Edge Newsletter #9 - Intuition vs Planning

📘 What I’m Reading

Ray Dalio’s article titled The Popping of the Bubble Stocks: An Update sheds a lot of light on where we are at in the cycle. Very few people at Mr Dalio’s level openly share their knowledge in the financial world. He uses a proprietary ‘bubble indicator’ to successfully navigate past crashes. It’s applied to analyse the current stock market and compared to data as far back as 1900.

Very short summary: In January, the US stock market was in a bubble. Since then, it has popped, but prices have not substantially swung to the opposite extreme, so it’s not necessarily a good time to buy. US stocks are still overpriced, and when a bubble is popped, prices tend to overcorrect. So I take it to be a situation of staying vigilant and being ready.

🔧 Resource of the Week

It doesn’t seem like the cost of living crisis is going away soon. So to give you guys value this time, I’m recommending a double whammy! The Nectar rewards card. Not only do you get to collect points with partners, but if you pair it with Sainsbury’s smartshop, it’ll give you money off on things you buy. I initially only downloaded the app to save time at checkouts, but I’ve gotten over 40% off on things that I would’ve bought anyway.

🏛 Quote

Making noble resolutions is not as important as keeping the resolutions you have made already. You have to persevere and fortify your pertinacity until the will to good becomes a disposition to good.

Seneca

💭 Thoughts

So this week, I want to talk about planning vs intuition. In the past, I’ve been in the former camp. We’re living in this time where things are rapidly evolving. Entire industries are popping up that didn’t exist around ten years ago. For example, in the crypto space, also I’m pretty sure content creator wasn’t a thing, and now companies are desperately playing catch up, even in established industries like the automotive sector are being disrupted by Tesla.

Many of us are in a position in life where we’ve done what we’re supposed to, saved up, got a safe job, and put the graft in, but it doesn’t seem to be giving the returns that we had hoped. We strive for more. Maybe a different approach is in order. This is coming from someone who’s always been slightly risk averse. I feel that taking the established ‘safe’ route is no longer the way. I would know. I did an engineering degree, then a safe job and got into a relationship that wasn’t quite right but was comfortable at the time, which ended up lasting seven years.

It doesn’t mean you need to take big risks, but you also don’t need everything planned out. I started my TikTok channel last August with no idea what to expect, with zero social media experience, and it’s led to some very interesting connections I would never have made. So a few things I’ve learned so far:

You don’t need permission to create. When you put yourself out there, you attract like minded connections.
Stop and ask yourself: what’s the endgame here? How would it make me feel? I wish I had done this sooner. I spent far too much time chasing career paths that I hated and spending my money on silly things.
Being busy ≠ more productive.
Working on the right things slowly, is far better than being productive on the wrong things.
Consistency. It’s non-negotiable. If you want to achieve practically anything, you have to show up, time after time, again and again, to constantly make micro improvements and see it compound over time.
Realistic expectations. I’ve had a love hate relationship with goals. My latest take is to set goals that you can control and not expect too much from the outcome. For example, for TikTok, my goal at the outset is to create four videos per week for a year and see if I want to continue, but I’m not allowed to quit before. This ties in with the consistency point. It’s much more important to set sustainable goals that you’ll stick to. There is no point aiming for the moon if you run of steam after a month.

I hope that was somewhat helpful. I’ve got a few projects on the horizon. Stay tuned for updates. As always, hit reply for any comments, suggestions or anything I read and respond to every single one.

Have a great week, and catch you next week!

Hans