My reading summary in Feb and Mar 2021

Entering 2021, I decided to mark a learning point from every book I read during the year. It is difficult to remember everything from a book. But if I could remember the most important thing from each and apply the lesson later on, it would be amazing!

Books read in Feb and Mar 2021:

Bolded and underscored: plan to reread from cover to cover this year

Bolded: may reread at some point in the coming 3 years

So here is a summary of what I read in Feb 2021:

1. Mindset: A growth mindset is the key to improvement. A growth mindset means that you believe your intelligence and talents can be developed over time. A fixed mindset means that you believe intelligence is fixed—so if you're not good at something, you might believe you'll never be good at it. People will a growth mindset would welcome feedback and treat it as an opportunity to improve. People with a fixed mindset would try to defend themselves when hearing negative feedback.
2. Range: The modern world rewards generalists who could borrow concepts from one discipline to another, instead of experts who only know one discipline very deeply. Still, even as a generalist, you need some depth in 2 or more areas - like this sign: ??.
3. The Biggest Bluff: A poker book that teaches me how to invest - maximize your gain when you have a good hand and minimize your loss when you have a bad hand.
4. Turning the Flywheel: Every great company must have a flywheel. A way for me to make big money as an investor is to identify the flywheel of companies that the market does not appreciate. The ability to identify flywheels at its early stage is arguably the best skill that an analyst could develop.
5. The Alpha Masters: think big. 見賢思齊
6. 科技島鏈：中美日韓台共構的產業新局 (Asian Edge - On the Frontline of the ICT World): Japan, Korea, and Taiwan are in strategic position as US and China compete on technology.
7. 斷鏈之後：科技產業鏈的分整合 (Disconnected ICT Supply Chains): China will break the equilibrium and division of labors among Korea, Japan, and Taiwan.
8. 態度 by 吳軍: Attitude is like the operating system of a person. If your operating system is bad, it doesn't help how many apps you install into the system.
9. 智識份子 by 萬維鋼: Different types of education suits different types of people. For my case, my life-time net present value would probably decrease materially if I did my MBA from any other school.

And here is a summary of what I read in Mar 2021:

1. 高手學習 by 萬維鋼: To better learn nowadays, you need to leverage external tools (e.g. knowledge management software). The world has changed and if you still adopt the learning method 20 years ago, you are certainly falling behind
2. 萬萬沒想到 by 萬維鋼: Gurus have 24 hours per day but they spend the time on the most valuable place. E.g. on reading, we should read high thought intensity materials. Thought intensity = the total time spent on preparing the material / the time required to read the material.
3. So Good They Can't Ignore You: Skills trump passion. You don't need to "follow your passion" and find the job that you love. You naturally love what you are good at. So whatever you do, try to be the best person in it - everyone loves the feeling of winning. And once you become the best, you will get to redefine or restructure your work to make it even more loveable. And to be an expert, 10,000 hours is not enough - if you spend 10,000 pleasant hours you are not improving. By definition, deliberate practice is painful. You need to spend 10,000 painful hours in order to be an expert.
4. Power: Build your reputation and network.
5. Make Time: Identify the focus of every day and make time for it (the book has a list of acts for you to make time - it's like a cookbook. So I want to re-read from time to time to see any act I could leverage
6. Finish What You Start: To finish something you first need to learn procrastinating - procrastinate things that are not urgent nor important. When your brain asks you to do something else while you should focus on a key thing, procrastinate on that random thought - write it on a to-do-list and tell yourself - okay I will do it after 10 mins if I still feel the urgency. More often you will not be prompted to do it after 10 mins.