Note to Self

●

When giving advice, talk less. The simpler and clearer your message, the better.

Too much detail or too many examples can overwhelm the person seeking help. Extra recommendations don’t add value; they dilute your main point. Advice is only useful if the core idea sticks after the conversation.

●●

Anything that triggers an emotional reaction in you has control over you. Ignore it. Block it. Let it go.

It’s not about agreeing or disagreeing with others. We all seek what makes us feel good, and that’s different for everyone. But when something controls us, we lose our freedom to choose. Our happiness slips out of our hands.

●●●

To achieve alpha, you need to be a contrarian. Successful investing means going against the crowd. You can’t beat the market by doing what everyone else does. The crowd is the market. You have to focus on what’s unpopular or overlooked.

Trying to outperform by chasing popular trends is pointless. You have two options:

1. Follow the crowd and get average returns.

2. Go against the crowd and get higher returns—if you’re right.

If you want exceptional results, look where others aren’t looking. Be prepared to be “wrong” for a long time before being proven right. It often takes time for the crowd to catch up.

Lessons Learned From Others

●

Jony Ive on focus:

“What focus means is saying no to something that you, with every bone in your body, think is a phenomenal idea. You wake up thinking about it, but you say no to it because you’re focusing on something else.”

Source: Apple’s Jony Ive on the Lessons He Learned From Steve Jobs

●●

Brian Armstrong on founding:

”I’ve never seen a startup where the very first version of their product actually worked.

Don’t spend your time going to conferences or trying to raise money if you don’t have product-market fit yet. Talk to your customers, improve your product based on their feedback, and then talk to your customers again to improve it further.

There are only two things you should be doing in the early stage: talking to customers and improving the product.”

Source: The Crazy Journey Of Building A $100 Billion Company

●●●

Seth Klarman on speculation:

“The strategy of going after the hot new thing has some serious disadvantages.

First of all, because everybody can see it’s the hot new thing, it tends to be priced for perfection. People have already built lofty expectations into it, so even the slightest disappointment can cause a severe loss.

This is where the difference between investing and speculation becomes clear: it’s all about how you think about downside.

Speculations tend to focus solely on the upside—how much can I make? But investing considers both the upside and the downside.

Source: Win the Long Game by Managing Risk

Valuable Finds

● Dr Cheri Mah helps NBA stars to sleep

● Warren Buffet’s punchcard concept

● Why you should run away from great ideas