A hundred thousand teardrops
Growth journey can be painful, as each step requires decisions and sometimes costly decisions. Given that you know far less about how the world works, sometimes it is hard to prevent anyone/anything/system to capitalize on your limitations.
Limited time, lack of patience, information gap, cognitive bias… mistakes that occur on a daily basis could lead to deadly mistakes. As I am writing now, I am cutting my losses on a mistake committed precisely this time one year ago, the ramifications are (still) bearable but it still left a profound scar— a costly mistake in assessing the future economics of a business. The cardinal sin is I delayed this mistake for one fucking year and tuck myself to bed everynight by sucking my own thumb.
So here’s something you might learn from my mistakes:
Lesson #1: problems require immediate action, face the pain
I am not that smart, but have enough brain juice to come up with a plausible explanation to delay scrutiny. The problem is, when you start coming up with your own baloney, soon you will fool yourself. So whenever you spot anomalies, take action to investigate instead of believing in your “hunch” or leave it to time.
Lesson #2 : Cope irrationality with understanding
Emotional discipline is so important, especially when you have skin in the game, the importance of psychology and its influence on the market & (yourself) is a mandatory knowledge to equip with!! Control your mind so the pendulum DO NOT careen from one extreme to another. (there’s moderate and happy medium between perfect & hopeless)
Lesson #3 : DO NOT settle for the easier answer, give real thought to it
Let’s be honest, a lot of us deal with the world with our “language” mind and interpret everything as it is. If you are a man with a hammer, subject to your own limitations, everything will look like a nail to you. DO NOT be satisfied with easy answer just because the person opposite you has an incentive to provide one (bankers, media, whatever). Sitting on top of a huge flow of information does not translate into an advantage, always question & penetrate deep the information you are handling.
As I believe avidly in lifelong learning, I will have better judgements. Mistakes will eventually fade away, and one day I will make a breathtaking winning decision.