This was one of the toughest weeks of trading for me in more than a three years. I was totally our of sync with the market, always running one step behind as I was buying risk when everyone was selling it, selling it when everyone was buying it. Usually I would have become apoplectic as the days progressed, throwing office items at my whiteboard, screaming at everyone around me and generally acting like a sullen jerk.

But this week was different. I remained preternaturally calm despite the frustrations that befell me and managed to take my Flow Trade accounts to all-time highs as my intra-day trading improved markedly. How was I able to remain so focused and productive? Easy. Instead of going out to dinner every night, I made home cooked gourmet meals for the kids four days in a row.

Currency trading is one of the most obsessive activities you can pursue. With FX markets open 24 hours 5 1/2 days per week, you can become glued to your screen like a hopped my Vegas junkie playing a marathon session of blackjack. During the week like we’ve just had, when every remark and rumor can send markets into a sudden tailspin or a vertical climb, it is especially easy to lose all sense of perspective as you watch the EUR/USD trade tick by tick.

That’s a big mistake. Not only do you exhaust yourself both mentally and physically, but you also become a much worse trader. In trading as with other areas of life, when you truly need to understand a problem its often best to stop trying to solve it and do something else entirely.

Cooking for me can be just as obsessive as trading and I naturally went all out creating five to seven dishes every night, including linguine al pesto that trumped any restaurant version in New York (according to my precocious 18-year-old foodie daughter who could write her own Zagat guide by now). The act of shopping for ingredients, pre-preparing the food and juggling four burners at once completely took my mind off the markets and more importantly released the stress of the day. I was able to come back the screens with a calm, objective mindset - the single most important tool of any successful trader. As a result, I made better trades.

The FX market can be an unbelievably self-contained cocoon. Its easy to begin viewing all of life through the perspective of the 5-minute EUR/USD chart. That’s why it is critical to break out of the bubble for at least a few hours each day. Want to be a better trader? Stop trading and go do something else.

Boris Schlossberg serves as director of currency research at GFT, and runs bktraderfx.com.