Reflections

Recently I managed to get a part time cleaner to come once a fortnight and as I watched her clean I realized that I can never be as efficient and effective as her. It doesn't help that my attempts at cleaning have not been successful as evidenced by the awful water marks on the bathroom glass door or the floor is never as sparkling as hers even 2 days after she has done the cleaning! 

Of course she's more experienced than me and I did pick up some tips from her which she kindly told me as well as from observing how she does chores for 3 hours. Even ACCICB is amazed by her and keeps telling me that he has never had such a clean house before depsite growing up with a helper since he was a child which also means I'm far from meeting the mark. 

Cleaning may seem like it has nothing to do with trading and investing but I think there are some similarities. Firstly, cleaning is a chore that needs to be repeated as no home stays clean forever.  Till the day someone has inventing a self cleaning house, cleaning would still remain a chore for many unless you are one of the few who love cleaning then well this post is probably irrelevant to you!

Investing and even trading can be something you keep procrastinating or postponing if you don't enjoy it because the rewards can be fleeting much like cleaning and you have to keep repeating it if you want to reap benefits from it. In fact, investing and trading are a negative sum game, once you commit, you start paying fees such as commissions first before knowing the end result.

I wish I can tell you how to make cleaning fun but it does make me feel more accomplished after I managed to halve my cleaning time with better results. It does help to learn from a pro and I wish I can say the same for investing and trading but I doubt I ever want to spend tons of money on learning from somebody before seeing for myself how it can transform my game. 

Secondly, you can actually feel ashamed if you don't clean well especially if you are at home while she cleans away. Each time she comes, ACCICB would ask her to do less important chores because he's afraid she doesn't have enough time to complete the more critical ones and each time she'll reassure him that she has more than enough time! Guess that's the difference between a pro trader and a wannabe, the pros are confident in what they can achieve in a given time frame.

Lastly, I'm still trying to see how she can come on a weekly basis but unless some of her clients give up her service which is impossible or we shift to where she stays, I think I have to just continue to be grateful that she's coming because finding someone like her would be even more difficult than making money in investing and trading as managing others is almost always more difficult than self management.