easier to manage from a mental standpoint than are the dollars made or conceded. Seeing it with your own eyes brings a sense of realism to the trade that allows you to identify with the trade on very personal terms. Do not allow that to happen. Many platforms, like ThinkorSwim, for instance, allow you to block the actual portfolio value as well as the gains/losses feature on a given trade. I am not saying that you should be oblivious to the destruction you might be causing to your portfolio, because that can be seen by simply looking at the past performance from a percentage standpoint. Avoiding the actual dollars you are making or losing on a given trade will help you to eliminate a great deal of the emotions from the trade that could lead you to making a fire saleâlike decision similar to the one I engaged in early on.
Emotions are killers in a trade, and if you allow that to creep into your workplace and its responsibilities, then you are creating double trouble for yourself, as you will become inept not only in your trading but likely in your job as well. An influx of emotions from trading often paralyzes the trader, and if that happens, you are not likely to be fit for your real job either.
CHAPTER 3
Where Wall Street Meets the Office
I 've always been a big fan of the NBC show The Office . Besides the fact that the show itself is absolutely hysterical, I was always able to identify with the character Jim Halpert. Here was an individual that was probably the best employee in his office, yet completely unable to relate to his job function or actually find any passion for what he did each day. It is no wonder that by season nine of the show, Jim is trying to find his own escape from the Dunder Mifflin branch in Scranton, Pennsylvania, to a new start-up company that identifies more with who he is as a person.
How can one possibly be passionate about selling paper? That is how I felt about where I was in my career. As a contracts manager, I would simply fill out countless forms each and every day. Every once in a while I would be allowed to negotiate a multimillion-dollar contract, but before I could get excited about that, I would be faced with having to follow a stack of processes so detailed that it practically covered the way I was to regulate my breathing while I was at the negotiation table. Despite the impressive dinner talk that ânegotiating multimillion-dollar contractsâ was, the reality of actually doing it was very robotic and restrictive. There was no opportunity for me to be like Jerry Maguire.
To say the least, I was inundated with about as much paperwork to fill out as Jim Halpert was in selling itâform after form, process after process, metric after metric, and report after report. I became miserable in my job. I was a person who needed to use the brain cells that God had given me, yet in order to do that there would have been a clearly outlined process determining how I could use them, too. I was allowed only to follow processes and nothing more.
â Work Ambivalence
Furthermore, there became this obsession with reports. I was considered a salaried person, but there was literally a requirement that stated we had to account for every bit of our time on the job down to one-sixth of an hour. There were these things called project codes, where every assignment we were given had a six-digit number assigned to it. Project codes were like currency. If you had project codes, you had work. If you did not have a project code, it meant you did not have any work to do, and ultimately it meant you would probably be shown the exit door.
I never had an issue with acquiring project codes because I did good work on the job and, frankly, I was a noncontroversial person. If the boss man wanted me to do something, I did it. I really did not care if what they wanted me to do made sense, nor did I care if the assignment I was asked to do was strategic and in the company's interests. There were plenty
Emotions are killers in a trade, and if you allow that to creep into your workplace and its responsibilities, then you are creating double trouble for yourself, as you will become inept not only in your trading but likely in your job as well. An influx of emotions from trading often paralyzes the trader, and if that happens, you are not likely to be fit for your real job either.
CHAPTER 3
Where Wall Street Meets the Office
I 've always been a big fan of the NBC show The Office . Besides the fact that the show itself is absolutely hysterical, I was always able to identify with the character Jim Halpert. Here was an individual that was probably the best employee in his office, yet completely unable to relate to his job function or actually find any passion for what he did each day. It is no wonder that by season nine of the show, Jim is trying to find his own escape from the Dunder Mifflin branch in Scranton, Pennsylvania, to a new start-up company that identifies more with who he is as a person.
How can one possibly be passionate about selling paper? That is how I felt about where I was in my career. As a contracts manager, I would simply fill out countless forms each and every day. Every once in a while I would be allowed to negotiate a multimillion-dollar contract, but before I could get excited about that, I would be faced with having to follow a stack of processes so detailed that it practically covered the way I was to regulate my breathing while I was at the negotiation table. Despite the impressive dinner talk that ânegotiating multimillion-dollar contractsâ was, the reality of actually doing it was very robotic and restrictive. There was no opportunity for me to be like Jerry Maguire.
To say the least, I was inundated with about as much paperwork to fill out as Jim Halpert was in selling itâform after form, process after process, metric after metric, and report after report. I became miserable in my job. I was a person who needed to use the brain cells that God had given me, yet in order to do that there would have been a clearly outlined process determining how I could use them, too. I was allowed only to follow processes and nothing more.
â Work Ambivalence
Furthermore, there became this obsession with reports. I was considered a salaried person, but there was literally a requirement that stated we had to account for every bit of our time on the job down to one-sixth of an hour. There were these things called project codes, where every assignment we were given had a six-digit number assigned to it. Project codes were like currency. If you had project codes, you had work. If you did not have a project code, it meant you did not have any work to do, and ultimately it meant you would probably be shown the exit door.
I never had an issue with acquiring project codes because I did good work on the job and, frankly, I was a noncontroversial person. If the boss man wanted me to do something, I did it. I really did not care if what they wanted me to do made sense, nor did I care if the assignment I was asked to do was strategic and in the company's interests. There were plenty
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