Whatever your thing – speculation, athletics, or business – sit for ten minutes and graph your past to a better future. The horizontal axis is time and the vertical skill. The line assumedly rises.
Now to see where it is going, how fast, and why. You will note jumps in the line over time, and try to attribute them to a cause such as a new trick, data, or advisor. Put dots on the line and write tiny reasons for the jumps.
Now you have a graph of where you have been. Look off the invisible future end and imagine what old tricks to repeat and new lessons to add to reach future gains.
There you go on your way to profit in finance, sports, or anything that follows a performance due to ability streak.
The accompanying comments were inspired from Brad Gilbert‘s book, 
Over the years I’ve been fortunate enough to get to know thousands of market participants. Some are long-term investors others are scalping pennies per trade on thousands of shares while others manage millions of other people’s money. The interesting theme I picked up on with nearly every one of them is that they each experienced panic and uncertainty at certain times in the market. Oftentimes, this panic stems from the inability to make sense of the market, to gain control of market participation. Thoughts such as whether or not too much capital is at work or perhaps not enough or even whether or not to be in the market at all seemed to consume them.