Just some thoughts

About Work

• Ask more questions at the right times, after you have exhausted all possible options or if the answer is not easily acquired.
• Work is very challenging for all occupations like military, doctors, surgeons. It helps to see more perspectives when you think about other people.

• Simplify and deliver.
• One of the most important things about work is to summarize after each day and see what you have learnt or improved on your fundamental skills.
• Status and reputation is not yours until you have built it. Work in the cutting edge technology as possible. The best possible work is to work on your passion with extraordinary people.
• Always be open to other side of ideas. There are merits in almost everything in the world depending on how you think about it.
• Working as close to the core and most profitable business as possible as it is likely the best way to advance your career to the next level.
• Allocate at least 80% of time to the real hardcore work. Try to eliminate random and administrative things, and get to the truth/critical thinking/engineering design stage faster. We need to constantly make assumptions and drop irrelevant things. So good assumptions are very important for not wasting time.
• Keep other people low expectation is a win for yourself.
• The only reason you have for quitting a job is because you want to quit, and hoping others will echo with you by giving all the reasons in the world as the grass is always greener on the other side.
• It is better to say don’t know, rather than giving the incorrect information.
• Meetings are best only to include the necessary 4–5 max people in it. It is more polite than rude to leave one if you have nothing to contribute. Written communications are more effective than meetings most of the time, because usually people give more thoughts and research into their writings.

• Over communication is better than under communication.
• Ignore distractions at work and learn to say no to almost everything.
• Ain’t broke, done fix mentality leads to stagnation, where growth-oriented mindset leads to progress. Don’t accept the world as it is. There are always ways to improve and change it. One of the biggest misconceptions people have is that things or technology in general automatically improve over time. However it fact, it degrades. Things only become better when many people are working very hard to make it better.

About Study

• If work is knowledge output, then study is intaking. There is a limit to the output, but limitless for whatever it is yet to be abosrbed. If work is a must, then hours after work will distinguishes you.
• Engineering and design are about creative problem solving with limited givens, which are not normally found in a text book, and requires out of the box thinking.
• Elon Musk could not have said it better, so I just directly quote him from CalTech graduation speech: “I always had an existential crisis, because I was trying to figure out ‘what does it all mean?’ Like what’s the purpose of things? And I came to the conclusion that if we can advance the knowledge of the world, if we can do things that expand the scope and scale of consciousness, then we’re better able to ask the right questions and become more enlightened. And that’s the only way forward.”
• Only those who have gone through certain hardship, can really appreciate the freedom. Treat knowledge as basic food during famine, and ready to accept the next challenge. This is how college changes our lives. Getting good grades is one aspect. Becoming the best is not just about being the best. It is about the same attitude you will have towards the rest of things. In the Chinese literature ‘Journey to the West’, what made the Tang Monk Tang Monk was never the scriptures from India, but the road of getting there.

• Learning takes time. Just like any worthwhile goals don’t get achieved so easily. The more you learn, the more you realize how much you don’t know.
• Computer science and finance are just tools, similar as knowing many programming languages. What’s important is that knowing how the tools get transformed and applied in engineering designs using the specific knowledge of data structure, algorithm, mathematical logics, databases, interfaces, etc.
• No students cannot be taught, but only the teachers who do not know how to teach.
• Think of learning as a way of getting trained.
• Don’t take everything for granted or simply following the trend. Have a rough idea of what other people know well or might not know. Think over it before making it your own knowledge. Reason by analogy and boil down to the fundamental truth one can imagine and reason from there. This is at least how physicists figured out quantum mechanics counter-intuitively. Theoretical knowledge can be better linked if you know what real world problems are out there. Thus work and study are equally important.
• During my undergraduate I used to think school was about pulling multiple all nighters. However after becoming an employee, I realized school was actually a place for same minded people to go through the same hardship together.

About Entrepreneurship and leadership

• Meet and know as many extraordinary people as possible. In order to work with the most brilliant, hardworking and motivated people, I need to become one of them first.
• Setting goals for others will further motivate yourself.
• Entrepreneurship is all about working hard and taking risks, and keep failing

• Proactively seek opportunities and talent relentlessly. Make yourself remembered.
• Read books of different genres. Leaders need to know different perspective of things not just limited to managing group project. He might also need to know what part of the news is more important to read about.
• Think about whether the company income and user growth are stable in the early stage. Then think about business model, size of scale, industry forecast in the long term. Companies need both short term and long term plans to set the right expectation for investors. This is why stretchy deadlines are so important. People tend to improve when unrealistic things are pushed on them.
• Theoretically, people only invest money somewhere-else because he or she does not believe himself or herself can produce the same or more value with their own hands.
• A good 30-minute-workout past most chunk of the day works very well not only for dealing with stress, but also helps to solve the problem of when entrepreneurs are bound to have low energy with so much work and so few hours of rest on a daily average basis.
• Walking alone is hard and vulnerable to lose the track. Walking with a group of people requires less effort but someone else set the pace. Easy or hard or where the destination will be you have no control over.
• All teams need a run-in period. Leadership and motivation is more important in a team than what you might think. It is always a good idea to keep certain gender ratios in a team.
• Need to have a good balance on rewarding people or spending on future expansion.
• Ideas don’t come out fully formed. They only become clear as you work on them. And you just have to get started. Try to get out a working prototype even it is very primitive, because it is much better than just powerpoint.

• Burn the boat strategy is used to find your inner drive and new skills during life and death, swim or sink scenarios. There is only one way forward if there are no other options to retreat.

About Productivity and Time management

• No one can deal with everything perfectly. That’s why we need to prioritize. If given an infinite amount of time, anybody can achieve anything. So technically speaking, your potential is only limited by your willingness to try.
• Nobody can be a workhorse with max efficiency throughout the day. In reality, maybe not even an hour! So we are better off using some external stimuli to help us. The things I found very useful are:

1. take as many as breaks you need
2. switch topics mentally
3. caffeine, cold shower, exercises for pumping high blood flow rate in you
4. reward oneself with certain hardship
5. remind what motivates you
6. external forceful supervioring
7. when you put something at stake

• If you put your mind to 100%, you will be surprised how much can be done in such small amount of time. I time my work in every 5 minute blocks and switch topics to refresh my mind. Calling a hard stop is like setting implicit deadlines, which actually gives me me more incentive to work on it again. The context switch is more useful than you would of thought. It lets you move on. And most importantly, following this method I am less likely to get stuck. It reduces much of the unproductive time I always wished to eliminate from hindsight. When you treasure every 5 minutes of your time to the maximum, any meetings or calls will get thrown out eventually.
• Motivation is actually a combination of a compelling goal + path to achieve it + confidence to achieve it. In order to become confident of such, you need to know the outcome of your behavior. And have consistency to complete it 100% of the time, which does take a lot of will power.
• It is easier to hold the same principles and be persistent 100% of the time rather than holding it to only 90% of the time, which will ultimately cause decision fatigue. Fruits just don’t get harvested very frequently.
• If you have three things on your priority list, you are not prioritizing.
• Time boxing is about pre-planning the day ahead with limited time for each task on the priority list. It gave me more confidence to stick to the plan, and reinforced a more disciplined approach to follow deadlines and take breaks. If given enough time, anyone in the world can achieve anything. So the do-it-all attitude always comes with a cost somewhere else. Perfection is only perfection if it matters. One key aspect to become successful in this strategy is to make every deadlines count. Deadlines without anyone overlooking is meaningless. We tend to estimate only the best case scenariosshown by a psychological study. It is good to always leave extra time in between tasks. It also takes a lot of skill to plan for how much time each task will take and how much I should or will spend on it. Finally, you need to handle disturbances and do changes of plan accordingly. Eventually you will realize plan less is do more.

• Find time for mental break and rewind.
• Time Management is all about subtraction. The more you grow, the better you know how not to allocate time for certain things. First, save every minute for yourself first before trying to do anything else. I used to have my calendar filled 120% before starting of the week. Then subtraction became extremely important to only plan the things that will benefit me in the long run.
• From my own experience, having average 6 hours of sleep every night is the most productive way. And treat food as just a type of fuel to keep going.
• We tend to do the easy stuff and what we are good at first. By analogy, it is easy to lose in drugs then it is to cope with life; it is easy to spend money than it is to earn or save money; it is easy to beat a child than it is to raise a child.
• Most people do not have difficulty staying on a task. So a very simple way to boost your productivity is just to get on it. Then chances are you will stick to it and accomplish things. Michale Jordan once said once I made a decision, I never thought about it again.
• If you do decide to wake up early (before 5am), try to do a non-negotiable cold shower. This is what wakes me up everyday. Showing in good appearance is always a good attitude and habit to start off the day. And Elon Musk was right about skipping breakfast with a cup of coffee. My body just functions better that way.

About Life and goals

• Life is a process full of unique and rich details. Process is focusing on what it is now without thinking about consequences. Life is not a race, as you probably don’t want to get to the finish line faster than anybody else. New goals get established after old one finished in endless circles. Same goals right now won’t last for the next 5 years. Our worldview changes every time we have reached certain goals. So we need to remind ourselves whether the current environment or action align with the inner heart. Be ready to zero all you have achieved, and use that same attitude towards new worthwhile goals anytime. Blindly chasing your final outcome will make you miserable whether succeed or not. Again, it is the process of getting there in no regret. The treasury could be lying just underneath the same tree before you started the whole journey, which will unlock by itself once you have completed certain things. However it is never a smart thing to trade limited life with unlimited money in this materialistic world.
• There is not point to compare goals among people. Everyone is his or her own race, and we just happen to cross at certain points in life.
• Correct choice weighs more than effort. All decisions are very important and will make impact profoundly. So don’t take decisions too quickly because our mindset could change or mature in the next minute.
• You grow faster if you can realize your own stupidity quicker.
• All the stress in the world is what you made of it.

• The Moon and Sixpence tells us life has tradeoffs if you want to have destructive genius or unthinkable wealth. It is never easy to become Elon Musk in many different ways. We do things because of our selfishness. It is not easy to live in this ordinary life by itself.

• Good preparation always leads to a better outcome. If you have done the best you could.
• Health is your highest leverage. There will be nothing you could change once it’s lost.
• Always exchange money with time if you could afford it.
• Success is in the process of striving for a worthwhile goal. Happiness is doing what you are passionate about. Purpose brings happiness. And purpose is a feeling that you are a part of something bigger than yourself, that you are needed, that you have something better to work for.
• Going through tough situation sharpens our rough edges in order to become a more well rounded person.
• If you are given a second chance. It’s the last one. So give all you have.
• Think about the future and not be sad when you wake up in the morning.

Finally to end my thoughts, I want to quote NASA astronaut Dr. Jonny Kim:

“I would tell myself to always follow your passion, never stature or money, because following a life of passion is long-term, sustainable and usually helps others. Be accountable for your mistakes and failures, and maintain the humility to learn from those mistakes and failures. And finally, I would caution myself that all worthwhile goals are difficult to obtain, but with the right attitude and hard work, you can accomplish anything.

Being a Naval Special Warfare Operator taught me that humans are capable of accomplishing ten times what their bodies and mind tell them. I learned there are no limits in life, and the biggest setback one can have is a poor attitude. I learned the value of strong leadership and accountability. I also learned the meaning of sacrifice, hardship, teamwork, love and compassion. All these traits helped me to develop the hard and soft skills required to be an astronaut.”

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