Thoughts towards the end of 2024
It is difficult when there is nobody to blame but yourself.
There are a few areas of my life where I find myself consistently failing and struggling to make progress.
I will eat very clean during the week, get good sleep, exercise consistently, and then get to the weekend and eat a bunch of junk, not exercise as much, and sleep in.
It has gotten so bad at points that I have had a running “days since last binge” tracker on my phone home screen where I would see how long I would go.
The saddest part is that I seldom made it past a week or two.
Telling nobody but the man in the mirror, I struggled to be accountable to myself.
In the new year, what will I change?
I have had in mind a contract to sign with myself, but never actually did it since it seems a bit performative.
Banging my head against the wall over and over for months where my weight looks like downward slopes followed by sharp spikes upward has not worked.
Time to try something new.
In the new year, I will be mindful with my eating and choose the pain of discipline over the pain of regret.
Something like I will only have X drinks tonight, or I will drink one glass of water for every drink I have etc.
On the nights when I would go out and not have a plan, I would find myself drinking another drink or getting another round just because.
Each time I would do this, I would feel horrible the next day and ask myself why I kept drinking.
By no means has this been problematic and in recent years I tend to drink far less than the average person my age, but there are these punctuated moments where I still take it too far.
I have never woken up and thought “man, I wish I drank more last night,” so how many times do I have to have the opposite thought to be able to tone it down.
Those who know me well know that I typically am not a drinker and would chalk this blurb up to being hard on myself which is fair, but on the other hand, I am not an idiot, so when I make dumb decisions and operate without a plan consistently achieving sub-optimal results, it is only right to call a spade a spade.
In the new year, I will not operate without a plan.
If I have a bad weekend or a bad night out, I can always pull things together as I am not the type of person to let myself spiral for more than a week or so.
Operating in the financial world since college, I now have some disposable income to try to invest and save for the future.
I like to think I am not an idiot sometimes, and yet I find myself making the same mistakes with trading.
My problem has largely been sins of omission, meaning I do not take huge losses, but rather miss out on large potential gains.
Unfilled limit orders and unacted-upon trade requests serve as proof that I missed out on several multi-baggers over the past two years when there were (what I thought to be) obvious dislocations in markets.
Sure, you can chalk this up to hindsight bias and me thinking I am smarter than I am, and you would probably be right.
How have I worked to overcome this bias?
Instead of continuing down the same path that has led to regret as I have with diet or drinking, I have changed my strategies to account for my biases and psychology.
Now that I am in the arena and taking real risk, I do not have excuses.
I have been operating on the sidelines, nibbling here and there without getting real conviction on different positions.
I have a few concentrated bets at the moment, and we will see if they pan out.
As I grow and develop, I need to do a better job at putting the ideas I learn into practice.
Bottom line is, I need some more failure.
It is difficult when there is nobody to blame but yourself.
There are a few areas of my life where I find myself consistently failing and struggling to make progress.
First and foremost is my diet.
I am very streaky in that I will string together a few good days or weeks, and then fall back into old habits of overeating.I will eat very clean during the week, get good sleep, exercise consistently, and then get to the weekend and eat a bunch of junk, not exercise as much, and sleep in.
It has gotten so bad at points that I have had a running “days since last binge” tracker on my phone home screen where I would see how long I would go.
The saddest part is that I seldom made it past a week or two.
Telling nobody but the man in the mirror, I struggled to be accountable to myself.
In the new year, what will I change?
I have had in mind a contract to sign with myself, but never actually did it since it seems a bit performative.
Banging my head against the wall over and over for months where my weight looks like downward slopes followed by sharp spikes upward has not worked.
Time to try something new.
In the new year, I will be mindful with my eating and choose the pain of discipline over the pain of regret.
Another area of life where I have struggled is drinking.
Since college, I decided it would be helpful to have a plan when I go out drinking.Something like I will only have X drinks tonight, or I will drink one glass of water for every drink I have etc.
On the nights when I would go out and not have a plan, I would find myself drinking another drink or getting another round just because.
Each time I would do this, I would feel horrible the next day and ask myself why I kept drinking.
By no means has this been problematic and in recent years I tend to drink far less than the average person my age, but there are these punctuated moments where I still take it too far.
I have never woken up and thought “man, I wish I drank more last night,” so how many times do I have to have the opposite thought to be able to tone it down.
Those who know me well know that I typically am not a drinker and would chalk this blurb up to being hard on myself which is fair, but on the other hand, I am not an idiot, so when I make dumb decisions and operate without a plan consistently achieving sub-optimal results, it is only right to call a spade a spade.
In the new year, I will not operate without a plan.
Last but not least, the most recent failure in my life has been trading/investing.
This is a more difficult lesson to learn since there are financial consequences.If I have a bad weekend or a bad night out, I can always pull things together as I am not the type of person to let myself spiral for more than a week or so.
Operating in the financial world since college, I now have some disposable income to try to invest and save for the future.
I like to think I am not an idiot sometimes, and yet I find myself making the same mistakes with trading.
My problem has largely been sins of omission, meaning I do not take huge losses, but rather miss out on large potential gains.
Unfilled limit orders and unacted-upon trade requests serve as proof that I missed out on several multi-baggers over the past two years when there were (what I thought to be) obvious dislocations in markets.
Sure, you can chalk this up to hindsight bias and me thinking I am smarter than I am, and you would probably be right.
How have I worked to overcome this bias?
Instead of continuing down the same path that has led to regret as I have with diet or drinking, I have changed my strategies to account for my biases and psychology.
Now that I am in the arena and taking real risk, I do not have excuses.
I have been operating on the sidelines, nibbling here and there without getting real conviction on different positions.
I have a few concentrated bets at the moment, and we will see if they pan out.
As I grow and develop, I need to do a better job at putting the ideas I learn into practice.
Bottom line is, I need some more failure.