07 | The Power of Nature
Hey guys,
I came back to London some days ago. The Scottish Highlands was a memorable trip and helped me sharpen the saw. Next Wednesday stay tuned for the full article on that.
I was wondering why being outdoors make us reflect about life. So I went back to one of my favourite books: Sapiens. I remember one chapter where the author mentioned how our ancestors ālived in harmony with natureā whereas the modern industry ādestroys natureā. He also described this as the romantic contrast between modern vs ancient.
Regardless the new generation and our adjustments to the latest way of living, devices, time management, multi-tasking and so onā¦ itās clear that thereās something else that triggers that āthingā when being in nature.
Maybe that āthingā is a reminder of who we truly are and sometimes we need to strike the right balance between the hectic situations we all go through and our connection to our roots.
šø Issue's Cover
Reflecting at The Storr in the Isle of Skye, Scotland
š This Week's Blog Post
āHi, Speedā was the tagline used by Apple for their event held yesterday. It was a virtual conference completely pre-recorded at Apple Park. This was the most expected event of the year as a brand new line of iPhones was going to be announced.
Read more: Apple Did It Again?
šø Financial Freedom
In previous issues we talked about alternative investments such as gold, luxury watches and fine wine. Last week we also started with more traditional investments such as bonds. Letās talk about stocks today.
Stocks are simply shares of ownership in a firm. When they go public, they issue these shares that all of us can buy. When these firms grow, they earn profits and typically the stock price goes up (and dividends!). You probably heard about P/E ratio (Stock Price/Company Earnings). This is one of the most tracked metrics for stock investors and typically used to value companies to see if they are under/overvalued. For example, P/E = 10 means that stock prices per share are selling at 10 times those firmsā earnings per share. In other words, investors are willing to pay 10 times more for every dollar of earnings. This is key to see the stockās growth potential. If the P/E is high, then the investors expect higher earnings. Watch outā¦ this doesnāt mean itās a better investment. Why? Because it can also be the case that the stock is overvalued and you might put your money at risk if those high earnings expectations are not met. I hope you now see why companiesā earnings presentations are so important.
As I always mention, never put your money anywhere you donāt understand and always seek professional advice as investments can go up and down.
š ļø Work Smarter (Not Harder!)
If you have an office job and find yourself working from home, howās your setup looking like? How many screens do you have?
Letās say you only work with your laptop and you use up to 5 different applications. Imagine you open your first application, then you click on the second one, go back and forth or even if you need to work in parallelā¦ how unproductive this is. How many minutes you waste just because of the setup. Over a year, these minutes are hours and days. Well, of course you can use command + tab (or control + tab if youāre a Windows user) to move faster between applications but then againā¦ what if you need to work in parallel and see multiple things faster? Thatās when 2 screens are the game changer. I keep my MacBook Pro 13" closed and connect it via USB-C port to my LG 34" Curved monitor which I use with my iPad Pro 11". There are moments where I used the 3 screens but generally my LG monitor and iPad are more than enough.
On the iPad I keep an eye on the calendar, use Zoom/WebEx/Jabber/Teams, do some OneNote edits and Notability notes.
On my LG screen, I keep MS Office, Aqua Data Studio, MobaXterm and many other apps I use for Finance. All this via Citrix from my macOS. When I go back to macOS, then I mainly use Adobe Creative Cloud, Final Cut Pro and Notion.
If I were to do all that with one monitor onlyā¦ Iād need more than 24 hours per day to get my stuff done.
š§³ Lifestyle Design
I know itās not the moment to talk about buying flight tickets. But this can be a great moment to plan your next holiday. Flight tickets are cheaper than ever and if you do your homework, you can find many tickets that allow you to reschedule. So you can buy now, change if there are travel restrictions at least once free of charge. Of course, not all airlines offer this. In fact, I learnt the hard way.
I bought a flight ticket with airBaltic and I made a big mistake because I thought it had a free change but I was wrong. It was non-refundable. So, guess what, restrictions took place and couldnāt fly, so changing the ticket was as expensive as buying a new one and cancelling was lost money. Donāt make the mistake I made. I also needed to travel to Madrid but I couldnāt so Air Europa gave me a voucher with the full cost of the flight to use within a year. This was not great either but at least I didnāt lose any money. British Airways is not the cheapest one, nevertheless I know that if I use points, I can cancel and get my points back. This is the best deal that works for me at the moment. If you want to read more about tricks with airlines and hotels, I encourage you to check the issue #3 of my newsletter.
Finally, try to buy always directly from the airlines, I generally donāt recommend agencies. Yes, airlines can be a bit more expensive but youāll save yourself some future headaches.