have phones or computers, and this is where he reads, thinks and naps. Here in Denver, I have a lawn chair (bought at Costco for $50) that I take outside to sit on, put on headphones, and listen to music and read. My friend Chris goes to Starbucks or the local library in the morning for four hours before he goes to his office, and that’s where he does his reading. The key is to figure out what works for you… "

“For external distractions, two prime candidates break your concentration no matter how involved you are in what we’re doing: loud sounds and blinking lights. Minimizing these common distractions is a sure way to ensure no outside forces will break your focus.”

Extracts from an article.

I wanted to discuss a bit about training our brain to develop monk-like focus. It is so important to carve out a certain portion of the day carved out to “stay in the zone” where productivity stays at its peak for several hours. In order to do so, it is very important to tweak the physical environment to minimise distraction as much as possible.

So, I intend to get up early in the morning to complete most important reading and reflecting. Finally, my goal is to have a “white” room where everything is white! No physical object/color should require my attention at that time apart from the task at hand!

All longtime investors/traders, please share your life hacks regarding this. Thanks

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Living in a metro city means that I can’t afford a lawn/garden or a separate room. But what I do is:

We have a balcony with couple of lights (one for reading and one for seeing around/thinking), a wall fan, and couple of chairs. I also have a wardrobe/shelf with over 300 books there so it a great place for me to think, relax, read or study. Will try to post a picture here once I go home.

I was a member with British Council Library and it is a great place for learning and studying only issue was they do not allow our books inside their premise. Not sure what their policy is now. I wake early and it is a great myself time but I normally go for a jog that time.

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Can you post the link to the entire article ?

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Interesting topic! My two cents:

What helps in concentrating,is your interest/passion for what you are doing.This interest can be motivated by incentives or internal curiosity,or just happiness in doing the job at hand.For investors of course,there is the incentive of finding a good company and making good returns.However,with time this changes to the thrill of finding an undiscovered stock and loading it up much before others.Thus,concentration shouldn’t be a problem,even in a busy city locality.I have found that the concentration level is proportional to the passion/interest we have,in the subject.I have never complained about the noise in a multiplex screen,while watching a movie :smiley:

Trivia: Albert Einstein worked out the General Theory of Relativity,in a World War torn city! Neither do I have his intellect,nor am I trying to work out how cosmos work.So,I should be fine :smile

In such cases,different things suit different people.So,this is just a personal view.

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Investor_learner
I did not open the link to read the original article. I do agree that focus is the mantra for success but a quite room may not be that necessary for a in vestor. May be traders require a ‘quite’ room to maintain their focus. Yes for those who read for the love reading require their own setting to enjoy that love. Successful stock traders definitely do praise solitude and quite spaces to maintain focus. Am I near somewhere?

Rajendra Badoni

My two pennies on the subject… will do a detailed post on my investing journey later. Focusing/concentrating ur mind is an art which improves with practice… I have come across people who lose their focus in a silent place (remember kamal hassan in Pushpak) :wink:
Meditation certainly does help in making progress… n then will come a time when u will be able to focus on anything right in the middle of busiest honking traffic signal :slightly_smiling:

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Noise really effects your performance. Noise came from the latin word nausea.
Sound level of noise effects you and so does it’s frequency ( traffic horns/aircraft are high frequencies).
Meditation and being calm doesn’t help you entirely. Your body will subconsciously react to noise and you lose mental bandwidth trying to block it out. Your cortisol levels automatically increase and hormones will go out of whack because of flight or fight response.

I am in process of replacing glass in old wooden windows with upvc windows plus laminated glass.