Category: Personal Growth

life, Personal Growth

My 2022

by MQDuong1 Comment on My 2022

Here is what happened to me in 2022

Books

I read 16 books in 2022 and reviewed some of them:

Blog

I published 112 entries this year, the lowest since 2019, and gained about 50 more followers, despite virtually no advertising. Next year, I’ll resolve to write more.

Fitness

In terms of fitness, I’ll give myself an F grade in 2022. Here are some data points according to my Fitness and Health app:

  • I set my daily goals of 11 stand hours, 600 calorie move goal and 50 mins of exercise for 2022. I closed all three rings only one every two days so far this year
  • 681 active calorie on average
  • 41 minutes of exercise
  • 14 hours of standing
  • 6,032 steps every day
  • 1,000 Apple Fitness+ workouts, including 250+ Yoga and 100+ HIIT

Another F grade in 12 months is NOT an option.

Diet

I spent half a year on a Mediterranean diet and the other half consuming more carbs than I should. Plus, I am a snack lover. My friends and wife never waste a chance to remind me that I snack too much. The goal next year is to limit the amount of carbs & to snack more healthily.

Immigration

I went back to Vietnam for my wedding. As a result, I had to get an H1B visa from the Consulate. Back to the US, I had to extend my H1B status while continuing my Permanent Residence process.

My wife got a tourist visa to visit my back in February. Then, she had to get an H4 visa to relocate to the US. As my spouse, she is also participating in the PR process while trying to secure an H4-based work permit.

All of those paperworks are time-consuming, expensive and frustrating. But we know we are lucky enough to even have an opportunity. I just hope that it will be over next year and we can share our experience with whoever needs it.

Self-improvement

Mentoring

I love mentoring people at work. Apart from the good feeling of know that I helped others, I benefit from being a mentor myself in multiple ways. First of all, I must make sure I don’t embarrass myself and I don’t give bad advice. As a result, I am motivated to validate what I know and deepen my knowledge at work even further. Second, I improve as a communicator as well. No matter how technically good you are, none of that matters if you can’t communicate. It’s a challenge to break down complex and technical issues in layman’s terms. I still have a long way to go, but I am better at it than I was in 2021. Last but not least, I learn what I am terrible at. Patience and occasionally control of my emotions. One of my interns candidly told me that he knew I was demanding and I didn’t do it on purpose, but I was harsh to him a couple of times. I took that feedback to heart and am working on it.

I have worked with 4 interns and a colleague this year. There are successes, but there are also failures. Personally, I learned a great deal from mentoring folks and am thankful for that.

“Just start”

High intensity interval training (HIIT) is a staple of my exercise routine. HIIT helps burn a lot of calorie in a short amount of time. Very useful to people that want to stay healthy yet are short on time. At the end of each HIIT session, I am satisfied and proud of myself after enduring physical challenge for about 10-30 mins. But it’s not mentally easy to press the “Start” button. No matter how much I practice HIIT, I still feel deterred and intimidated when I think of tired quads and short breaths half way through a session. Overcoming that fear personally is more difficult than the physical strain I put on my body. But once I get going, my body responds to the challenge and adapts accordingly. The key is to just get started and see how it goes.

I have struggled to blog as much this year as I did in the past. Much as I like to use work and taking care of my family as excuses, the main reason is that I was lazy. I am not a native speaker nor am I a great writer. But I often find it easier to complete a blog entry when I sit down and just get cracking. There will often be silly words, awkward sentences and raw ideas at first before major editing, but once words flow, it gets much easier to continue and finish. All I need to do is to sit down and type.

Gratitude

My wife and I have been in the process of getting permanent residence in the US for almost two years. There has been a lot of paperwork and even a greater deal of frustration. You’d think that someone with two STEM Master’s degrees that is a law-abiding citizen with not so much of a parking ticket should be rewarded with a more permanent status. But life is anything but fair. On a few occasions, I regretted the decision to move to the US. Had I gone to Canada to study and work, I would have got PR by now. Thankfully, talking to my Indian coworkers, I was reminded that they would have to wait for years to get a Green Card. In fact, a teammate of mine only received her status a few months ago and she applied for it back in 2012. Who am I to complain?

Last week saw some of the coldest days I have ever had in Omaha since I came here in 2016. The temperature dropped to -25 Celsius degrees and wind chills were as low as -39. As tough as it was for me, such a harsh condition was even tougher for my wife who is so used to the hot climate in Vietnam and just has her first ever winter this year. But on more than one occasion, we just looked at each other and were thankful that we got a roof on our head, hot soup to warm ourselves and warm clothes to wear. Not so many people even have that luxury.

Personal Growth

Attention to detail matters

by MQDuong1 Comment on Attention to detail matters

Great executives pay attention to detail. Here are a few examples:

Vic Gundotra, who managed Google+, had a legendary interaction with the late Steve Jobs. In 2008, Steve called Vic on a Sunday while he was in a religious service. Vic didn’t pick up so Steve left a message saying that he had something urgent to discuss. Vic called back and it turned out that Steve was unhappy the second O in the Google logo on the iPhone at the time didn’t have the right yellow gradient. A CEO like Jobs paid attention to the gradient of the second O in the Google logo on a Sunday!

Tim Cook is another example of leaders who pay attention to even small details. When Tim first joined Apple, he held an operations meeting to learn everything he could about the company’s supply chain. Tim probed about the percentage of produced units that passed quality assurance before shipment. When told that the yield was 98%, Tim would ask: how did the other two percent fail? Tim also has a habit of waking up early to review sales data. He once discovered that one model of iPhone was more popular than another model in a small city in Georgia. The difference was due to different promotions run across the state.

Jony Ive was instrumental to the success that Apple had had for the past 20+ years prior to leaving the company in 2019. A great product designer, he was known for perfectionism and a maniacal focus on details. To demonstrate, here is an excerpt from Tripp Mickle book “After Steve” on Jony

IVE’S PERFECTIONISM intensified under Jobs. In 2002, Apple’s leadership agreed to change its laptop cases from titanium to aluminum, a more versatile metal. It tapped a Japanese manufacturer to produce the computer casing, and Ive traveled to Tokyo to evaluate their work with Bart Andre, the product’s design lead, and Nick Forlenza, an engineer who brought designs to life on the factory floor. Ive arranged to meet at the Hotel Okura Tokyo, one of the city’s oldest luxury hotels.

On the day of the meeting, the delegation from Apple and the manufacturer breezed through the hotel’s gold-hued lobby past shin-high tables to a private room. A Japanese executive pulled several aluminum laptop casings out of a manila envelope for Ive to review. The supplier had polished the parts to a shimmering satin silver that reflected the artificial light from the ceiling. Ive hovered over a casing and lifted it toward the light. His hands trembled with panic as his eyes glimpsed small deviations from his design specifications. He abruptly rose and left the group, upset.

Ive held an aluminum sheet above his head and rolled it beneath the overhead lights, showing Forlenza how the reflection revealed almost imperceptible blemishes. He wanted them eliminated. Forlenza explained the problem to the supplier, and when the group returned two weeks later to review the part again, the blemishes were gone.

Ive ratcheted up scrutiny of the supply chain as Apple’s product line expanded. When SARS broke out in 2003, the company was preparing to produce its first desktop made of aluminum, the Power Mac G5. The tower computer was the width and height of a paper grocery bag with smooth aluminum sides framed by front and rear panels that featured tiny holes like those in a citrus zester. Ive wanted to be there as it rolled off the assembly line, so he and members of the operations team flew to Hong Kong on some of the first post-SARS flights. They then headed to Shenzhen, where Ive spent the next forty days sleeping in the factory dormitory and walking the manufacturing floor. He could be intense as he surveyed an assembly line. During the assembly process, he would grab colleagues and point at a factory worker who was crudely handling parts.

“I don’t want him touching our products,” he would say. “Look at how’s he’s touching the side of it!”

Before being appointed to succeed Jeff Bezos and lead Amazon, Andy Jassy was the CEO of AWS, which he helped build from the ground up, and involved in every aspect of the division. He reviewed every press release and had input in branding decisions. He personally spent time picking artists for an AWS event in 2012 as well as took weeks to settle on the name Redshift for the new data analytics product. When there was a major outage at an AWS data center in Virginia, Andy personally got involved to figure out the problem. As it turned out, it was a fluke. While checking in a generator, a technician shut the door and accidentally turned off the generator. To keep employees to a standard that he subscribes to, Andy regularly holds meetings to pick teams, at random, to give a presentation on their business and fires pointed questions. Unprepared teams will be called out.

Toto Wolff is a team principal managing the Formula 1 Mercedes team. Under Toto’s leadership, Mercedes won 8 consecutive constructor titles and 7 driver championships between 2014 and 2021, establishing the dominance unrivaled in a sport as tough as Formula 1. In addition to many great leadership traits, Toto is also a stickler for the smallest of details. On his first trip to the Mercedes team’s headquarters in Brackley, England, Toto noticed a crumpled newspapers and two old paper coffee cups on a table in the lobby. After his meeting with the previous team principal, whom he replaced, Toto brought up his observation and said that it was below the standard of an F1 team to have a lobby like that. In another instance, Toto was upset about how dirty the bathroom in Mercedes’s hospitality area was the first team he visited. He hired a full-time hygiene manager, physically showed the manager how he wanted the bathroom cleaned and ordered the manager to keep the bathroom spotless after every guest on a race weekend.

F1 is a sport of details. Every race, drivers and their engineers analyze telemetry data like below to find out which MINI sectors and corners they lost lap time. Every thousandth of a second can determine a race’s pole and often a race win. Lewis Hamilton, the 7-time world champion, noticed others drivers were wearing fewer cables and as a result having an advantage of probably a few grams. He relayed that feedback to his team so that they could look into doing the same. Back when Lewis was still teammate with Nico Rosberg, Mercedes changed their drivers’ gloves and the way they were sewn so that they could get better race starts.

Source: Reddit
life, Personal Growth

Small but important things

by MQDuong1 Comment on Small but important things

Below are a few short clips that I found profound yet easy to understand. Hope you’ll enjoy them as much as I do

The value of independence

In this clip (starting 31:30 and I tried to make the embedded video start at that point), Morgan Housel talked about his own experience with the independence and freedom that money provides. The older I grow, the more I take this lesson to heart. Fortunately, my wife shares the same perspective and that makes everything a bit easier.

Enough

My wife and I took a walk this evening to enjoy an awesome weather that is going to be sorely missed in a month. We talked about what would have been like if we were living in the 1920s. There would be no Internet. We would have no Google. We would have to look up things on newspapers. We would have to write to our family back home in Vietnam instead of Facetiming. We would be in more danger because drugs and medical procedures were much less advanced, etc. We both came to a conclusion that we were happy to be where we are. A lot of people that I interacted with asked me why I chose Omaha and why I haven’t moved to a bigger city. Many of them actually left themselves. We have a different opinion. We like it here. It’s not too hectic nor is it too expensive. It’s quiet and if we look long enough, we can always find something to do. We may change our minds in a few years, but for now we are content. We have enough. Which is what Morgan Housel talks about here:

What is winning?

Hasan Minhaj brought up a great point in this clip. We idolize celebrities and put them on a pedestal. Many of them earn that respect, love and adulation. There are dedicated fans who know every achievement and every single detail of an athlete’s career. There are even university courses on some superstars. But how much do we talk about the other side of the equation? How much do we talk about the strained relationship, the mental breakdown or the sacrifices? Envy is arguably the worst sin. If you envy someone, envy the whole package. The good and the bad. Which is something that I am working hard on every day.

We and everything we do will fade. So take it easy

I am not a fan of Naval on Twitter. In fact, I blocked him. But that doesn’t negate the fact that he made a great point here. Stand in a forest, an ocean or a mountain and you’ll see how small we are against nature. Zoom it out to the whole planet and we become microscopic. Zoom it out a bit further and we’re absolutely nothing. As great as some civilizations and great individuals in the past, they are all gone and some of their work will already fade eventually. We won’t be any different and that’s life. Knowing that brings a whole new perspective in life.

life, Personal Growth

Two tips that will help your financial planning

by MQDuong1 Comment on Two tips that will help your financial planning

Plan future expenses

To ensure that your financial planning is set up properly, it’s NOT enough to consider only current expenses. It’s very important to take into account for future expenses, particularly those that you know will appear.

Let’s run a simple scenario as an example. For simplicity sake, imagine your after-tax take-home income, from both you and your spouse, is $100,000 a year. You expect to get two promotions in 2025 and 2028, which will increase your income by 15% and 10% from the year before respectively. Except those two years, your income will grow on average by 3% every year till you retire. Regarding current and future expenses, here are the big items:

  • Your current monthly expense is $4,000. The natural increase in this expense line item is 2% a year, unless specified otherwise.
  • You plan to have two children. One born in 2025 and the other in 2028. It will cost approximately $20,000 to deliver each kid.
  • The first kid will see the monthly expense grow to $5,500 and the second will push it to $7,000.
  • The estimated amount that you want to give them for college tuition fee is $100,000 each by 2043, when they are 18 years old. Hence, the combined college fund will total $200,000 by 2043.
  • You and your spouse understand that unfortunate events can happen to anyone. As a result, you both want to set aside 10% of your annual take-home income for emergencies.
  • For investments, you budget it at 20% of your annual income.
  • Life is short. You want to see the world and travel. Hence, travel will take 5%, if possible.
  • Whatever left will go to the disposable fund that can be used for any purposes.

Using the information above, here is what the numbers look like every year between 2023 and 2035

financial-planning-2Download the Excel file I use for the above screenshot

If you notice, I am pretty conservative with the income estimate. Growing the top line, as long as other expenses don’t grow proportionately, will bring more flexibility, freedom and choice. This is why folks want a higher salary or have a side gig. One source of income isn’t sufficient to sustain various financial needs. Also, I don’t include the fund for retirement which can be $2 million for person. The exclusion is driven by the fact that our 401K already comes out of our paycheck prior to the scenario and that the Emergency, Investment, Travel and Disposable Fund, if unused, can all be funneled into retirement.

Regardless, it’s obvious that the paycheck now doesn’t seem very big any more, does it? If it’s not possible to grow income sustainably, then there must be restrictions on the number of financial needs and there must be also compromises. That fancy car that you dream about, that new TV and furniture set that you crave or that yearly trip to Europe that you brag about, they need to be either axed or paid for by money slated either for emergencies or investments. It all comes down to preferences and willingness to compromise. But without an exercise like this, a normal person with little adequate personal finance awareness would get themselves deep into debt or make decisions that would not leave much margin for accidents.

Nobody knows what their future holds. Hence, the point of this exercise is not to be 100% accurate. Rather, it’s about putting more thoughts on one’s financial status and life priorities, which is ultimately what all this boils down to.

The 2x Rule

I “stole” this tip from a book called Just Keep Buying: Proven Ways To Save Money And Build Your Wealth. Essentially, this rule dictates that anytime I want to splash money on something, I must put the same amount of money on investing (most likely an index). This simple tip is a brilliant way to tamp down my urge to spend impulsively or too discretionally. It creates a moment of doubt in your mind and makes you wonder how much you want the item at hand and whether you are willing to pay double for it. For example,I have told my wife numerous times in the past year that I wanted to buy new Apple gadgets, but the thought of having to put the same amount in investing deterred me and made me realize that I didn’t need those new toys that much. The end result is that I am still using a 10-year-old Mac and a 3-year-old iPhone.

Personal finance, as the name may already give it away, is very personal. What works for me may not work for you. These tools are helpful, but their usefulness depends on how you use them, whether you do so religiously and what your life circumstances are. Mike Tyson said it best: everyone has a plan till they get punched in the face. Nonetheless, it’s better to be prepared to some extent than to be caught completely off guard.

Personal Growth

Tips for new data analysts

by MQDuong1 Comment on Tips for new data analysts

Having worked with credit card data in the past years, I have to say that it’s a steep learning curve. My manager gave me 6 months to a year to learn what we do in our day job and he wasn’t exaggerating. I actually needed that. Even now, more than 3 years later, I still learn something new every day. The complexity and the sheer amount of data is just staggering. Our warehouse has to store data of an account on a daily basis for as long as the account is active. And an account’s life can consist of numerous interactions from applications, special offers, purchases, fees, payments to calls, mobile logins or complaints. Everything can and should be analyzed so that we can learn actionable insights that can benefit the organization.

After a tough period when I put in the work to survive, I want to share a few things that have helped me tremendously become a better analyst and programmer. My experience is with credit card data. I don’t mean to think that what I do is more complex than others, but I believe the lessons I learned can be helpful in other industries.

Learn to connect the business and the data together

At my company, the better analysts and coders often have a better understanding of the business than others. They don’t take data on face value. They use data to answer business questions and, in turn, use their business knowledge to understand data better. For example, credit cards draw much of its revenue from finance charge. However, issuers tend to appeal to potential users with an intro offer that sets interest rate at 0% for a period of time (6 all the way up to 20 months). Without that understanding, how can one understand the revenue data before and after the grace period?

Likewise, data can help issuers answer business questions. In case you don’t know, credit card companies work with the likes of Experian, TransUnion and Equifax closely for acquisition campaigns. These credit bureaus know a lot about consumers in the U.S and each has a database that can be licensed out to issuers. Issuers go through a bureau’s database and choose a population based on a variety of attributes that they believe will be most responsive to direct mail campaigns. Through post-campaign analyses, issuers learn which attributes are more predictive than others. Hence, they can become more efficient with direct mail campaigns. Let’s say that if a campaign with a 1 million pieces worth $0.5 each yields about 5,000 accounts (0.5% net response rate), each account will cost about $100 in acquisition. By using data and improving the net response rate to 0.6%, an issuer can decrease that acquisition cost to $83. That’s a real financial benefit. That’s the power of analyzing data for actionable insights.

Look at the output

A common mistake I noticed among my coworkers is that those more prone to mistakes don’t often look at the real data output. There are two reasons for it. The first is complacency. After a decent amount of time on the job, a certain level of complacency tends to develop in each analyst. Such complacency creates a false illusion that one knows everything already, while, in fact, that is often far from the truth, particularly when complex data is involved. The second reason why less effective analysts don’t look at real data output is the false assumption that their previous work will continue to deliver forever in the future. Such an assumption ignores the fact that businesses evolve all the time and when that happens, the data evolves too, such as new partners, new products, new regulations or new acquisition channels. Assuming that an old block of code will work one or two years from now is a mistake, yet luckily it’s entirely avoidable!

Find outliers

Banking data is structured most of the time. There are business rules behind the scenes that dictate how values are set. As a result, it’s very helpful to look at outliers because it will reinforce an analyst’s understanding of not only the data, but also such business rules. Let me give you an example. A co-brand portfolio of ours mandates that a customer has to maintain a specific level of spending in a calendar year to keep their Premium status. One time, I noticed that some accounts didn’t meet the threshold, yet still managed to keep their status the following year. I asked around and learned that there was a policy which enabled customers who just missed the cut to qualify for the status only if they called our Customer Care. Without paying attention to outliers, I wouldn’t be able to learn about that policy. And how did I notice those outliers? Indeed, I looked at my data output!

Read about the industry

I always believe that our understanding of the world is a network of dots and how we are able to link them together. The more we read, the more dots we add to our personal network and the better connections we can create. Without reading, there wouldn’t be many dots to connect, to begin with. Plus, the world is full of smart people who are often smarter than us. Why not taking advantage of that? We can learn so much about the trends, best practices as well as mistakes from others and apply appropriately to our business. In fact, we just launched a new credit card and I am proud to say that came from an idea of mine, an idea that was born out of regular studying of the competition and the market. So, if you want to be a better analyst, read. Read about your competition, your customers, your industry and adjacent industries too. Dig as deep as your interest allows you. Read from the basic. For instance, if you want to know about credit card transactions, read this helpful but obscure book: The Anatomy of The Swipe! The more you get to the basics, the better you can grasp more complex concepts!

Stay curious

The overarching theme over the points I make above is curiosity. As long as you stay curious, you are automatically intrigued by the questions like: How does this work? Do I miss something? Is what people told me 100% accurate? Did they miss something themselves? These questions will drive you to dig deeper and constantly ask questions; which will eventually lead you to doing all of the above and becoming an analyst.

If you come across this entry, I hope what I share above is helpful and can prevent you from making the same mistakes that I did. Leave in the comment if you have any thoughts or tips as well!

Personal Growth

The Mundanity of Excellence

by MQDuong1 Comment on The Mundanity of Excellence

Below are my notes from the academic essay named The Mundanity of Excellence, which was written by Daniel Chambliss. The essay drew on his years of studying swimmers on different levels to understand the sources of excellence. And as you can see below, the lessons aren’t only applicable to swimming. They can be very useful to us all in every walk of life.

What are NOT the sources of excellence

Excellence is not, I find, the product of socially deviant personalities. These swimmers don’t appear to be “oddballs,” nor are they loners.

Excellence does not result from quantitative changes in behavior. Increased training time, per se, does not make one swim fast; nor does increased “psyching up,” nor does moving the arms faster. Simply doing more of the same will not lead to moving up a level in the sport.

Excellence does not result from some special inner quality of the athlete. “Talent” is one common name for this quality; sometimes we talk of a “gift,” or of “natural ability.”

I agree with Daniel that socially deviant personalities, quantitive changes or innate talent ALONE does NOT explain excellence. There are plenty of world class athletes who seem very socially friendly such as Kobe Bryant (Rest in Power, Mamba), Roger Federer, Leo Messi or Lewis Hamilton. If the amount of practice alone was the determinant of excellence, why wouldn’t we have more world class competitors? Why would people have different skill levels even at the same age and likely the same amount of practice? If the innate talent could determine excellence, then why did we have several 1st draft pick players in NBA fail to meet expectations? Why did we have the likes of Ravel Morrison, who people at Manchester United labelled as genius, fail to reach the heights that seemed destined for them?

On the last point, the author expanded on why he didn’t think talent alone doesn’t lead to excellence

Talent is indistinguishable from its effects. One cannot see that talent exists until after its effects become obvious. One of the more startling discoveries of our study has been that it takes a while to recognize swimming talent. Indeed, it usually takes being successful at a regional level, and more often, at a national level (in AAU swimming) before the child is identified as talented. 

It seems initially plausible that one must have a certain level of natural ability in order to succeed in sports (or music or academics). But upon empirical examination, it becomes very difficult to say exactly what that physical minimum is. Most Olympic champions, when their history is studied, seem to have overcome sharp adversity in their pursuit of success. Automobile accidents, shin splints, twisted ankles, shoulder surgery are common in such tales. In fact, they are common in life generally. While some necessary minimum of physical strength, heart/lung capacity, or nerve density may well be required for athletic achievement (again, I am not denying differential advantages), that mini- mum seems both difficult to define and markedly low, at least in many cases. Perhaps the crucial factor is not natural ability at all, but the willingness to overcome natural or unnatural disabilities of the sort that most of us face, ranging from minor inconveniences in getting up and going to work, to accidents and injuries, to gross physical impairments.

Excellence is mundane

Superlative performance is really a confluence of dozens of small skills or activities, each one learned or stumbled upon, which have been carefully drilled into habit and then are fitted together in a synthesized whole. There is nothing extraordinary or superhuman in any one of those actions; only the fact that they are done consistently and correctly, and all together, produce excellence.

Doing more does not equal doing better. High performers focus on qualitative, not quantitative, improvements; it is qualitative improvements which produce significant changes in level of achievement; different levels of achievement really are distinct, and in fact reflect vastly different habits, values, and goals

All the world class put in thousands of hours in practice before they burst into fame. Not only do they train as hard as anyone else, but they are almost maniacal about improving their craft. The late Kobe Bryant studied cheetahs to improve his fade away shots. He called up Hakeem to learn about post-up moves. He talked to Michael Jackson to become a better athlete. LeBron James and Cristiano Ronaldo have taken care of their body and skills so well that they are still performing exceptionally at the age of 36.

Motivation is mundane, too

But even given the longer-term goals, the daily satisfactions need to be there. The mundane social rewards really are crucial. By comparison, the big, dramatic motivations— winning an Olympic gold medal, setting a world record—seem to be ineffective unless translated into shorter-term tasks. Viewing “Rocky” or “Chariots of Fire” may inspire one for several days, but the excitement stirred by a film wears off rather quickly when confronted with the day- to-day reality of climbing out of bed to go and jump in cold water. If, on the other hand, that day-to-day reality is itself fun, rewarding, challenging; if the water is nice and friends are supportive, the longer-term goals may well be achieved almost in spite of themselves. 

You see the effect of short-term goals and daily satisfactions every often in reality. Fitness apps have leaderboards so that you can compare yourself with friends or strangers. The confidence and satisfaction boost derived from seeing your name on the top of the leaderboard makes you likely committed in the long run. Personally, when I started to learn English, the road to fluency wasn’t easy. First, I needed to reach some local certificates that were proof of the mastery of the language in Vietnam and the stepping stones for international tests such as IELTS or TOEFL. After I achieved those certificates, then came the preparation for IELTS. Even after I got my IELTS, I still needed to practice a lot to use English comfortably. Without the small wins, I am not sure I would have persisted for years to learn a second language.

Maintaining mundanity is the key psychological challenge

In common parlance, winners don’t choke. Faced with what seems to be a tremendous challenge or a strikingly unusual event, such as the Olympic Games, the better athletes take it as a normal, manageable situation18 (“It’s just another swim meet,” is a phrase sometimes used by top swimmers at a major event such as the Games) and do what is necessary to deal with it. Standard rituals (such as the warmup, the psych, the visualization of the race, the taking off of sweats, and the like) are ways of importing one’s daily habits into the novel situation, to make it as normal an event as possible

Rafael Nadal is famous for his rituals on the tennis court. He always takes a cold shower before every game. He walks into a court with his bags on one shoulder and a racquet in the other hand. He never steps on the court lines. He has two bottles, one is water and the other can be juice. They have to be placed in a certain order and the labels always face the side that he is on. There is no scientific explanation for his behavior, except that doing these little things make him focused and at ease.

One of my favorite movies is Burnt, which stars Bradley Cooper as a 2-star Michelin chef named Adam striving for his 3rd. Adam is infamous for his short temper, ridiculously high standards and lack of patience. He kept pushing his team to the limit every day and wore out everybody in the process. After a betrayal of his Sous Chef, sorting out his personal problems and with the help of his new girlfriend, Adam became more relaxed in his pursuit of the 3rd Michelin star. This scene below is what he got his chance. At 0:22 when being informed that the judges arrived, Adam nonchalantly said “We do what we do”. Everybody looked shocked because it wasn’t what they expected from him. But it’s exactly that attitude that helped him and his team psychologically in their triumph.

The biggest take-away for me from this article is that in addition to putting the work in, I need to spend more time on thinking about how to improve myself qualitatively and how to be smarter and more disciplined with my practices.

Investment, Personal Growth

Important lessons on investing that I learned

by MQDuong1 Comment on Important lessons on investing that I learned

Over the weekend, I reviewed my portfolio and by extension, my performance as the CIO of my personal hedge fund (lol). I want to see how I have fared so far and importantly, if there is a lesson or two to take away going into the remaining four months of the year and 2022, what would that or they be?

In the first half of 2021, ending 30th June 2021, my portfolio’s return is 8.5%, compared to the return of 15.3% of the S&P 500, including dividends. Last year, Minh Duong Capital’s 2020 return was 21.3%, compared to S&P 500’s return of 18.4%. What does it mean? Obviously, I underperformed the market in the first 6 months this year, a fact that is particularly disappointing given that I outperformed the index last year. In other words, I overestimated my stock-picking power this year. Frankly, I didn’t do a good enough job. Instead of spending a lot of time looking at new ideas, I should have just bought the S&P 500.

That’s actually one of the big two lessons I learned: buy more ETF stocks. Take S&P 500 ETF ($SPY) and Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF ($VTI) as examples. In the last 10 years, they have an annualized return of 13.9% and 15.2% respectively. The beauty here is that investors don’t need to spend any time researching and regularly checking their portfolio. The ETFs just routinely deliver two-digit returns every year with minimal efforts or financial understanding of the companies.

At the moment, ETFs make up only 2% of my portfolio. I do plan to increase the ratio significantly in the next few months and next year. Don’t get me wrong. I still enjoy researching companies and finding winners which I believe will bring higher returns than that of the ETFs. But at the same time, I want to make sure that I at least have the same return as the market. You know, being realistic and all that. Does buying ETFs sound simple and easy? Yes, but it’s not in reality. Nowadays, it only takes a few phone taps to trade for a stock. When the barriers are that low and when you are tempted to prove that you are a better investor than just somebody buying an ETF, the illusion kicks in and the temptation is highly irresistible. Nonetheless, that’s what I plan to do in the near future. Buy more index and wait for only great opportunities.

That’s one lesson. What’s the other one that I learned?

In addition to stock picking and investing in ETFs, one can leverage the expertise of hedge funds. These guys get paid in the form of 2/20 (2% management fees and 20% of your profit) with an implicit promise to outperform the market. In other words, they are EXPECTED to deliver higher returns than what investors would get from the likes of S&P 500 or VTI. Here are the returns of a few funds in the first half of 2021:

Among this small sample, my personal return this year is higher than some funds’ and lower than others’. Of course, there are more funds spread out across the spectrum. The question, though, is how should I think about my performance in comparison with these funds? Well, not so much. Such a comparison is a slippery slope. If I want to make myself feel better, I only need to identify a few underperforming firms. On the other hand, it’s just unrealistic to think that I can beat the professionals whose full-time job is to find investing ideas and whose experience & resources far outweigh mine. The goalposts should stay constant, not move based on how I want to feel. In fact, Morgan Housel said: one of the most difficult skills in investing is to not constantly move the goalposts.

Hence, I decided to judge myself based on two things: did I avoid making the same mistakes twice? Am I delivering a higher return than ETFs? If the answer to both questions is yes, every time I conduct a review, then I will be a happy person. Otherwise, there is work to do.

Personal Growth, Science

People prefer electric shocks to being left alone with their own thoughts

by MQDuong1 Comment on People prefer electric shocks to being left alone with their own thoughts

I came across this academic study that focuses on how difficult it is for people to sit alone with their own thoughts. Here is the most interesting part (I put together small paragraphs from all over the article)

Ninety- five percent of American adults reported that they did at least one leisure activity in the past 24 hours, such as watching television, socializing, or reading for pleasure, but 83% reported they spent no time whatsoever “relaxing or thinking”.

Most participants reported that it was difficult to concentrate (57.5% responded at or above the midpoint or the point scale) and that their mind wandered (89% responded at or above the midpoint or the scale), even though there was nothing competing for their attention.

There was no evidence that enjoyment of the thinking period was related to participants’ age, education, income or the frequency with which they used smart phones or social media.

In part 1 of the study, participants rated the pleasantness of several positive stimuli (e.g attractive photos) and negative stimuli (e.g an electric shock). Many participants elected to receive negative stimulation over no stimulation, especially men: 67% of men gave themselves at least one shock during the thinking period compared to 25% of women. The gender difference is probably due to the tendency for men to be higher in sensation-seeking. But what is striking is that simply being alone with their own thoughts for 15 min was apparently so aversive that it drove many participants to self-administer an electric shock that they had earlier said they would pay to avoid.

Source: Just think: The challenges of the disengaged mind

This is simultaneously interesting, embarrassing and frightening. I have one of those disengaged minds. Just sitting alone with my own thoughts is so challenging. I tried to do it multiple times and always found myself looking at my phone. More embarrassingly, at the time of the “transgression”, I was aware of that tendency and had no other distraction competing for my thoughts, yet I still couldn’t keep myself engaged. Yoga has been a greatly positive experience, but whatever progress I may have made is apparently insufficient with regard to being able to sit alone with my own thoughts.

Personal Growth

I started and sustained my fitness habit for 30+ days. Here is what I learned

by MQDuong1 Comment on I started and sustained my fitness habit for 30+ days. Here is what I learned

Yesterday marked the 34th day in a row that I completed my workout targets on the Apple Fitness app. To those who aren’t familiar, there are three rings. The red ring shows how much calorie is burned in a day, the green ring records how many minutes you work out and the blue ring refers to the number of hours in which you stand at least for one minute. I set my goals as 550 Calorie, 50 mins of workout and 11 hours of standing. Here are the lessons I learned after the last 30+ days

My challenge has been going on since 4/25/2021

A sprint or a disciplined marathon

While I could have gone for 1200 Calorie a day, I knew that sort of target wouldn’t be sustainable. I wouldn’t be able to keep that level of commitment for 30+ days. Hence, I set a target that is both challenging enough for me to put in real effort and realistic enough for me to maintain it for a month. Think of it as a choice between a sprint or a marathon. You can run at a high speed, but that burst of energy won’t last for long. After a couple of days of heavy workout, I’d probably take it easy the next day and completely fail the challenge. In some cases, rest would be precisely what my body requires. But I chose not to give myself that excuse. So, before you embark on a similar challenge, think of an appropriate goal for yourself. You can slightly low-bar it in the beginning and raise it gradually in the process. Just don’t start too big and fail too soon.

Pulling through the moments of demotivation matters

There were days when I woke up feeling energetic and couldn’t wait to start a workout. On the other hand, there were days when my level of motivation was low. You know what it feels like: a bad sleep, mood swings, effect from a gloomy weather, stress from work, fights with your loved ones. I had plenty of that during my challenge. There were times when I had to pull late workouts or put everything I had into a HIIT because I was behind. It’s tough to force your mind to go through those moments and commit to the mission at hand. But. I guess it’s one of those things that can help me mentally deal with other aspects of my life. As I am fully vaccinated, it increasingly becomes difficult to stay here and not to be able to return to Vietnam to visit my family, friends and girlfriend. It’s tough, but I definitely feel this little challenge helps a bit.

Yoga or HIIT

At 550 Calorie, I couldn’t sit around all day and meet the quota. Usually a long yoga or at least 20 mins of HIIT is necessary to get the job done. The question now becomes whether I am up for spending an hour on yoga or sweating out with maximum effort for 20 minutes. When your days are overburdened with commitments, a HIIT is a better option, but do you have the mental fortitude to go through 20 minutes of hard work? When your energy level is high enough for a HIIT but your body is sore from the day before, are you patient and committed enough to complete an hour of yoga? The same applies to real life. I am sure my writing would be a lot better if I spent 10-12 hours a day without a job on writing. The progress in a short period of time would be significant. On the other hand, I could choose to write less intensely but over a period of time and with a financial cushion from a day job. The progress would take more time obviously. What then is your preference in that case?

Sometimes it’s just too late

Here is how the Stand ring works. To record one hour on the ring, you have to stand for at least one minute straight during a clock hour. Somehow the motion tracking on Apple Watch can see if you are standing or sitting. It means that if you set your goal at 11 hours of standing like I do, you can’t load up everything by standing for 11 minutes straight in one hour and call it done. You have to stand for at least one minute between 7am and 8am, another between 8am and 9am, so on and so forth.

I have a friend whom I am doing this challenge with. One time, he texted me around 8:30pm and said that he still had 5 more Stand hours to go to meet his daily goal. I told him that he wouldn’t meet it that day because he only had 4 available hours left at most. The lesson here is that if you don’t consciously plan and start your standing early enough during the day, you likely won’t be able to succeed. It’s like coming into a 60-minute exam whose questions require at least 25 minutes to complete, when there is only 20 minutes to go. Or if a flight is about to take off in 30 minutes and you are still at home that is about 30 minutes or less away. Sometimes, it doesn’t matter how much money or effort you put in, time’s not available to buy.

life, Personal Growth

Great reminders for clustered and busy minds

by MQDuong1 Comment on Great reminders for clustered and busy minds

I came across a couple of things that I absolutely believe are great reminders and lessons in life, especially when our mind is often distracted by the deluge of daily information, and clustered with hours at work.

The better measure of success

When I was a kid or even in my 20s, success was solely associated with money and title. Because how success is measured is personally subjective, that approach must still ring true to some. That’s perfectly fine. But it’s important to keep in mind that it’s NOT the only approach. Liz and Mollie created a graphic below to demonstrate another point of view on success. And I agree with it. Whenever you compare yourself to another person’s title or net worth, it’s important to keep in mind that they are only two small slices of the whole pie. There are other aspects that are as, if not more, important than Title and Money. Would you still trade for bigger Title & Salary slices if the other shrank significantly? Would Title and Salary still mean as much if you hated what you do, got sick often, had bad sleep most of the time and never had time for your hobbies?

If there is anything that I want to add to the pie, it’s relationship. Relationship with friends or loved ones is highly important and it requires time and attention, both of which are limited resources, to cultivate. Sometimes, not “having a life” may be what it takes to achieve professional success and I applaud those who are willing to make that sacrifice. But personally I am at a point of my life where surrounding myself with friends, family, my cat and my girlfriend sits firmly at the top of my agenda. Hence, it’s pretty pointless to compare my situation with others’. And it’s often pointless to make any comparisons, to begin with.

Title 1: How we’re taught to measure success. Image: A pie diagram showing two equal parts, Salary and Job Title. Title 2: A better measure. Image: A pie diagram showing more segments, which in increasing sizes are Job Title, Salary, Free Time, Liking What You Do, Physical Health and Mental Health. Twitter handle in top right: @lizandmollie

The Dunning Kruger Effect

The Dunning Kruger Effect is a bias in which people mistakenly overestimate their ability at something. Barry Ritholtz had a graphic that succinctly illustrates the Effect

The Dunning-Kruger Effect
Source: Barry Ritholtz

The world’s problems are often complicated, multi-faceted and, in my opinion, can hardly be fully explained in most cases. Should the federal government provide the economic stimulus package to help out citizens in need or should it be aware of the potential federal debt and inflation? Which one outweighs the other at this moment? Would action or lack of it result in a worse scenario for the US? I don’t think anybody can say for sure. Additionally, people in Western countries, especially in the US, often claim that democracy is the best societal form. But is it? Given what is happening with voter restrictions, the spread of misinformation, the dysfunction of Congress, the income inequality and the long lines at food banks, is it really definitively better than what happens in Vietnam, Singapore or China, countries that are essentially authoritarian? Financially speaking, can anyone explain why Bitcoin has risen leaps and bounds in the last few years? What are the underlying rationales for its rise or fall?

I understand that there are scenarios where we need to “fake it till we make it”, as in we demonstrate a high level of confidence than what our competence can back up. In interviews for a new job, how can an outsider applicant be sure that he or she will do a better job than an internal candidate? How can a person be confident in succeeding in a new industry or a new environment? Yet, all of us sell ourselves hard in interviews all the time. In entrepreneurship, investors pour plenty of money in startups and make expensive bets that these startups will be able to cash all the checks that they claim they can write. I am not naive enough to think that confidence doesn’t play a role in our society.

However, if one is serious about intellectual curiosity, it’s important to beware of the Dunning-Kruger Effect and avoid overconfidence when one is not competently ready. The tricky parts are to know where one is on the curve and how to move to the right of the x-axis. Everybody has their own method. Mine include 1/constantly remembering that in most cases, nobody really knows what is going on, 2/ reading everyday to keep myself as informed as I possibly can and 3/ writing things down. The act of writing my thoughts down really helps. Often, the end result is much better than my initial thought, regardless of whether it is good enough to thousands of people out there.

One implication is that if you have a different point of view than some authority voices out there who have a better reputation, a brand name or a celebrity mark on social media, it doesn’t mean that you’re wrong and they are always right. I am a fan of Twitter as I learn a lot from the people on it, but I am often taken back by claims that some experts make with startling confidence. For instance, some chastised the AB5 law in California as a disaster, but recently the top court in UK forced Uber to recognize drivers as employees and the company followed suit, pointing out that the extra expenses would not raise fare. In another instance, some experts called GDPR a disaster as it would help incumbents like Google or Facebook and reduce competition. Well, the WSJ yesterday said that Amazon, Google and Facebook are now responsible for 90% of the US’s digital ad market. The US doesn’t have GDPR, yet there is a triopoly. Also, it’s difficult for me to believe that analysts think that they can run companies better than insiders who have a lot more information. Yet, I have seen many who make declarations with overwhelming confidence on social media all the time.

We’re nobodies in the grand scheme of things

A couple of days ago, Business Insider published a picture of the Milky Way, which took a Finnish astrophotographer 12 long years to put together. Just look at the magnificence and grandness of the picture below

It took over a decade and 1,000 hours of photography to create this picture of the Milky Way
Source: Business Insider

When viewed from outer space, we will look extremely small, like a peck of dust on Earth. Imagine how would you describe each of us when Earth itself looks extremely small in the Milky Way? Microscopic is the best adjective I can come up with, but that doesn’t even come close to doing the scenario justice. Plus, most of us don’t make it past 100 years of age. Yet, the Earth is millions of years old and the Milky Way is much much older than that. What if there is a civilization out there that is so advanced that our current one looks like BC to them? Whenever I think about life from this perspective, it’s easy to get me grounded. And that often helps with avoidance of the Dunning-Kruger Effect or of the thinking that success is just about money and title.