Basically, colonism forced me to take a white name. Now that colonism is harshly banished, I’m a widow left with my white name. Imagine Munich was a Chinese colony, you are Johannes Köch. You of course have to give to Chinese school to learn the language your colonizer, aka me, speaks, and German is such a tricky language to the tongue...

Spoiler alert: health > money > time is the correct order Here’s why. At the age of witnessing loved ones losing memories, family members diagnosed with cancer, and even a high school classmate passing away, I know that when health goes down, life goes down, too. And when health reaches zero, there is no life. When your bank account ba...

First part: On haters I love karaoke bars in Europe, and last year, when I was in Lausanne, I found this bar called Barberousse on Google Maps. Weird enough, what I read first on the reviews were “rude server,” “never go there!” etc. Nonetheless, I visited it that evening and many more times in the coming weeks - made friends with the ...

Today, let’s discuss how we learn. Nope, not about The First Principle. It is about how to grasp a new idea efficiently and keep the mind engaged: contrast learning - focus on the big contrast. Like how we learn a new language, the bad words and phrases we should not say are stickier in the mind. Why? Very likely, it is part of our sur...

Talk to entrepreneurs you meet on a Start-Up Day or conference; it is not hard to find them overhyping on small things, smiling way too much, being overly optimistic, as if they are overdosed. Are their minds f up? Talk to entrepreneurs when they are drunk. Ask them why they quit their corporate jobs. You will probably see how much the...

We often hear our internal voices when we are in the kitchen preparing our meals, washing our dishes, or alone. Some may be positive, others may cast self-doubts, “Will I make it?”, “Will everything in my presentation be alright tomorrow?”, “Will the new studio look exactly like I want?”, “Will the meeting be successful?”. As much as o...

If you only read and don’t write, you are doing it wrong. It is unnecessary to repeat the advantages of writing down your thoughts or journaling but to address the common challenges that stop one from doing it. As far as my memory goes, I read a lot and wrote almost none when I was younger. I had the imagination of writing down thought...

This serves as a record of my thoughts ten years after my high school graduation. Maybe I will write another one ten years later. : ) Ten years ago, at the end of June 2013, I graduated from one of the top high schools in my region, not as the top in class as I used to be in primary school (unnecessarily flexible, I know), but as the t...

The answer is that the study of the immune system is multiply realized at the physical level. Interestingly, different science disciplines, such as biology, chemistry, and physics, rarely invade each other’s territory. A biologist seldom worries about an uprising physics law or theory, or vice versa. Even though cells are made up of at...

Recently, I was in a startup incubator meeting, and user interviews were mentioned apathetically and repeatedly by the program manager in the incubator. Taking notes about the user interview method, the audience seemed to be my high school classmates, which concerned me. Should user interviews be treated as the go-to method to access a...

We all give ourselves the title Founder & CEO once we start a company and begin hiring the first employee, simply because there are no other titles to choose from, albeit the innate contradiction in such a title. After all, the job of the Founder contradicts the CEO’s position, as one injects risks to the business and mitigates risks t...

If everyone was busy walking fast, who invented the wheel? Let’s be honest. Most of us are infected with the Great Western Disease (GWD), a sickness that primed us to chase productivity faithfully and blindly as if a successful life is about writing a task list and checking off todos. If you do not complete any todo today, as an infect...

It takes somebody thirty minutes to fix a bicycle and somebody three days. Everyone is good at something. Unfortunately, this basic truism is the foundation of many overhyped HR strategies. If time is a currency, the cost of a task varies among individuals. Yet, many HR management overly focuses on soft metrics like employee happiness ...

The adage "big things have small beginnings" is particularly apposite in the context of habit formation. The process of changing one's life, whether in the pursuit of personal or professional goals, is gradual and often laborious, requiring a consistent and persistent effort to develop and maintain new habits. In this regard, the impor...

As I reflect on the year 2022, an annoying fact stands out - I had achieved most of what I wanted when I was 22. At this point, I had my own company and employees, my podcast show with a decent group of audience, my books published on Apple Books, and a scientific career as an oncology researcher along the entrepreneurial way. However,...

I recently talked with a friend studying at the medical school at New York University, and we were discussing how to stay motivated for as long as we want. First, being motivated may have little changes on your packed daily schedule, as it is filled with chores, work, and some free time. However, this state significantly affects your m...

The jackpot question worth a million dollars is not about building a product people want but the sustainability of the franticness behind your product. It is easy to create a product that shines ephemerally like a firework, but to build a long-lasting firework is to go against the law of physics of the firework. Is it a question about ...

The new ideology of approaching relationships by being transparent and upfront at the beginning concerning the potential challenges young couples without a set career path and place to settle down will face. - Part 1 - by F.S.Pun, C.N.Ao After observing how similar the rise and fall of over 100+ relationships are, we began to question ...

At some point in life, we will have relationships and breakups. In hindsight, we may wonder if we should ever have started that relationship, only to have a breakup as the event that we were converging to. Even though this question in itself consists of a false premise - the fact that we do not have the ability to foresee the future at...

Besides this sentence, everything else was written on January 1, 2022. (mildly edited for clarity) When things happen, it happens at an unimaginable pace. This is the nature of life, and it’s what makes life so interesting. When a business collapses, it collapses quickly. When a country collapses, it collapses rapidly. This escalation ...

To analyze a relationship, we can use the following 5-element framework. There are five attributes that determine if a relationship, not limited to a romantic relationship, will work or not – mutual enjoyment of each other’s company, respect, shared experience, reciprocity, and trust. That being said, this framework only gives us a rou...

Our ancestors, Hominina, a split from the chimpanzees, were on Earth about six million years ago, while modern humans, the species very close to our current form, evolved only about 200,000 years ago. Putting it into context, the average lifespan of a modern human is 75 years. Even though it is not accurate because the average lifespan...

When you are driven to do something, that thing is your passion. You don’t care about anything besides your passion. I’d argue this is the best stage of life because even feeling sick will not stop you from doing what you are passionate about. I call this absolute passion and having it every day is beautiful. At some point in life, I h...

Have I told you that a friend of mine got into the dental school of NYU from the waiting list by emailing the administrative office? Have I told you that a friend of mine got the past papers of an entrance exam for a science program at Max Planck Institute by emailing the alumni? Have I told you that a friend of mine becomes a close co...

2022 has been groundbreaking for me because I have met inspiring individuals that are achievers - rocket scientists in Munich, AI researchers in Copenhagen, young scientists from Newcastle, etc. To me, being connected with them and knowing that most of our time is devoted to a field we are passionate about helps me to stay focused and ...

One thing in life we have to admit, whether we like it or not, is that everything has consequences. Even if you do nothing, doing nothing itself will bring you consequences. When I was younger, I saw it as the push of time because time was ticking without my consent, and I could not stop time from ticking and running. This was my first...

What industrial revolution ultimately brings us is the ability to mass produce and mass manufacture — limited to physical goods such as newspaper, television, dish soap, shampoo, etc. Now, with the mass technology we have and over 7 hours of screen time per day in Gen Z, we have another ability unlocked — mass audience and asynchronous...

It is super important to get this right: your mission statement — why are you doing what you are currently doing? The actual reason behind your every day life. Maybe you are working a super boring 9-5 day job, but you are actually saving up for your next trip or next business venture. That gives the boring day job an actual meaning and...

Circle of competence https://fs.blog/2013/12/mental-model-circle-of-competence/ As a new year brings, I want to take this opportunity to define my circle of competence. The area I've been developing myself is entrepreneurship and scientific thinking. Since I have graduated from UC San Diego in 2017, I've been involved in the game of en...

Over the years, I have released several products in the small business that I owned. Here are my thoughts and lessons learned. Nothing is perfect on the first day. If you develop a product, treat it like a journey, and an ongoing learning process of your customers and your niche. Don’t spend extra time on fine-tuning your pricing model...