A Trade A Day

A CEO buddy of mine has an excellent saying. He’s always telling his employees “Hope is not a strategy”. I think he’s a pretty good CEO, but I guess I might wonder how well his company is doing if he’s constantly telling his employees to stop hoping.

In all seriousness, he’s got a point. How often do we go through life hoping something will happen. Hoping we find a wife/husband. Hoping we can pay our bills, hoping for a raise. You get the idea.

My life has no hope. At least as little as I will allow. My life is a project plan. I use goals and make plans. I’ve heard goals are good ideas with a timeframe. I can accept that, but I still focus on execution and use my goals to guide me.

My wife still has hope and I constantly try to get her to give it up. She’ll tell me…”I want to do X, or In 2 years I want to be here”. “Ok honey”, I say, “let’s sit down, map it out and detail the next 5 steps we need to do to make it happen and execute one of those steps right now!”

Usually, the conversation ends right there. I’m getting her to change her approach, but it’s slow going.

In the trading world, avoiding hope and fear have become cliche. The solution is the same. It all comes down to sticking to your method and execution. I’ve gotten more personal and career satisfaction from applying that same cliche to life.

Of course life likes to throw curveballs. It doesn’t always go as planned. It’s presumptious to assume that the secret to success is that easy, but you’ll get farther treating your life like a project with goals, timelines and todo lists than you will having hope.

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