Category: musings

  • Read less books

    I had a phase in 2018 and 2019 where I had a goal of reading at least 50 books. I read 50 in 2018 and 35 in 2019. I thought that the more books I read, the better thinker I become. Well, I was indeed a better thinker right after reading the book, but I…

  • The power of saying “I don’t know”

    I am a skeptic. The works of Nassim Taleb and Karl Popper has been tattooed in my worldview. Yes Nassim, finding a black swan will invalidate the theory that all swans are white. Karl, I understand that science should attempt to disprove a theory rather than finding ways to continually prove it. Countless times in…

  • Too much and too little of anything is not good

    Indifference Curve. Isocost. Isoquant. If you’ve taken Microeconomics in uni and you feel the dread, I feel you. I was very interested in economic theory and consumer behavior but once my professor threw me those indifference curves, I was done ya’ll. No chance. Too much complexity and graphs to what I think could be explained…

  • Build wealth through leverage

    I had an interesting conversation with my tennis partner this morning. He is in his early 20’s and still trying to figure out his career path. As his ultimate goal is financial freedom, I told him the concept of leverage. Two things I have learned from our conversation. First, I have a difficult time expressing…

  • Don’t be married to your ideas

    For a long time, humans believed that the earth was the center of the universe while the sun, stars, and other planets revolve around it. Copernicus challenged the idea in the 16th century by stating the sun was the center. Surgeons have been killing patients with their own germs until Ignaz Semmelweis introduced hand washing with chlorinated…

  • Learning is non-linear

    When I turned 30 in 2019, I took up tennis. I had too many injuries playing basketball over the years (e.g. partial MCL tear, grade 1 and grade 2 ankle sprains, rotator cuff tendinitis) that I decided to switch to a less physical sport. I could have opted for swimming but my 45-minute laps were…

  • On Chris Dixon’s climbing the wrong hill

    Okay folks, I have been in the crypto and blockchain rabbit hole lately. So far, the best podcast that I have listened to about this space is Tim Ferriss episode 542 with Chris Dixon and Naval Ravikant. It has added to my confidence on the future of blockchain, decentralization, and peer-to-peer money. A portion of…

  • 1,000 true fans

    I read 1,000 true fans by Kevin Kelly in 2017 and ever since I could not stop telling fellow entrepreneurs about this concept. Although the article was originally written in 2008, the theory is more feasible now than it was then. An artist/creator who sells $100 worth of merchandise in a year to 1,000 true…

  • Washing machine and social media

    The washing machine, what an invention. I was hand washing my favorite shirt earlier because the machine could not remove some dirt on it. This got me thinking. What if I washed all of my clothes manually like the good ol’ days? I probably would spend 2 to 3 hours washing and hanging them. By…

  • Slow down, no need to rush

    I decided to learn the guitar last August 2020. I needed another outlet from the monotony of home life during a pandemic.  I gave myself 6 months to “learn” the guitar. Obviously, I was in for a rude awakening as the first 2-3 months alone was literally painful. Fretting the strings to play basic chords…