Scoring marks..

This just sums it up...

A little secret from my engineering years, I used to write my paper by thinking of what the examiner wanted to see. I would make up diagrams that looked relevant and made my handwriting more legible for sentences I was sure about. Worked!

tl;dr: Examiners like to flip through many pages of relevant looking content. Make their life easy.

Understanding Risk in Investing...

Infinite number of factors influence the future. This results in large entropy (more randomness), and the weak relationships between many possible outcome events. 

Hence, the future events cannot be predicted with any consistency.  

This brings me to my next point:

We should not see future as a fixed outcome and capable of being predicted. 

Rather, future should be viewed as a range of possibilities.  (hopefully on the basis of insight into their respective likelihood occurrences, as a probability distribution).

This uncertainty, as to which of the possibilities will occur, is the source of risk in investing. 

Risk means more things can happen than will happen.

Reverse of above is also true. Even though many things can happen, only one will.

For investing, there should be two main risks to consider:

1. Risk of permanent loss

2. And risk of falling short. 

Either one can be eliminated but not both. In other words, we should consider the risk of not taking enough risk.

Another risk to be aware of is FOMO risk:  risk that comes from excessive Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO).

Whereas Risk Control is mandatory, Risk Avoidance is not an appropriate goal. 

This is because of simple reason: risk avoidance usually goes hand-in-hand with return avoidance. 

Risk Avoidance <==> Return Avoidance

One should not expect to make money just for bearing risk. 

At the same time, we should not expect to make money without Bearing Risk.

In short, Move forward, but with caution.

Also Read my old post: Understanding Risk

Source: My understanding of OakTree's memo Risk Revisited.
Image Credits: iStockPhoto

Life...

Life..

• is nothing what it seems...
• Moving forward/progressing would happen no matter what direction you take..
• is filled with obstacles that repeat over the course of your life, but looking at things differently each time lets you explore opportunities you might have missed..

Believe in Schedule

Source: Image Search

..not because they are supposed to be accurate or they are 'right'.










But because, a schedule can:
   1. help track your work progress. Breaking a big piece of humongous work into small chunks and tracking against time.
   2. help encourage accountability, commitment and frequent communication.
   3. tie people together in a project and help them being part of the process.

It should not matter if your schedule is inaccurate or your project progress is not respecting your schedule.
Though, it does not mean it should not strive to make it as accurate as possible.
Try your best with this but it's more important to make sure you have a schedule.

Also read: The Dirty Little Secret of Project Management

Not-So-Good Organizations

It's a poor organization if the following happens:

1. You observe people spending much of their time fighting organizational boundaries. (think broken processes and practices).
2. You observe people are confused about their job. Or are not very clear about expectations from their job. This leads to the situations where/when no-one knows if they are getting the job done (or not). (missing value-add)
3. You see some people working hard and extra hours, and they think that they get the job done. But in the hindsight, they have no idea what it means for the company and their own careers. 
4. If someone finally manages to work up the courage and tell management how screwed their situation is. Following things happen (in sequence):
1. Denial mode ensues. Management denies there is a problem.
2. And then..Defend mode ensues. Management defends status-quo.
3. And then, Do-nothing mode ensues. Management ignores the problem.

Hiring is too much skewed towards referrals and interview feedback is not respected.

...