BULLy the BEAR

Since a lot of readers commented that they had only been reading 1-2 books max in a year, I thought it'll be a good time to share what I did to read that many books. First of all, let me add that in my opinion, reading many books is not as important as reading the right books. I rather read less books but books that are important and crucial to your mental well-being, than to say, reading many many books that are just trashy. But it's the law of diminishing returns that really makes it harder and harder to find those books that bring the right amount of inspiration and motivation to pump your hand in the air and gave a mental shout of victory. The best books are books that told you what you know internally already, in a way and mannerisms that makes it so easy for you to absorb. If I can read a handful of such books in a year, I think it'll be a great literary adventure for that year.



I read a lot more after I wanted to have a more disciplined approach towards it. In the past, I only read like less than 5 books in a year. I thought there is something wrong with this because there are so many things - wisdom and experiences - captured in books, written by people who had lived entirely different lives, that if I didn't know about them, I couldn't be living a full life, so to speak. It's a very good habit, I'll say. Things that I never though I knew, I actually knew. Besides being able to talk about almost anything, I find it useful in my work when I can relate certain facts or story and weave them into my lesson plans when teaching.

These days, I'm more likely to hold a ebook reader than a physical book

Anyway, here's how to squeeze more time and have some spare time to read:


1. I never watch tv. In fact, I don't even have a tv at home now, a fact that I'm proud of (despite the many cries by relatives and friends for me to go get a tv). I watch things from my computer though, because firstly I can skip by all the advertisements that a show usually will be splattered with, intermittently every 15 mins or so. I used the spare time to read instead. Roughly I can save around 2-3 hours like that to spend on reading.



2. I read while commuting. Though I don't bring my gigantic kindle dx around with me when I travel, I either have a physical book with me or an ebook saved in my handphone for idle time that pops out occasionally. I make it a point to always have something that I want to read in my bag (or handphone) so that when I'm commuting or when friends I'm meeting are late, I can whip it out to spend the time. Since I've reduced the amount of time that I spent travelling now, I read in between classes while waiting for students to come. I think I can save around 1 hr per day reading by doing this.



3. I always read before going to bed. Minimum of 30 mins or until a suitable stopping point in the book. It had been a habit since a long time, so besides calming me down to ready my mind to go to rest, it also serve as a routine that brings me to sleep. If I don't do it, I might even have problem sleeping! I think everyone needs to prepare for bed by doing things that will relax their body, so that when they actually go about sleeping, their mind will not be so alert and restless. This bedtime reading will allow me to spend a minimum of 30 mins to 2 hours reading.


So, in total, I think I can do about a minimum of 3 hours of reading time per day on average. Of course, there are other hobbies that I would do occasionally if I'm not reading, like guitar and playing computer games. But I think spreading between these few hobbies that I have, it's not too hard to be able to read an average sized book (around 2-3 cm thick) in a week.


Try it, you might find how easy it catches on!

(I'm off for a trip on 21st Jan, will be back on 26th Jan)

After doing my end of month accounting for the Dec 2011 and thus wrap up my financial year 2011, I realised that a lot of my networth was wiped out. Okay, everyone's definition of networth is different, so here's mine - it's defined as all my assets (includes cash, marked to market investment portfolio, whole life insurance cash value, mmf  and cpf) but excludes my residential property. I also didn't include debts that I owed to the hdb because of the property. I think you can roughly say that's my investible networth since most of it is cash that I can utilize at short notice. I know you can't use cpf anytime you want, but then again, I don't have much of it anyway, so it doesn't matter significantly.



With this kind of definition, I realised that my networth is whacked down to around 2008, way before I had started any kind of disciplined savings. I had never had so little money in my savings account; the last time being just right after I had graduated from university. Wow, what a journey that I had in 2010/2011 right? But I had never had so much satisfaction and fun, so it's all worth it.



I realised that I had to begin from scratch again, working hard, savings hard and building up that excess money that I can hoard away for maybe another life's big bombs to hit me again. Sometimes I wondered if I had spend way more than I can handle. But the deed is done, so there's only one way to go and that's forward. I guess it's back to the 50k per year savings target. I'm really trying hard to double that savings but I think realistically, it's not going to happen this year 2012. There's simply no way to save more than I can afford to do so without sacrificing my current standard of living, so I'll have to do it by upping my income level. That's the challenge isn't it? I think if I can manage to save up 50k this year without including my mortgage payment, it'll be quite a feat already. That's technically 60-70k in total. Gulp.


So what had I set out to do in 2011?


1. Save 50k. Okay, that's old story, been there done that. Even though halfway along the year, I had to start paying mortgage for my flat, so the 50k includes all the mortgage payment too (I don't have much cpf, as mentioned earlier, so all of it is through cash)


2. Read 52 books a year. Nope, didn't manage to do that but I came quite close at 50 books. Here's the books that I read in 2011. Most of it is fiction, not some financial books that I've been gorging on since 2006. I realised that fiction taught me a lot on how to be human being. I haven't been reading so much fiction since my primary school day. PRIMARY SCHOOL - can you believe that? My brains must be super lopsided, haha!

You can see that I'm a loyal reader. If I like a particular author, I tend to 'cheong' all his/her books.

3. Set up and finish up the house. Okay, that's mostly done too. I still haven't got my bedside table and a tv. Yes, most people who came up to my house will definitely remark on the fact that I don't have any tv at home. I just don't see how a tv will fit into my life, so that's quite a low priority in my waiting list of things to buy.



In retrospect, I think 2011 had been a fulfilling year. It's a year that I had spent more than I had ever done in my life. It's a year that my friendship with my parents had just begun. It's a year that I had experienced a lot of new things (like cooking and maintaining the home, buying furniture, supervising renovation etc). It is certainly a year that is a big milestone in my life

I made a couple of mistakes these few weeks as I shifted over to my new home. Most of them happened in the kitchen, because that's the part of the home that I had least experience in. In school, we make mistakes when doing tutorials. In work, we make mistakes in handling people and other more technical stuff. At home, what kind of mistakes can I make?



Well, I'm going to list it out:


1. As I was sweeping stuff into my dustpan, I moved it over to the rubbish chute (which is inside my home) to clear it. But without concentrating on what I'm doing, I didn't grip the brush hard enough, as a result, the whole brush fell into the chute, all the way down to the bottom. It's so silly that when I told my wife about it, we all laugh at the kind of clumsiness we can exhibit. My wife had her own episode too - she was putting some door stopper on the window when it dropped off. All the way down from the 22nd floor! Thankfully it's made of sponge, otherwise who knows what damage it can cause!



2. Things that look like silicone might not be silicone. Silicone has high melting point, so it can withstand temperatures up to 250 degree celsius plus minus. I had a scrapper that I had bought which I thought was made of silicone (maybe it is, but not the heat resistant kind), so I used it to fry pancakes with. As a result, part of it melted. Luckily I saw white marks on the pan and ceased using it, otherwise I might become plastic man instead.



3. I first started using the oven by re-heating frozen pizzas bought off the shelf from supermarket. I preheated the oven to a certain temperature, accordingly to the 'instruction manual' at the package of the pizza. Okay, what's so difficult about preheating the oven. Just turn the knob to the desired temperature and wait right? Wrong. I didn't know that there is a temperature light that goes off when the temperature is reached. So the pizza is half cooked. Seriously, it's silly.



4. Cooking without researching (meaning sufficient youtubing and reading through the recipe thoroughly) is a sure fire way to fail. Fail to plan? Plan to fail. There are countless times that I thought the wife knows what she is doing, and she thinks I know what I'm doing. In the end, nobody knows what they are doing.





I think making mistakes is part and parcel of trying out new experiences. I haven't made so many mistakes for so many years since I left school. That means I haven't been trying out so many new things in the past. While new mistakes are unavoidable, repeated mistakes are totally avoidable. I think that mistakes are life's great teachers, if you wish to learn from it. If you live your live to avoid making mistakes, then I'll say your life is pretty safe and conservative. Not much adventure too.



I think the same goes for investments. I've made countless mistakes, many of which I'm still living through the repercussions. But that's life - we have to learn from our mistakes and move on. If because of this and that mistake, you totally give up, then you'll never see the breakthrough. Thomas Edison is said to have made 2000 life bulbs before successfully finding the right material to make the filament. Did he have 2000 failures? Nah, he discovered 2000 ways that a light bulb will not work.


So, don't be afraid of making mistakes. If you haven't made a mistake today, you haven't tried something new!

The recent mrt episodes in Singapore highlighted a couple of bias that can be equally applicable in the investment/trading mentality. I saw some report saying that since the CEO had been in the company, the company had grew its profit from xxx to yyy per annum. This implied that the CEO is responsible for creating the profits. But when the spate of incidents causing the train to breakdown happened, there's no report saying that the CEO is responsible for it. I mean, why is it so easy to attribute good things to the CEO but not the bad things?



Will that happen to people who invests or trades too? I guess so. When the stocks that you bought went up, it was a good call or a good investment decision. You picked a stock that ran up, so you are good. But when the call turns sour, you start blaming the general investment sentiments, or the euro crisis, or the fact that you are not there to execute the orders, or that you are busy with work. A thousand and one event happened to prevent you from making the right decision, it seems to me. That's just self delusional.






If you keep on coming up with excuses on why you cannot do this or that, then perhaps you are shifting the blame to anything or anyone but yourself. By doing so, you are empowering others, making yourself a victim of the circumstances. Playing the victim is such a good role to play, it would seem to me, because a lot of people like to complain about their lot in life. Okay, granted that everyone needs a space to vent out their frustration and to release the emotional steam that builds up inside you. But what do people do after they complained? They'll just go about doing the same thing again. If you keep doing what you have been doing, you will keep on getting what you have been getting. I don't know about you, but I try to distance myself far from such people because they tend to be quite infectious in their negativity. I call them vampires - real life vampires do not suck blood, they suck energy from people around them and make others vampires too.



So, this coming new year, how about putting up a resolution to change this mentality? Instead of thinking that "I could do this if only _____", how about thinking that "I could do this by doing _____". Only by taking full responsibility of your situation can you empower yourself to do the necessary changes to improve it. Unless you're contented at playing the victim, of course.

As I get older and hopefully more mature, I realised that if I have to choose between quantity and quality, I'll go for quality these days. It's not always like that. There was a time that I thought more is good. For example, having more of a cheaper share is better than having less of a better one. Or eating more lousy food in buffet is better than eating less but higher quality ones. There are many many such examples where I can quote you that lets you see how I chose quantity over quality. Hopefully I will reduce such nonsense from now on.


Specifically, here are the areas that I would need to rewire my thinking regarding the choice of quantity vs quality:



1. I've always had a target to read 1 book a week. Initially that target was set so that I can read more. I remember the times when I was reading maybe less than 5 books in a year - that was not okay for me. I wanted to change that, so I set up a target of 52 books per year, since 5 yrs ago. While I understand why I set the target back then, I think the reason for such a goal no longer exists. I don't think I need to force myself to do such a target anymore.


As such, I want to read less and enjoy more. Instead of reading 52 books per year, how about reading 12 good books in a year?



2. Trading 20 ideas in the stock market can be further reduced to trading 10 good ideas in a year. Slowly but surely, I'm getting more patience about the kind of setup I want to see before entering a position. I am no longer looking at the market as fervently as, say 2 yrs ago. When there's nothing to do, do nothing. That doesn't mean that you totally ignore the market - it simply means you wait for the right time and right situation before doing anything. If I miss it, so be it. I realised that there are many ways to make money, but unfortunately, going through the stock market is not my way. That's an important realisation. With that thinking, I not longer try to showoff my skills (not that I have any) or trying to hit certain targets. There are other ways that I can earn my money and fulfill my other goals at the same time. I would focus my time and energy on that instead.







3. Playing 15 so-so computer games is something that I simply cannot afford to. If I want to fulfill my gaming needs (yes, there is such a thing in me), I would rather play 1-2 good game. Again, it's a conscious choice of quality over quantity. I will have to reduce the amount of games that I buy online over steam.



4. A few good friends is better than 30 so-so friends?


The whole point of quality over quantity is really also to reduce the clutter in your life. With less stuff and stuff that you really really want, you can increase your satisfaction and happiness while not cluttering and filling your life energy with all sorts of rubbish. Life works best if it's simple but not simpler. Perhaps when one gets older, you'll realise that time is about the only asset that is decreasing whether you use it sensible or not. Not money.

If you're looking for prescribed, step by step ways to kick start a healthy relationship with money and wealth, then Hill Harper's "The Weath Cure" is not your type of book. Initially when I read the book, I found it rather strange because of the way the book is structured. There are 5 big parts to the book, which each part having a couple of smaller chapters that is related to the parts. But here's the thing - I don't see the relation at all. Perhaps I had been to used to seeing other financial related books that are usually more straightfoward. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, it's just different. 

I was reading this book by Dr. Robert Anthony "How to make the impossible possible", when I discovered that the author actually differentiate between positive mindset and possibility mindset . We know the usual positive thinking - if we think positive, then the outcome can also be positive. This is opposed to thinking negatively about a situation. But I've always wondered about the limitations of having a positive mindset and the book addresses exactly that problem.



I thought that if I think hard enough, will things really happen? For example, if I 'will' a book to move, will it really do so, even if I'm ultra positive about it? To the majority who don't have special powers, I guess the book is going to stay there. So there is a limitations to how much positive thinking can do to us. It's like if you never study hard for your exams, no matter how positive you are about it, you probably wouldn't do very well in it, unless you're a genius. You can ever call such a person naive, or overconfident. Positive thinking can make a person in denial of the actual situation.



Now what is possibility thinking? That is when you think that things are possible in the first place. For example, if you think that the book is going to move, having a possibility mindset means that you know that the book is not going to move on its own (though it's possible to move it), so you're going to move your butt and move it yourself. Or if you know that sitting for a test without studying isn't going to work but it's within the realm of possibility to pass and even to ace it if you just start working hard on it. Having a possibility mindset essentially entails that things are possible, if you are willing to do it. This mindset takes into account of reality and places power in your hands, because only you alone can change an impossible situation and make it possible.



It's a subtle difference but it makes all the difference to me. So actually, when I referred to having a positive mindset in the past, I'm really talking about having a possibility mindset - an attitude in life that views that things are possible if you are willing to take actions to do it. I'm not saying that having a positive mindset is not good - it's just not good enough. A possibility mindset allows you to think that something that you deem impossible is possible in the first place, and then forces you to address on how to achieve it.



Here's more examples:




So are you ready to take on the world? Haha :)