Resolutions Are For Dummies

I just recently tried the whole, “New Years Resolution” thing. To clarify, I’m not really one to embark on self improvement unnecessarily, so trying to better myself just because a bunch of capitalist conglomerate spoofs centered their marketing campaigns on “new year, new me” was a big leap in my book. I’m not saying I’m perfect by any means, I just don’t like to be told what to do. Sue me.

Anyway, my resolution? Find more time in my subnominal days to devote toward investing. Hey, beats going to the gym.

The biggest hurdle I face with investing is finding the time and the focus to research companies. I refuse to invest until I understand a company, and I can’t understand a company until I sit down and research it. On paper, this sounds easy. In actuality, trying to read a 10K after working for 12 hours is impossible.

So, I made a resolution to better plan my days so as to have more time to invest, and man did I take this seriously.

The first two days of the New Year, I wrote a 5-page journal entry outlining my goals, I created a color coded Google calendar, I recreated the color coded Google calendar on paper, then I wrote another journal entry hyping myself up.

By the end of the second night I was pumped and ready for a whole year of productive days and improved research. Per my calendar, (both digital and paper) day three of my New Years resolution would start at 4am with coffee and the WSJ. I was excited, thrilled, just ecstatic to be starting this year on such an organized, time efficient, hyper-focused foot that I… Forgot to set my alarm.

Three days into my New Years resolution and I was already done. One day of oversleeping knocked me five hours off track and left me forever disappointed with my inability to keep an unattainable schedule. So much for new year, new me.

Pshhh what’s the point anyway? Nobody keeps their New Years resolutions. It’s just another holiday themed marketing scheme to get people to buy more exercise clothes and protein shakes. Plus, who said resolutions should be revolutionizing? What if I don’t want to be revolutionized? What if I just want to be happier?

Who ever thought of that, huh?

The Struggle Is Real

As of this writing, I bounce between three jobs, I share a house with two roommates, and I still rely on my dad to pay for my car and health insurance. I work most days of the week, but still I have some months where I need to pull a little more from savings than I want to.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not poor by any means. I still make enough to pay rent and go on trips, and splurge when I feel it’s warranted, but I would say, my grandparents and even my parents had it easier. By the time my parents were my age, they could afford a house, two kids, two cars, and three dogs with just one job.

Inflation’s a bitch.

All that said, I work… a lot. When I’m not working, I’m worrying. When I’m not worrying, I’m doing some basic, “keep myself alive” type crap like sleeping, or making food. On a day to day basis, it feels like I have almost no time to work on investing. When I do come across a free hour or two, I’m usually too tired or burnt out to even touch a 10K, let alone analyze it.

Here starts the endless, self-defeating cycle: wake, make a coffee, create a list of unattainable tasks I want to accomplish that day, go about my day, accomplish none of the tasks, feel like a failure.

Don’t worry, I do break the cycle eventually. It took a significant amount of trial, error, and self-alienation to come up with my current system of finding time to work on stock research, but so far, I’ve found this system both practical and fulfilling. Who knew you could have the best of both worlds?

Enjoying Found Time vs. Suffering Through An Unattainable Schedule

Rather than creating an unattainable, color coded, multi-dimensional schedule, I’ve found it’s better to not make a schedule at all. My secret to finding time to invest? Stop looking for it.

It’s impossible to plan for what may or may not happen in a given day. I don’t know how I’m going to feel or what unexpected problems may arise, so there’s no way for me to make an attainable plan because I don’t know what will be “attainable” on the day. If I try to plan, it’s likely something else may come up that takes away from the time I was going to spend investing. This often results in anger, annoyance, and ultimately the sacrifice of something else that I had “planned” to do.

So, I’ve found that the best way to find time to invest is to allow the time to find me. If, after a day of working and surviving, I have a free hour to enjoy a cup of tea and read a few articles about a company’s management team, I’ll do it. I’ll enjoy my cup of tea, my quiet room after a long day, and the feeling of accomplishment in actually doing some research for once. It’s a win, win, win!

So, treat time like a stubborn pug puppy. Don’t force it, just let it do it’s thing, otherwise, it may blow up in your face.

(I’m sorry for that visual. That was grotesque even for me).