Things I learnt from the past 10 years of work

1. If one goes to other people's homes, and when the hosts suggest to drink tea or watch TV, it is time to say goodbye. People always remind others to do something trivial when they feel that they have nothing to say or do.

2. When one is reporting to their bosses, the boss is not looking at you and tapping his/her fingers on the table mean he/she is not satisfied with the report. But if he/she is initially shaking his/her legs under the table when you enter; while you were talking, his feet suddenly stopped shaking, then he has developed a keen interest in your words.

3. When talking to a new acquaintance, his/her arms are always folded, which shows that he/she is still defensive against you, so it is best to be cautious.

4. At the social gathering, beware of the person who toasts to you frequently. It is either he/she needs your help or he/she is hostile to you.

5. A person who is always boasting is just the opposite of his boastful appearance. He is an extremely inferior person. He only used it to cover up his inner inferiority complex.

6. When clinking glasses with others at a social event, your own glass must be lower than that of the other party, especially if the other party is an elder or leader.

7. If you ask someone a question and they didn’t answer you, stop asking.

8. When someone criticizes you, even if he is wrong, don't refute it first, wait for everyone to calm down before explaining.

9. You will meet all kinds of people in life. You can't be pleasing everyone, but one thing is universal: how you treat others, it will be reciprocal.

10. To survive in this world, one must first learn the word "endure".

11. Don't tell your secrets to everyone.

12. Do not gossip about work with colleagues. Your unintentional remarks may become evidence for others attack you.

13. There are real friends, but don’t know if you are lucky enough to meet them. Regardless of whether you have encountered it or not, don't backstab anyone.

14. When loaning money to others, you must factor in the worst scenario, thinking you won’t get the money back. Therefore, the loaned money must always be within the range that you can bear.

15. Among best friends, unless they are poor and got no means to have their meals, its best not to have monetary contacts. Many valuable friendships fail because of money.

16. It is for you to adapt to society, not society to adapt to you.

17. Don't let others know what you really think, laugh in front of others, hide and cry alone.

18. Simple things are complicated to do, and complicated things are simple to do. Be responsible for your actions, don't blame others, think about whether you should do it before you do it, and learn to solve it yourself when something goes wrong.

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Have you ever swiped your phone until wee hours?

01

Have you also had such an experience: At night, when you finish your day's work and lay on the bed, you pick up your phone and plan to have fun? After surfing for a while, you suddenly realized that it was already 3 o'clock in the morning.

Why are we so addicted, immersed such that we wasted a lot of precious time?

I used to play with mobile phones just to relax myself. If I can control my time well, there is no harm. However, this is not the case. After putting the phone down, you will feel that your brain is empty, and you will be hit by a deep sense of boredom.

A friend once said that there are too many short videos, and now he don’t even have the patience to watch videos of more than three minutes. If things go on like this, we will become more and more impatient, and gradually lose our goals and motivation.

02

What does it mean to your body if you are addicted to playing with your mobile phone and stay up late?

I saw with my own eyes a man who was crushed by staying up all night. Once, he was tall and thin, with outstanding abilities. He was a young middle-level person in the company and an idol for newcomers in the office. But after staying up all night, he fell into his home because of a cerebral hemorrhage. After several months of rescue and treatment, he slowly stood up. But everything needs to be learned from the beginning, re-learning to recognize numbers, re-learning to use mobile phones, and re-learning to walk alone. Although in the end he recovered physically, but he could no longer do his original job.

You are obviously sleepy, but you just don't want to close your eyes and rest. What does staying up all night mean? Sometimes, it will completely crush your body.

When you are young, you may feel that you are in good health and staying up late won’t do you much harm. When you get older, you will find that a good body is your greatest asset.

03

Playing with mobile phones late at night brings us only a short-term pleasure. Apart from consuming our energy, there is not much benefit.

Do something that makes yourself thankful for the future makes more sense. For example, if you want to learn a new skill, then learn it through various channels; if you want to become more knowledgeable, read a valuable book.

Even in 15mins before going to bed, we can enrich ourselves with meaningful things.

A good body and a good spirit are great assets; not staying up late and persisting in doing meaningful things are the best self-discipline.

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Work to live or live to work?

Work to live or live to work?

 

More and more people in the workplace have realized: "Work is to have better life, and life is not only for work." This mindset pays more attention to the quality of life, and enjoying such a life especially with family members.

 

It is indeed our job to make money, but if we spend every five days at work from 8 in the morning to 6 in the evening, we can’t even have proper meals. It only means that we chose the wrong job."

 

The pressure of work is often very heavy in our modern lives. It is understandable that a person in the workplace always puts his work first. However, don't take your work home. Think about how a person who is still working can integrate into the atmosphere of home, how can the family members who live with you feel your care and love, and how can the family produce the warmth it needs? If things go on like this, home will not be home. And because of the imbalance between work and family, it is difficult to ensure that you can devote yourself to your career, which will also affect your work. Marriage and family are the most direct support systems for individuals, and they are undoubtedly very important for the release and relief of personal stress. The support and recognition of family and family members is an important way for everyone to gain self-esteem, as well as a source of confidence and strength.

 

You should hurry home after getting off work to have dinner with your family and enjoy the family happiness. Some people always think that family and career cannot be balanced. In fact, there is no contradiction between the two. How to take both into account and treat them in a balanced way is an issue that we should be concerned about. In terms of importance, family and career should be equal. Blindly pursuing a career can easily lead to a disconnection with the latter; on the contrary, a certain degree of disconnection with the latter will also bring a certain counter-effect to the former. You can’t just look at your family from the perspective of your career, and you can’t always look at your career from the perspective of your family. While building a family with a perfect atmosphere, we should complement each other's career with this atmosphere, and let the family become the backing of the career. Relief yourself appropriately and take free time to enjoy the warmth brought by the family, so that while enjoying the ambience, the pressure brought by all aspects of the career will also be reduced.

 

Facts have proved that people can have a successful career and a beautiful family at the same time. Only if you are passionate about life and work, this is then a beautiful life. In fact, whether men or women, the key to having a good life lies in our attitude and satisfaction with material life, career and feelings, as well as our own skills and maturity in role-playing.

 

Everyone has different goals at every stage, and the order of career and family is also different. Taken together, the family is the backing of the career, and the career is the assurance of the family; once you try to get out of the labyrinth, understanding the essentials of various roles, striving to be a "good actor" and working smoothly between the workplace and the family are naturally the only way to succeed.

 

As long as time permits, we must try our best to make family life meaningful, and some details should not be missed. No matter how busy you are, no matter how late you go home, you should go to your child's bedside and hug your child every morning. There will be understanding and love between you and your family, and happiness will come for a long time.

 

In short, work conscientiously, live happily, and use your own efforts to make career and life fly together.

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8 workplace experiences summarized by veterans in the workplace

8 workplace experiences summarized by veterans in the workplace

1. Don't tell your colleagues that you are planning to leave.

Don't tell anyone in the original company before leaving your job, so that you can protect your interests.

Resignation is a big event for the company. After telling your colleagues, it will get to the ears of leaders or supervisors. Then you eventually will have to leave.

 

2. Sharing too much with colleagues

Almost all people know that it is a taboo to share too much about ourselves, and the problem is that many people have not yet understood that their friendship with some people is actually very shallow.

But because they have the same views or practices on one or two things, they feel that they are very close. They get acquainted with others in a short period of time, say everything, and finally hurt themselves.

So the best way is not to tell any secrets to people who have known you for a short time.

 

3. Usefulness

In the workplace, the more "useful" you are, the more "restrained" others are towards you. If your boss can humiliate you in front of others, your colleagues can instruct you to do trivial things, not because you are not good. It is because you are "useless to them".

 

4. Devote your time carefully

Energy and time are limited. Often those who succeeded earlier knew at a young age that a person can only do a few things or even one thing well in his life. Thus they find themselves the right thing, concentrate all your energy on doing it, and then accumulate experience, and the compound interest effect of time allows them to be ahead of their peers.

 

5. Lose your temper at the right time

When you need to lose your temper, you have to lose your temper. Maybe you are not angry at all, but you can pretend to be angry. Although it will become a little awkward, but others will be wary that there is a threshold of you that needs to be respected.

 

6. Learn to have multiple income streams.

Learn a few more skills even if you are unemployed in the future, you will have a competitive advantage over others.

Just like if a salesman is developing multiple customers at the same time, he will not put all his hopes in one customer, and he will not be nervous about the gains and losses, so he will have more confidence to negotiate the business.

 

7. Don't tell your colleagues that you have other sources of incomes.

Be sure to keep confidential with your colleagues, to ensure that he will cause trouble to the entire company. Leaders think that you are not doing your job properly, since that you have other income anyway, so they will give you less promotion and pay raise.

 

8. No one is irreplaceable; people will be queuing to take your place.

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Predictions in 2022

Time flies and we are in 2022.This comes a bit too late but well never too late as long as 2022 has not end.  Here are some of the predictions in 2022.

01     Pandemic to Endemic

Although there are further mutations of the virus, mankind is inventing vaccines and booster shots to produce immunity against the virus. No one knows when the viruses could be wiped out but one thing for sure is that the pandemic could become just like common cold for more developed countries with high vaccination rates. Countries will not enter endemic phase at the same time. The faster the country enters the endemic state, the faster it can get back to pre –covid standards. It will create a larger economic inequality between the richer and poorer countries. Richer countries will be able to allow travel much earlier and this will get the economy back up.

02     Future of Work

Due to the pandemic, people realised that they have the flexibility to choose their working hours. Employees prefer work life balance which they know that they can work more productive remotely. It is also a win win situation for the employers as they can scale down their office spaces for substantial savings. This might lead to more people resigning and reprioritizing their lives goals.

03     Inflation and Rise of Cypto

Inflation is running at a nearly four decade high in the United States and Singapore is not spared from rising inflation rates. Higher inflation erodes the value of money in your bank account. Gold has been used as a hedge against inflation however crypto has been gaining popularity in recent years. Non fungible tokens (NFTs) and the metaverse will continue to boom into 2022. Even Facebook is taking a claim in the metaverse. The blockchains and its impact is definitely a thing to note in 2022.

04     Travel worries

How many of us have not been travelling due to the pandemic, I think all of us are looking forward to being able to travel to far and exotic countries. However due to the impact of the lockdowns and travel bans, a lot of the travel related industries was impacted. Jobs are lost and reduced, time and money is required to attract the talents back into the related industries. Not only increased salaries, rising oil prices will cost travel fares to go up. Thus people will go and hunt for shorter trips within the countries or countries nearby instead.

05     Potential Business Opportunities

Online retail will continue to prosper, however due to the disruptions of the supply chain caused by the pandemic, there will be further delays in shipments, resulting in scarcity of resources and goods. This will give rise to the second hand economy.  Consumers do not mind using second hand goods to save some money and to wait for new products to reach the shopping racks. The rise of the second hand economy is also fuelled by the consensus to create a more sustainable future to deter the impacts of climate change.

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2 tips to make you spend money wisely

I don't know if you agree with this point of view. It is not easy to make money, and spending money is a form of knowledge. How to master the art of spending money? How to allocate expenses reasonably In the uncertainty of life?

Can you tell the difference between consumption and investment? For example, is buying a fitness membership an investment? Lottery tickets are irrational speculation, and why do so many people buy them? How to turn money into a valuable asset?

01     Distinguish three "wallets"

"Spending money smartly is as hard as earning it".

Regarding this point, there is actually a big misunderstanding in spending money. Most people think that spending money means saving money and buying cheap things. Living within your means, being diligent and thrifty are the ways to spend money.

However, to really utilise money, you must know how to distinguish between three wallets.

Each of us has three wallets, a consumption wallet, a speculative wallet and an investment wallet.

Consumption wallet: To satisfy own needs such as clothes, daily necessities, etc

Speculative wallet: To speculate and spend on items that involves some luck, such as lottery tickets art pieces, thinking that they may go up in value in the future

Investment wallet: To spend money on items that will go up in value in the future such as investment products, entrepreneurship, etc.

In general, spend more investment wallets, moderate consumption wallets, and avoiding speculative wallets are the first important things to remember about spending money.

02     Only buy things that will be worth more later

Since you want to spend more money in your investment wallet, how do you use it in real life? That's what we're going to talk about next: the principle of making more money.

This principle is: only buy things that will be more valuable later.

The question is: how can I know how much the things I buy will be worth in the future?

Probably the hardest part is estimating the values ​​and discounting them. In the eyes of economists, almost all items ​​can be converted into money for comparison.

For example, your job requires you to be fluent in Chinese, and once your Chinese proficiency improves, your monthly salary may increase.

Under such circumstances, it costs a few hundreds to sign up for a one-year training course, which seems to be a very cost-effective investment, because it can bring you more monetary returns in the future.

This is an estimate of what the purchase will be worth in the future and can help you decide whether to spend the money.

However, with regards to this estimate, there is a loophole. Because you ignore an important factor, and that is time. In other words, future money is not as valuable as present money.

Therefore, when you spend money and invest to calculate future income, you cannot directly compare the amount of money you may earn in the future with the amount you will spend now, but you have to give a discount to the future money. This discount is called in economics. Discount Rate.

This principle sounds simple, but most people are often disregard this problem.

If you understand the concept of discount rate, you will know that the sooner you get more money, the less discount you will lose. Not to mention that if you get the money in advance, you can make other investments and bring additional income.

In addition to considering the discount rate, another factor you need to consider is how long it will take to get the return, and at that point, whether the return you want will still mean as much to you.

If you tell a 20-year-old young man, "You give me 2 million now, and I will give you 10 million in 30 years", many young people will be willing, because for them, they will be 50 years old in 30 years, and still Lots of time to enjoy this money.

But if you say the same thing to an 80-year-old, he probably won't say yes, he thinks he may be running out of time and doesn't want to take the risk.

When people are young, they can appropriately allocate more stock assets, and their ability to withstand risk fluctuations will be relatively strong. Once there is a loss, they can also have the opportunity to use time and accumulated experience to "wait" the gains back.

02     Two strategies to reduce investment losses

When we invest, it is very likely that due to habit of judgment, the investment will fail. Is there any way to reduce the loss of investment?

In order to ensure stable investment and avoid risks, there are two strategies: one is a portfolio investment strategy and the other is an option strategy.

Portfolio investment strategy, to put it bluntly, is not to put all your eggs in one basket to avoid bankruptcy due to your misjudgment. You may already be familiar with this concept.

The second strategy is to use options. The essence of options is to pre-determine the right to spend a certain amount of money to buy a certain transaction within an agreed time.

For example, if you go to rent a house, you have to pay a deposit when you sign the contract. You may have to pay 10% of the rent. This deposit is actually an option.

If in the next month, you find a house with a cheaper rent, then you have the right to choose to abandon the transaction.

This is a right to backtrack that you buy yourself in the future when your investment may fail.

This idea can give us a good direction, that is, when you are not sure about the investment results, you can spend a little money first to buy the right to this investment opportunity.

After a period of time, if you feel that the investment opportunity is not good or there is a better opportunity, you can do not need this part of the deposit and pursue a better choice, then the risk of this investment in life will be greatly reduced.

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The company behind “All of us are dead” and “Squid Game”

Korean dramas “All of us are dead” and "Squid Game" have been top discussion topics on social media, and many people have followed this drama, and they have also given high ratings recently.

Why are those shows so popular? A closer look reveals that the producer behind it is Netflix.

When it comes to Netflix, everyone will think of a series of high-quality film and television dramas, such as "House of Cards", "The Queen's Gambit", "Black Mirror" and so on, many of which have been nominated for several Oscars.

If someone goes in depth into Netflix's history, they will find that its current business model is completely different from the original one.

So what did Netflix do in the first place? What exactly does it make money from?

01

Let’s take a brief look at how Netflix got its start.

Netflix first started as a DVD rental business. After the customer placed an order online, Netflix mailed the DVD to the customer's home.

This business model looks simple now, but in 1998, it was quite creative.

Because people at that time wanted to watch discs, they had to go to physical stores,  which was very inconvenient; and suddenly one fine day, they could rent discs without leaving home. Who could resist such a temptation?

Netflix's business is really hot. As its users continue to increase, Netflix has tried to launch a "monthly subscription" service, paying more than ten dollars a month and renting 4 movies at a time.

With the new model, Netflix's subscribers rose to 300,000, and the company's monthly revenue was several million dollars.

But we also know that with the advancement of technology, movies can also be seen on the Internet, and the DVD format has gradually been eliminated.

Netflix keenly observed this technological change and quickly transformed itself into an online video site. To put it bluntly, it is like an "online cinema", which buys film and television drama copyrights from film companies and puts them on the platform for users to watch.

But this model still has its shortcomings. If the upstream price increases sharply, or the movie copyright is not sold to you, the business may collapse immediately.

After thinking about it, Netflix finally decided to produce its own content and attract users through self-produced film and television dramas. But the threshold for filming and TV drama is so high, how to go about it?

In 2013, Netflix launched its first self-made drama "House of Cards", which was well received. Since then, it has embarked on a "point of no return" for self-made dramas.

Therefore, from the earliest paid DVD rentals to the current paid to watch homemade dramas, it seems that Netflix's business has changed, but the essence of providing users the content they are interested in has not changed.

02

When we look at Netflix's stock price over the past ten years, we can see that its development momentum is indeed relatively strong:

You may want to ask, how does this company make money? 

The answer is membership fees.

At present, Netflix has more than 200 million subscribers, and the monthly fee is 8.99 US dollars, and the annual revenue is more than 20 billion US dollars.

The membership fees charged by Netflix are indeed not cheap. But many people are willing to pay this money, one is for its many high-quality original dramas, and the other is that there are no advertisements on Netflix.

When we dived into Netflix's annual report, we found out that Netflix's revenue are mainly from 2 sources , 99% is membership fee, and 1% is DVD service:

Therefore, there is a conflict between the membership service and the advertising business itself. Netflix simply gave up the advertising business and attracted users by continuously outputting high-quality content + good experience.

03

According to the latest annual report, Netflix's annual profit is 2.7 billion US dollars.

Netflix uses big data algorithms and in-depth mining of user data to tailor films that meet the audience's interests, it can mass-produce high-quality original dramas; however, domestic video platforms usually require good scripts to be popular and self-made. The quality of the show can't always be that stable.

Therefore, Netflix has long understood that a video platform can only make money if it has the mindset of pumping lots of money to continue to produce high-quality content. Being able to gain insight into the development direction of the industry so early is the most remarkable thing about this company.

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