I realized my problem wasn’t finding trades. it was taking too many bad ones

I’m in Bitget’s Trading Club Championship (TCC Phase 21) right now, and it made something painfully obvious about my trading: I don’t usually lose because I “can’t find entries,” I lose because I take trades I never should’ve taken in the first place.

So this phase I changed one thing. Before I enter anything (spot or futures), I force myself to slow down and stress-test my own idea. I’ve been using an AI assistant (GetAgent) not to tell me *what* to trade, but to poke holes in my reasoning. like what assumptions I’m making, what would invalidate the setup, and what I’m ignoring because I want the trade to work.

It didn’t suddenly turn me into a better trader, but it did something more useful: I’m trading less, I’m less reactive, and I’m not jumping into marginal setups just because price is moving. In choppy conditions, that alone feels like an edge.

I’m still undecided whether this holds long-term or if it’s just discipline because it’s new. But using something as a structured checklist instead of a signal generator has been surprisingly grounding.

Curious how others here approach this.
Do you use anything as a pre-trade filter, or do you rely purely on your own process?