Investments: Recovered a little bit with profits on AMD naked puts and now I'm in the green on naked puts for PLUG & CRSR. Once these are closed out (hopefully soon), I'm out of the naked put game for a long while. I need to recalibrate and I'm continuing to revisit less risky options strategies. For example, I repurchased AMD at $100 a share and I wrote $111 covered calls on AMD before earnings; aiming to close out early. If CC closes early I profit, if not and AMD runs up, I profit again anyway...stuff like that. Can always roll if necessary or let shares called away and sell puts.
Food: Doing very well. Its almost Saturday and we normally do our once a week grocery shopping but we're still filled with staples...almost not required to shop again. My son still likes to drink milk but we can reduce the quantity that we purchase because I'm going to eliminate or significantly reduce my own milk consumption. Quick research shows that adults need calcium in the 1000-1200mg range daily and I think I can get this through other things I regularly consume such as oats, leafy greens, sardines, and cheese.
Job: I can't believe it but this hellish project
might be coming to an end for me. My contract is up by end of the month and I may or may not get extended. Crossing fingers and hope that I'm not extended and tossed on the bench. Normally this would be a "bad" thing as consulting utilization is important for all sorts of metrics (
https://www.thebalancecareers.com/staff ... ms-1286921) but for me, I want to take the time to choose the right project, mentally recover, maybe use some of my built up PTO... Now having led a project (with minimal resources and no oversight basically), I've a much better idea of what to look out for and also how to manage a project from the get go if I end up in another lead roll. So as hellish as this project has been, I've takeaways.
In a strange way, I think this stressful project influenced me to get really aggressive in my speculative investing this year...a quiet desperation of trying to growth my way out of the problem. In hindsight - just reducing my food budget by $100 a month is the equivalent of $30k at 4%. Hard to get that return even with a portfolio like mine without taking significant risk. I would've been better off focusing on these strategies...and instead of mental energies on speculative investing...I could've put mental energy into better managing my project. Or getting another job
but I decided to stick it out because of the challenge, despite the stressfulness, I was building skills.
I think this sounds like "well duh" in hindsight but I can only think clearly now that the contract is almost up and I'm actually in a comfortable spot with it. When bad things happen (job is stressful, market is down, other things), our character really gets tested...that is where the learning happens as they say.
Some key points, from my experience, on leading a project...
1.) Know what your customers problems are and what they're looking to have solved. That is your focus and nothing else should matter. Don't mistake the forest for the tress. Which reminds me - let your people handle the trees and you focus on the forest.
2.) Have a short-term plan (what do I need to solve now), a medium-term plan, and a long-term plan. You've to stomp on the Goombas to get to Bowser.
3.) If something you believe is going to take 2 weeks to solve, tell your client/customer you'll need 3 weeks. Always build in slack. Murphy's law applies.
4.) When mistakes happen, don't dance around. Just be candid, own it (even if it not your fault sometimes...life is not fair anyway), and explain how you will fix it and prevent it from happening again. You'll build respect this way.
5.) There are some thing that will simply be out of your control - accept this.
6.) Leverage other people and try not to always go it alone. Learn to delegate and place trust in your people...even if they're incompetent sometimes. They aren't going to learn anyway if you don't place this responsibility on them.
7.) Don't stress out over known unknowns. Just keep reading and you'll find the answers you're looking for...or reframe the problem.
8.) If your customer is not angry with you, or your client is not angry with you, you'll probably doing way better then you think. Avoid imposter syndrome. In fact, sometimes this negative feedback can be appreciated because it will push you in the direction you need to go. Silence can be worse sometimes. If you're not getting feedback, it may be best to just ask for it.