#59
3 min read

#59

What I’m Watching

As a watch enthusiast, I’ve been following Teddy’s YouTube channel for a while and it’s impressive to see his progression through the years. Recently, he has been making full-blown documentary-style factory tours of some of the most prestigious brands in the industry. It’s not only the access he has, but the knowledge, production value and approach he takes that makes this art accessible to us all. Highly recommended!

Resource of the week

From watches to pens. As mentioned in last week’s newsletter I managed to purchase my personal ‘holy grail’ vintage pen I’ve been on the search for, for a while. This was courtesy of John who is one of the most knowledgeable people I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with when it comes to vintage pens.

Just taking a look at some of his beautiful listings on his eBay shop, you can see the level of detail and history behind each pen. Worth taking a look to find out what makes each vintage pen so special.

Quote

“Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.”

Steve Jobs

Looking at the metrics, it all seems to indicate that the worse of the property downturn is behind us, temporarily at least.

  • First-time buyers were the largest group in 2022 and will be a significant factor in 2023. If the help-to-buy (or similar) scheme comes back into play could this give another boom?
  • While year on year, the property market is not as strong, demand is up vs 2019.
  • Although it’s not all sunshine as property affordability worsens particularly in the South East.

Thoughts

This week I’ve been frantically working on closing off the handwriting class, unfortunately, it does seem like the release will miss my self-imposed deadline of this week. But the good thing is it’s in the final editing stages and will 100%(!!) be out by the end of next week.

In my younger years, every time I would start a new project, it ends up following the same cycle. I’d start, and make progress, but stall when things got tough and the initial drive had gone. Eventually, I’d get shiny object syndrome and move on to something else. It could be programming, writing books etc.

Now I’m much better at holding myself accountable. Something I like to keep in my head is to take an approach to life by comparing it to rowing. We set goals, review, and put in the work. When we set our goals it’s analogous to pointing our boat in the right direction at the start, it’s important, but once it’s roughly where you want it, it’s pointless to over-obsess. We do our reviews along the way which are our course corrections, which we’ll always need no matter how well we plan because life has a tendency to throw unanticipated challenges at us. Most important of all is to row, focusing on one stroke at a time. I tell myself it doesn't matter how good the plan is, I have to put in the work every single day. Doing well on one day doesn't mean we get tomorrow off, we don't stop, we take the same approach every day. We fight our challenges anew every day. It helps a lot if you’re enjoying it.

One thing I’ve found that helps me is to sit down at the end of every evening and just bullet point what the first things I’ll do when I wake up the next morning. This way I avoid waking up with no specific task, and waste those initial moments looking through my priority lists, I’m already primed to go. Having a quick win helps set up the rest of the day.

The plan after this project is to push for another property acquisition as I think the property market is as good as any time we’ve had in the last few years. The mortgage markets have calmed down while a decent amount of stock is back on the market.

Hit reply if you have any feedback or questions. Otherwise, have a good week!

Hans