Redesigning everyday life – Change

Change, it’s slowly but surely making it’s way into my everyday life, a change that I meet with resistance one time and embrace on other moments. I am now getting better results from my new planning system and also being a lot more aware of my energy. A challenge is too really relax and take it one day at the time. It’s mostly the day to day stuff that’s getting better. Less crazy dips when I should have been able to avoid those. The avoiding is going well, after being inside for almost a complete week due to a knee injury I found that staying inside actually helped in controlling the amount of incentives , consequently I kept avoiding going outside. Which I am now doing a again every day. I can’t stay inside all the time, so I am now picking that up again. It’s also important too maintain a social life and keep connecting with people. Also something I need to focus on more. The new way of distributing my energy should yield a better base line and more stability in the next 3 or 4 months. After this point I can gradually increase my activities.

With all day to day stuff going better I slowly need too look ahead. I am now trying to get permission to get a coach with a lot of experience in getting people with cognitive problems back to work, since I am now receiving payment via the government they have too approve this. So hopefully I will have a meeting within the next few weeks. So I can get this started.

So all in all many good things, in many small steps.

Portfolio news – October 2016 changes

New name for the monthly posts , changes instead of additions. Why, well I sold one position in my portfolio. My favourite sneaker manufacturer Adidas. I bought it back in November 2015 and sold it last week. The question is why of course as I am very long term. First the appreciation is very substantial in this period. I can’t really add any more to the position without tipping the balance in the portfolio and as a result also the dividend percentage dropped significantly. For me the valuation just got a bit too high and the payout of selling was very attractive.

I will still follow the company and I am sure to buy it again at lower levels. As for the addition this month it has been BMW the German car manufacturer that will along with the rest of the established auto motive branch , according to all the experts lose from Tesla. But until that happens is a very good investment. It has had some downturn last year and at the beginning of this year and is now slowly getting out of that hole. It’s around 80 Euro at the moment which is not cheap but simply good value. Debt position is average and should increase.

Dividend is 3,20 Euro per share which is around 4%, fair result. Another reason is I am spotting a lot of people looking at BMW as their new car. Maybe not the usual market indicator but one famous fund manager always said, look around and buy what you see people buy and company’s you understand. Along those lines anyway. So it’s all about the Germans this month.

Redesigning everyday life – Carpe diem

The biggest question of all, how far will the recovery go. Nobody knows the answer, or can give you a range. I knew that from the beginning. What I didn’t know is what it meant for me and everybody around me.

I am slowly learning what it means. I have to give up my desire to control things, which is hard to do because I have always had some sort of plan and knew if I followed the plan , the goals would be reached. Most of the time anyway. You can’t win them all.

I’m trying to let go of my old ways of doing things, which was to work hard and work harder if it didn’t go as planned.
Fighting was my number one response if events didn’t go my way.

It was my first response in my recovery, I wanted to get back to normal as fast as possible. So I went back to work pretty quick and set out to up my activities almost on a weekly base. Not just the hours at work but also activities at home. I felt tired pretty quick but tried to fight it and push on, which normally worked upon till some degree. I kept this up until my contract at work ended and I felt just how much energy this had taken. And I suffered the inevitable set back most people experience in their recovery. I had tried to train my way out of it. But it’s not sport or even studying were you put in the time and effort and it mostly pays off in the end.

I was simply draining myself and burnt the energy I needed to recover. So after the dip I had to really rethink the approach and take taking my time to recover seriously. I talked about this period with the people who help me recover and they said it was time for me to accept my current situation and not trying to compare everything to the way I was and did things before. Most of the progress is with acceptance and trying to live one day at the time. So it was back to the drawing board, the result was a new system for energy management which allows me to go into more detail when planning my energy and some extra help in acceptance and the psychological side of things.

The new energy management system will show results after 3 to 4 months give or take. If the balance is solid I can them go and experiment further. the other part is the acceptance bit. Given the results of the Neuro psychological tests I can’t expect to fully recover to my former self in terms of concentration , analytical capabilities and information intake and memory. Most likely I can’t return to my old job. The funny thing is , I was already exploring other options before I got this. Off course the cards have been shuffled differently since then, and I never pulled the trigger on those options. It was easier and way faster to go back into my ‘old’ job then it is to make a real switch.

Now I have the opportunity to explore things I am really passionate about , and step outside of my comfort zone and habits, without going all practical about it all the time. I have never taken these kind of exercises seriously in the past, Amusing yes, but my practical side always took over and I just continued with life. In general there are always more excuses to stay on a course that feels safe and secure, or feel that way. So when I was told that it’s a good exercise to brainstorm what it is that makes me happy in life, my first reaction was a bit sceptical.

But then again what do I really have to loose ? All my prior attempts failed because of self imposed boundaries and limits. And without having a solid outlook I just as well go and think out of the box and give this a real shot. I always found people living by the day a bit naive, never planning ahead seemed like a path to certain failure. But now it’s really time for me to incorporate some of that ‘Carpe diem’ in my life and find out where it takes me.

Portfolio news – September 2016 additions

So for this portfolio update I have added a brand new name to the collection. It’s ASML a Dutch company that makes machines to produce all these wonderful chips we all need in our phones, computers and other selected devices of choice. It has been on my list for some time now. It’s been expensive lately and still is, but I simply decided not to wait any more to add this to the portfolio. Also because I suck at timing highs and lows of any stock I wish to buy.

The company has paid out a dividend of Euro 1,05 which is nice , but as makes the current price a bit high in terms of dividend return, nevertheless still good enough. The dividend is not guaranteed , one could say that’s the case per default for any company. But it’s not a member of the dividend aristocrats family. So they will not try to pay out dividends if it doesn’t suit the company’s goals. The company’s debt is slowly decreasing which is always good. One of the other risk factors with these highly expensive and long term products is the problems that can occur with delivery times , but that is the case with all producers of this kind of high tech. For me it’s a solid investment for the future, and I hope I can add to the position in the near future.

September 2016 – Dividend

Another month , another bit of dividend coming in this month, not much to add except the figures. Figuring out how to get a bit more revenue out of the portfolio, but since I’m very slow, this process is also very slow. Totals without tax, which will be deducted and reclaimed again at the end of the year, so irrelevant for this overview.

7-9-2016 Dividend (Product: UNILEVER DR) EUR 3,20
8-9-2016 Dividend (Product: MICROSOFT CORPORATION) EUR 3,10
9-9-2016 Dividend (Product: VANGUARD DIV APPRECIAT) EUR 1,02
9-9-2016 Dividend (Product: EMERSON ELECTRIC COMPA) EUR 4,09
19-9-2016 Dividend (Product: RDSA dvd reinvestment plan) EUR 42,18
19-9-2016 Dividend (Product: ICAHN ENTERPRISES L.P.) EUR 1,29

Total 54,88

Redesigning everyday life – Explorations

Brain recovery, how far can the brain recover ? According to most experts your brain can recover from serious damage but once the recovery stops that’s it. It is , however possible to recover up until your old level, which can take a few weeks months or years. In most cases people change, either in their ability to concentrate, memorize stuff, finding words etc, or have changes to their personalities. And now the fun part, most of the experts agree that in the first period recovery is at its quickest. After that it slows down. Sometimes people find themselves getting better years and years after. Which is good , very good.

I have gone past the half year mark and have had some nice improvements , reading is going better and I am getting used to all the tips and tricks that make my life easier to manage.

However, a few area’s are still a bit of a problem. And not so easy for people to understand and get their head around. In this article I will try to shed some light on this.

First off, conversations. If I am well rested and in a reasonable relaxed environment , I make sense most of the time and can actually interact on a normal level. It can happen when I’m talking my brain can’t always find the right words or my sentences get screwed up. Especially if there is a lot of noise or a lot of people talking nearby. This gets worse at the end of the day when my energy levels drop. I mix up words more often at the end of the day, so most of the time only my girlfriend notices. When I am asking for a spoon when I want her to pass me the remote control or something.

More troubling I can’t really remember what I have been talking about without taking notes. Making notes during casual conversation might be a bit odd. So I don’t do that. But then something happens along the lines of , remember you said this last time we spook. And I really can’t remember it. Most people close to me know this by now. But for people a bit further away this is a bit weird. As if I am not that interested in them or have been half ignoring them at the last meet.

Taping conversations is not really an option just yet, meetings of an official nature I am leaning towards it. But for a friendly conversation this is strange.
So I am figuring this out as I go. If I meet new people I try and casually slip in a few lines about my condition and how it can affect the conversation we have. This can clarify why I sometimes ask people to repeat what they just said twice (so I can remember better) or why it takes time for me to respond. Some people pick it up really casual ask one or two things about and continue. Other people react as if they just seen the grim reaper and the fun and casual conversation turns into me answering loads of questions about my condition. Which is normal I guess but not something you always want to do. Don’t get me wrong here , people being interested is not a bad thing and most are very compassionate and nice. But I don’t want it do dominate the conversation in any way. It’s just me trying to give some insight in why I have to apply these tactics in order to follow the conversation.

Secondly, I am extremely slow in finding solutions to any given problem, question or anything hard. It takes ages. I have to take notes, read them over. Ask questions later etc.
I a meeting this is difficult. I come up with stuff way after the momentum has passed, well after the meeting has ended basically.
This doesn’t mean my level of intelligence just dropped , my brain is essentially processing everything in slow motion. And my response is therefore also in slow motion.

This has been the greatest effect , because it takes so much time it also sucks energy. I can’t work on a hard project for hours on end on just food and coffee. I have to split everything up in small parts, which hopefully makes me a great planner ;). It’s about energy management rather than time management.

So after my first goal of getting my energy, focus and concentration on a higher level has been reached , these things will hopefully have improved a lot. Hopefully these examples will give some insight , and maybe I will tape our next encounter ;-).

Portfolio news – August 2016 additions

A bit late as I an busy taking more time off and balancing my energy, more on that in another post. The addition of August.

Only one addition this month, and yet again a extension of an existing position, namely Microsoft. It was a position that was not in line with the rest of the portfolio so it had to be adjusted. Most of the tech positions in the portfolio are performing well and I think Microsoft has more potential on the upside. The company is producing good results and while this may not be the best way to take investment decisions I love windows 10, it’s an excellent OS , fast and stable. And a lot of people agree. Also their development tools are great and they are doing a lot in the way of education and making people familiar with the software.

I think this can only get better, more and more people getting involved in tech will make for more innovations. Hopefully not only in just another app but also in research and other tech fields where you are bound to need software. All in all I am positive about Microsoft. Next month , well this month in the coming week I will get a brand new position. For the September addition.

Redesigning everyday life

Last few weeks I have been taking some more rest and time out to reflect on my progress so far. It’s been a steep learning curve and I am now up to a point where I almost know how much energy I have on any given day. I am now working on a system to score the amount of energy of each individual activity in a way such that I can compare and measure my flow of energy.

Until now I was giving out colours , red for an energy consuming task, green for an energy giving task and yellow for neutral. At the end of the day I also scored the overall day on a scale of 1 to 10.

While this was fine it didn’t help me as much as I wanted, especially when planning ahead. While thinking about this , I set on designing a system that helps me plan my activities more accurately and thus keep the heavy dips in energy at bay. So my first idea was to come up with some kind of system to score my activities and my daily available energy amount.

I discussed my idea with my therapist and she had a system which they don’t use that often because it’s normally a bit to hard for people to understand. But it has exactly what I need , a scientific based scoring method to score your activities. It also has a tool to calculate your base daily energy.

The goal for me is now to start and measure the activities and score my days. Once I have that sorted I will be able to manage my energy in a way that the strange dips in energy don’t occur as much any more.

For me this is a great step in redesigning my life in such a way I feel more in control about it. It also opens a lot opportunities to develop this further. Since it’s more accurate than just handing out colours it has a lot of potential for analysing my day to day and week to week planning.

I am very enthusiastic about this new method and hopefully I can report some good progress over the next few weeks and months.

August 2016 – Dividend

Dividends again, always a good thing. As always the markets are moody as ever and nobody knows how long this ridiculous policy of low interest and buying huge amounts of bonds will go on. It has led to inflated markets and in the Netherlands , the old crazy pre credit crisis housing madness is back once again. This time with even lower rates. More debt at lower cost is still debt.

People don’t seem to mind and are paying large amounts of money for housing again. But more on that later, back to the dividends. It has been a slow month and I am looking for good ways to even out the monthly income from my portfolio. I am looking into various ways to do this. Maybe incorporate a bit more option strategies during the month. I now sell some for extra revenue. Which works great , so I am looking into ways to extend this.

Well, without further delays and small talk the August dividend result.

9-8-2016 Dividend (NSI) EUR 13,00
4-8-2016 Dividend (AMSTERDAM COMMOD.) EUR 5,60
15-8-2016 Dividend (Product: ONEOK INC. COMMON STO) EUR 5,23
11-8-2016 Dividend (Product: APPLE INC. – COMMON ST) EUR 4,85
16-8-2016 Dividend (Product: ONEOK INC. COMMON STO) EUR 4,63
12-8-2016 Dividend (Product: APPLE INC. – COMMON ST) EUR 4,34

Total EUR 37,65

Modern Football , finally some good news ?

Modern football, a term that’s almost old school again. It’s against a lot of things. Modern stadiums , modern stadium catering, seating , ticket prices, idiotic hired stewards eh hosts and hostesses. And a lot of other things, let’s not forget the bans , mandatory away travelling arrangements. The lot basically. It used to be better, so much better. Standing in the wind, rain , and cold. Drinks and food sold out or robbed out at half time. Waiting at the tickets office for hours on end hoping to get a ticket to European matches. You get the picture although I might have overstated some of the above. Everybody has their own more or less romanticized view on days past.

Today it was announced the 4 most important football nations in Europe will have 4 places each for the Champions League. You know the competition for the champions of the different European leagues. Didn’t know we had 4 in each. I know, I know it’s been a silly name for a number of years now.

The smaller country’s will lose more once again. This has been an ongoing process. In the Netherlands every club in the 90’s envisioned European titles in their ambitions, building new expensive stadiums. Building mountains of debt and subsequently getting in a lot of distress. But sports as a business is a reality, has been for some time and everyone was looking to the US for examples of how to run a sports business. Club managers attended seminars , conferences and got their heads filled with silly ideas, supporters are customers, hospitality packages and all seater stadiums. Some Football clubs even went on the stock market. Forgetting one thing, the supporters.

Supporting a team in Europe means something vastly different then in the US. In the big 3 sports anyway. In the US people can move teams around the country, from Oakland to LA and back again as was the case with the Raiders. In my view there is a bit of a culture behind it. For me there was.

In any case , money took over in Europe. League tickets are expensive and the former working class Saturday/Sunday adventures became unobtainable for a lot of people. Well Saturday turned into Monday , Tuesday and other every day of the week basically. But people have to work. You can’t be expected to travel half way across the country on a Monday for a 7PM kick off. Most of us not anyway.

One important aspect of being a supporter of a club is the social element. Most people who end up going to the fixtures where either taken by their parents, other family or just decided to go with friends. All at a young age. For a small amount of money you could go enjoy the atmosphere , the build up, watch a game and share the stories for years and years to come. Friendships for life are forged and now matter what you will always follow that club. More or less with the same people season in and out. Whether it be a local team or one of the bigger clubs. For what ? the Football, no off course not it’s the social side of things. Meeting up , seeing old friends , reminiscing on old stories. Sharing experiences and beer.

The big leagues are getting too expensive for young people to really get attached to a club. Watching it on TV will not let you make any new friends, experience the days out (far more fun most of the time than the actual match.) and feel the energy of those once in a lifetime victories in the dying seconds of a cup final. Bringing your kids is too expensive, and they will not choose a club , but a player so you end buying another team’s shirt every season because your kids favourite player just moved. For another record braking sum of money. And this is very wrong.

But ….

In the smaller competitions and countries ousted of the champions league due to the new rules, I see a lot of room for improvements. At first it will be a lot less. Some fans will lose their European away games. Which I must admit are legendary. Less money from TV, sponsors and everything else. As a club you will probably have to sell all of the talent every season , and that maybe a bit of an annoyance.

Less money from all those distractions will hopefully achieve the following, and I know I will stretch it a bit here. Quality games will not be readily available any more. After a few seasons most of the tourists will stay away, thus leaving the clubs with the few die-hards who are willing to sacrifice all of their money for a season ticket. Eventually prices will have to come down, in other words getting people to go to the stadium on a very regular basis will be the main source of income. The rotten dialogue between most club boards and their supporters will have to be restored. Supporters will once again have a say in clubs , idiotic Monday night games will be a thing of the past. Everyone will play on a Saturday (sorry personal preference , in my case Sunday’s 14:30 would be the real old school way) and thus have time for a night out afterwards.

Competitions will be far more exciting because most teams will be equally good (or bad). Parents will bring their kids again, they will make friends and after a few years will start going with their friends and make new friends, all friends for life. And so on , The balance of old is restored and new stories will be told for years to come.