Mental Models, Chow Yong Han, Page 8

An open office reduces friction

(Extracted from Bloomberg on Bloomberg) I’ve always believed that management’s ability to influence work habits through edict is limited. Ordering something gets it done, perhaps. When you turn your back,...

October 4, 2019| Execution, Structure drives behaviour Read More

Play as many hands as possible, whatever cards you are dealt with

(Extracted from Bloomberg on Bloomberg) Don’t devise a Five-Year Plan or a Great Leap Forward. Central planning didn’t work for Stalin or Mao, and it won’t work for an entrepreneur either. Slavishly follow a...

October 3, 2019| Execution, Life, Optionality, Path Dependence Read More

Bestselling books with fewer words

(Excerpt from Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon) The right constraints can lead to your very best work. My favorite example? Dr. Seuss wrote The Cat in the Hat with only 236 different words, so his editor bet him he...

September 30, 2019| Via Negativa Read More

Behavior is a function of the Person in their Environment

(Extracted from Atomic Habits by James Clear) People often choose products not because of what they are, but because of where they are. If I walk into the kitchen and see a plate of cookies on the counter, I’ll...

September 27, 2019| Structure drives behaviour Read More

Don’t act smart in the markets

(Excerpt from The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham) The art of investment has one characteristic that is not generally appreciated. A creditable, if unspectacular, result can be achieved by the lay investor with...

September 23, 2019| Fallibility, Investing, Overconfidence Bias, Randomness Read More

Be selective about what you work on. Think hard before you work hard.

(Excerpt from Zero to One by Peter Thiel) The power law is not just important to investors; rather, it’s important to everybody because everybody is an investor. An entrepreneur makes a major investment just by...

September 21, 2019| Focus, Life, Nonlinearity, Tech Read More

Rule for Venture Capital: Invest in companies with the potential to return the value of the entire fund

(Excerpt from Zero to One by Peter Thiel) Our results at Founders Fund illustrate this skewed pattern: Facebook, the best investment in our 2005 fund, returned more than all the others combined. Palantir, the...

September 21, 2019| Nonlinearity, Tech Read More

Be the last mover

(Extracted from Zero to One by Peter Thiel) You’ve probably heard about “first mover advantage”: if you’re the first entrant into a market, you can capture significant market share while competitors...

September 21, 2019| Inversion, Strategy Read More

Be a monopoly of one

(Extracted from Zero to One by Peter Thiel) You can expect the future to take a definite form or you can treat it as hazily uncertain. If you treat the future as something definite, it makes sense to understand it in...

September 21, 2019| Focus, Life Read More

Being fallible in investing and not hanging onto a wrong idea

(Extracted from Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb) One of the best traders I have ever encountered in my life, Nigel Babbage, has the remarkable attribute of being completely free of any path dependence in his...

September 20, 2019| Fallibility, Investing Read More