My reading summary in Jan 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!

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 Jan 2021:

1. Only the Paranoid Survive: Pay attention to strategic inflection points facing companies - refer to this reflection
2. The Indistractable: The most effective way to build habits is through building self-identity. E.g. self-control might not make a smoker quit smoking at home. But if he gives birth and builds a self-identity of a good dad, the odd becomes higher
3. The Pomodoro Technique: If you feel that you are being distracted from time to time, set a count-down clock of X mins and force yourself be 100% focused during until it rings (not checking emails, phone, etc.)
4. 浪潮之巔: DNA (culture, structure, etc.) is the most important factor determining whether a tech company could evolve / succeed
5. 格局: Think really BIG - winning a watermelon is better than winning 1,000 sesames. Apply this principle not just towards your goals / work but anything else in your life (e.g. if it takes you 10 mins in a queue to get a free ice-cream, why bother?)
6. 見識: Lev Landau kept a list of names of physicists which he ranked on a logarithmic scale of productivity ranging from 0 to 5 - while it was for physicists, it could be applied to any other discipline. This insight prompted me to create a similar list tailored for the investment world, which reminds myself that the world is big and the path is long
7. 高手思維: My wife asked me a few weeks ago was why the world no longer produces scientists as great as Einstein. Later I found the answer from this book - gurus only appear in less competitive areas. Less competitive -> you can outperform others by a lot. Now as science is more mature and there is almost perfect information flow among scientists (resulting in perfect competition), nobody could be far ahead of others - and thus we no longer see gurus. Same for value investing - it was a new concept when Warren Buffett made his status as a guru. But now it is just difficult for the world to have a Warren Buffett #2.
8. 精準思考: Build the ability too think in different levels (depth) and across disciplines (width). This is a great book to get a feel of the mental model theory advocated by Charlie Munger
9. 成大事者不糾結: 曾國藩 demonstrated "一個資質平平的人，在意志力的推動下，可以達到什麼樣的高度" (you'd be amazed to see how far an average guy can achieved if he's powered by supreme willpower - I have no excuse)
10. 是誰出的題目這麼難 到處都是正確答案: Learn to reject requests in order to save time and energy - only accept requests that 1) are really important to the requester; 2) you are the best person to help; 3) you could be helpful with; and 4) do not violate your principles
11. 一年頂十年: Assign a hourly value to your time and use that as a base to make decision. E.g. if your time cost is $100/hour, it is worth paying $80 to somebody else too save an hour