06 | Stop saying you don't have time

Oct 11, 2020

Hey guys,

I’ve been the whole week in the stunning Scottish Highlands. There were days I had a lot of work to do but still tried to squeeze some extra activities such as hiking (one lunch break and one day off), quick workouts (20 minutes/day at least 3 times this week), meditation (from 5 to 15 minutes every day), preparing the next blog articles (30 minutes every night), brainstorming ideas for the upcoming newsletter (10-15 minutes every day while in the shower) and reading a book (30 minutes every night in bed). If you quantify this, it’s probably “only” an average of 1.5 hour/day but when you think in the context of a month it’s 45 hours and in a year 540 hours.

Don’t underestimate the value of squeezing little things every day. Great success doesn’t require massive actions, that’s a big lie. You can be consistent on a daily basis and when you see things over a year, you’ll see big changes.

So do me a favour, save the excuses book and stop saying you don’t have time. We all have 24 hours :)

📸 Issue's Cover

My first day in the Scottish Highlands by the Loch Ness

📝 This Week's Blog Post

I was invited to a beautiful wedding in Erfurt, the capital of Thuringia. My first time celebrating such an event in Germany. Oh yes, during the pandemic.

💸 Financial Freedom

In previous issues we talked about alternative investments such as gold, luxury watches and fine wine. But how about the ordinary investments? Alright, let’s talk about bonds.

If you invest in a bond, it means that you lend money to an organisation. This “paper” is issued with a maturity date (when the principal/face value is repaid) and interest rate (most commonly known as coupon). For example, if you’re holding a 10-year, 7% bond issued by Apple, you’re lending your money to Apple for 10 years (when you get your original investment back) at an interest rate of 7% per year (paid every 6 months). Whenever you hear that rates go up, be worried because your bond will go down in value. Why? Let’s say rates go up and now are 9% but your bond yield only at 7%… then no one would buy a 7% bond when they can obtain elsewhere the bond with an interest rate of 9%. Basic math, who wants to lose?

There are multiple variables such as credit quality (ratings), type of institutions you lend your money and length of maturity for instance. However, if you want to get started… then get a broker and start doing your homework. Never put your money anywhere you don’t understand and always seek professional advice as investments can go up and down.

🛠️ Work Smarter (Not Harder!)

One of the functions I use a lot when working is “Schedule Email”. I cannot stress how much this changed my productivity game.

Fridays are really good days for planning as I mentioned some weeks ago, simply because these are less intense days compared to the rest of the week. One of my tricks is to schedule emails for all days.

Why would somebody do it? If you send an email at 6pm on a Friday, it’s not going to get any traction and it might be missed. But if you send it on Monday morning people will pay more attention. Sometimes there are other reasons such as you don’t want to be too much ahead of certain deadlines or simply you want to be more visible at certain times.

In any case you don’t want to be writing your email and then hit send during very busy periods, so better to use a day like Friday to plan, write and schedule as much as possible. This is how you do it in Outlook and in Gmail.

🧳 Lifestyle Design

I’ve been travelling for the last 11 years. I’ve seen more than 60 countries. I took so many photos and videos. Sometimes with very basic digital cameras but most of the time with my phone. Looking back, I regret not having used a better camera to capture those moments I enjoyed so much. But that’s life. As Steve Jobs said, you can’t connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards.

In 2020, I bought a Sony A7III and this changed the game for me. I started to post better covers for my content while building a collection of high quality photos. Because I didn’t want to take photos in auto mode, I enrolled to few courses and now I feel confident using my camera in manual mode and shooting raw. I found very good free courses online, although to take your photos to the next level I strongly recommend Skillshare Premium. It’s £7 per month and it gives you unlimited access to plenty of content and offline videos beyond photography. Try 14-days free here and remember to cancel before if you don’t like it.