Learning from both Steven and my brother, I limited effort on my IT works to strictly office hours only. I have came to find such a practise very productive. Each day starts with a clear set of well defined objectives. Choice of objectives are set to be manageable within my self imposed daily working hours. In fact, more often than not, I am able to accomplish all the daily objectives within the given time frame. Though I might be tempted to attempt at completing objectives for the next day if I did finish the current day’s objective much faster than anticipated, abiding by my self imposed rules, I refrained from doing so.
This is not the case in the past, when driven by desire to accomplish a project ASAP, I would unknowingly clock a 16 hour working day for weeks straight. In hindsight, such a frantic pace of work is simply not sustainable physcially and mentally in the long run. It often left me burnt out after a few months of work.
Following this new method of work, I could start each day feeling refreshed and alert. Not only that, it leaves me with plenty of free time not only to think and plan my actions ahead of time but also to pursue one of my favourite past times – to sit and read useful and insightful books by the beach. This is in fact consistant with Robert Kiyosaki’s advice “a person’s occupation should not be mistaken for his business”. Being an IT guy is my occupation, but finding ways and means of compounding my money upwards is my business. To find ways and means to compound my money means I will need to find time away from my profession to think.
Over the past few months, I have rejected around 50% of the IT projects coming my way. While there is money to be made, careful calculation shows the money is not worth the time I will potentially have to spend on completing these projects. In layman terms, I will be selling my time too cheaply, time which I could devote towards thinking about ways and means of compounding money.
Johnson did mention last year there are lots of companies trading on the SGX that were trading below their net book value, however since he considered himself stupid when it came to stocks, he was neither interested in studying about or dabbling in them. This statement from him should not be taken literally, he just could not bother himself with the task of trading with stocks. His preferences lies in real estate. It is a natural choice for him since he is already very skilled at accessing the value of real estates. To make matters even easier, he has also established relationships with a very wide network of real estate agents who are constantly working for him to sniff out all the good deals in town. The last time, he showed me his phone list, the list of real estate agents in his phone seemed to scroll on and on forever…
Just for the fun of it, I am taking on Johnson’s suggestion to me. With the newly acquired spare time, I am devoting myself towards the studying of the financial statements of all the publicly listed companies in the SGX at the pace of 10 companies per day. This is to first find out the netbook value of all the companies trading on the SGX and subsequently to determine the companies with share prices trading below their net worth. If maintained consistantly at this pace, I should have studied and gained somewhat of an understanding on most of the companies listed.
If my hypothesis on business cycles are correct, 2013 should be the next time when stock prices get hit adversely by some screw ups from Wall Street in New York. Derivatives are like dynamites that are one interlinked with the other. The fact that they are so widely traded around the world means that when shit happens in Wall Street, via the blowing up of interlinking derivatives, the shit would soon hit SGX as well.
When that time comes, I should have gathered enough data to gauge the stocks to acquire as well as the stocks to avoid.
Another chunk of my spare time will be spent of studying the newspapers, not on news but on the spending habits of my potential prospects, building up their profile over time. This latest book on Warren Buffett is most insightful. Yes, handicapping is really useful and could in fact be applied all over the place.