On Making Decisions... I really enjoy reading Jason Fried and his team's article on what guides their decision-making process. Whether it is in a product role, running a business or even optimising our lives (think buying a bigger home, investing..), we are always making decisions. Here are a few points that really resonated with me: 3...

Starting a new post series on 3 new things I learnt today. A new word I learnt a new word called “macerate” from Mark Manson's newsletter. A reader wrote to him: “It took me years before I decided to start therapy. I used to think that I was good at "watching my mind" and able to analyze the causes of my issues. However, I had to ackno...

• Value creation does not always require technology • Great product does not sell by itself • It is human nature to want to feel engaged, share knowledge (think: Reddit, Whirlpool, Facebook groups) • Boundaries are set by the questions we ask ourselves. Ask better questions, you get better answers • Writing clarifies thoughts. When in ...

Meta results is out. I subscribed to Steady Compounding for the research and earning analysis. There are a few nuggets of wisdom in its that I am trying to understand. It says “CapEx spend is $9.52b on operating cash flow (OCF) of $9.7b. This leaves $0.18b as free cash flow (FCF) What are those terms? And why does this matter? CapEx ar...

" Trying to write something of permanent value is a full-time job even though only a few hours a day are spent on the actual writing. A writer can be compared to a well. There are as many kinds of wells as there are writers. The important thing is to have good water in the well, and it is better to take a regular amount out than to pum...

There is much more to exceptional performance than a 10,000 hours practice or burning endless nights. It is the intention in the deliberate practice that matters ultimately. The following paragraphs extracted from James Clear’s recent post sums it up well: The person who wins the Nobel Prize in biology is not the person who read the mo...

I just love this play with words on the tin of collagen powder. Simple, sharp and getting that dual message across.

Someone asked me today on how I manage my time and overlapping priorities. This is a hard one especially with 3 products I am trying to launch, 2 products to maintain and 2 market research pieces. That requires better planning and de-prioitising but in any case time management practices kick in.. Some of the suggestions of this Twitter...

"If you want to be heard, you must first hear..." A simple yet overlooked fact. If you want to influence, you need to start with trust. People are more likely to hear you when they trust you. So always start with building trust. To build trust, you need to provide value. Value can come in the form of empathy articulated, summarizing a ...

Summarised it beautifully by Ray Dalio. The best teams are those who are hums in agreement and disagreement.

Knowledge does not change behaviour. You give people all the knowledge in the world and they still make poor decisions. Most decision-making are emotional. Remember when you help yourself to another chocolate bar even though you wanted to go on a diet? We know that overeating is bad but we still can't help it. Remember the very first t...

A good one from David Perell which I had quoted below: "But when you write regularly, you start observing those things because the pen turns you into a curious detective who is always hunting for clues. So much of effective writing is being attentive to the world in ways that other people aren’t. The more observational you become, the ...

I got this from Janel's newsletter for the curious. Check it out here Don't fall for the promotion trap in your career. "To get promoted, you need to show a track record of “wins” leading up to the decision. This incentivizes more focus on “looking good” than “getting good”. There’s rarely a prize for doing things the hard way. Why wor...

I always love reading the curated network of articles in my Feedly app over coffee every morning. This morning, an article that Kevin Kelly attached in Recommendo weekly newsletter on decisioning making really sing out to me. Having grew up in a society that heavily prize success at all cost, that mindset became a crippling factor for ...

Changing hearts and minds.. Over the past few weeks, I have been thinking about how one continuously update their world view. Many would know me for my steadfast opinions. However, there is an evolution of these opinions as one mellow through experiences. You wrestle with tension as you re-consider another view point that is in direct ...

A couple of us were talking about work which touches on the topic of diversity. Diversity is shaped by the identity and essentially the culture behind. I have always been fascinated by identity and its assembly into a culture, less so about diversity because the term "diversity" is overused in corporate. Here is the article by BrainPic...

The simple truth behind how to excel is really the right motivation. You know it when you see it. Investor Graham Duncan describes it well below "[Tennis champion] Novak Djokovic said in an interview with the Financial Times that "I can carry on playing at this level because I like hitting the tennis ball." The interviewer replied in s...

Art. Do something, do anything creative and fun, not bound by any media or standards. These are the ones that gently question the boundaries and nudge towards an independent thinking. This is a good one by Wei, the maker behind Very Small Exhibition in Singapore. It is a guerrilla-style installation in the heartlands of Singapore. It s...

Here's my 4th post which I had modelled after Jason Fried's series. Heard Something In good and tough times, I always come back to a quote from one of my favourite figures, Naval. “ A calm mind, a fit body and a house full of love. They can't be bought. They are earned and cultivated. ” I heard that in my mind again when I hit the bric...

I recently posted part of this on LinkedIn after grabbing it off AVC's original post on short and sweet. Why take two pages to say something that can be condensed in one page? Less words, more impact. Nice, punchy example by Duolingo's co-founder, Luis von Ahn to potential investors - see below. It feels real and grand when one plans t...

The meaning of home is summarised beautifully below ... You can spend a lifetime looking for a sense of home. Sometimes we must leave our home in order to find it. In his poem “Journey Home,” Rabindranath Tagore writes, “The traveler has to knock at every alien door to come to his own.” Home can be a place we belong, home can be found ...

From Taylor Pearson.. One of the great disservices of the modern educational system is that it trains us to follow instructions instead of educating us to write the instructions. It trains us to seek certainty instead of learning to manage and benefit from uncertainty. However, It's the marketer that discovers the channel early when it...

Here's my 3rd post which I had modelled after Jason Fried's series. Heard Something I am at the tail end of watching Terry Tran's The Freedom Trader and he said something that really struck a chord. “Patience is a profitable activity over time” Many understood the real value of patience because you don't see results immediately. It is ...

Speaking is a chance to hone your voice, to test your worldview and to unify everyone on an aspiration. Preparation should be essential whether you are speaking as a speaker in an event on the stage or even speaking to drive towards an outcome in a group meeting. Both are speaking but many largely underestimate the preparation and role...

When I first started my investing journey, I was constantly reminded by FIRE community that time in the market is better than time the market. Eventually it became something I firmly believed in. I used to be cynical when folks were attempting to enter the market at a specific price. To me, that was a silly move because there is a cost...

People can spend days to research on new clothes, accessories, television and establish whether it is at bargain, but can't spend 20-30minutes researching a stock, a company and an investment. What an irony indeed.

I was reading this book called Exhalation by Ted Chiang , a recommendation by one of my all-time favourite maker, Seth Godin. Exhalation is a collection of short stories that nudge you to think deeper. Of late, the point about free will has been lingering in my head, mostly invoked by the COVID situation. As most had noticed, the evolu...

Here's my 2nd post which I had modelled after Jason Fried's series. Heard Something I had enrolled in Terry Tran's The Freedom Trader on how to profit stocks safely in part because I want to learn a new skill on the side and have it in my small bets realm. Terry always emphasised in the course that it's not about getting the trough and...

Rugby player Jonny Wilkinson on maintaining a mindset of flexibility: “If I need things to be a certain way, I'm held hostage by them”

Everything in life is created twice. Once in your mind and then in your reality. I have always struggled speaking in front of a group or a crowd. But recently I have started practising the flow to nut out the key messaging. First writing the flow of the speech / presentation on paper and then using that to visualise the settings and ho...