Real Inspiration: looking beyond the surface

In our daily grind of making it through the work day, week, and year, we often tend to miss some of the more interesting but deceptively mundane things taking place right beneath our noses. I was recently thinking about the storylines that are largely untold by the headlines, marketers, or conference themes. It’s the narrative that isn’t spelled out by analyzing the latest VC funding rounds or the hottest hiring trends. An it’s certainly not told by the app popularity contest among 14-24-year olds. 

It’s the story of the hacker driven by the ability to do what hasn’t been done before, or the story of the engineer who got into the game for more than just securing a good career path, instead possessing a child-like wonder over technology and how things work. Or the story of the seasoned engineer of yesteryear who gives you a window into what it must have been like to be a product of the space age. Although the battle scars of startups trying to ramp up their user base sounds great, what about actually having to run for your life from your own creation (and not talking about Boston Dynamics here). In the early days of semiconductor manufacturing, they apparently had to evade “mystery clouds” that periodically made their way toward the offices from the main fabrication areas.

In a data-driven world and workplace, inspiration is often hard to find. Layoffs at big corporations may look at the salary-to-business unit profitability ratio to determine which engineers will contribute to the latest “right-sizing” (often resulting in a mysteriously symmetrical bell curve of layoff demographics), but they fail to reflect the fact that the mentorship of the laid off engineer that resulted in a 2x productivity increase among his or her peers. Better yet, maybe the fact that they were just someone to look up to as a role model and inspiration. 

What do you look for inspiration as a trader? Is it the evolving storylines like this week’s Boeing drama, the intellectual gymnastics required in deconstructing causes behind potential market moves, or just the sheer act of trading itself, whose successful/profitable execution manifests various positive qualities that you have to embody? The daily and weekly grind of trading can also appear to be deceptively mundane, so take a step back to look the broader story and the characters in the story. Take a step back to see what drew you to this game, what inspired you beyond the allure of big or “easy” money.