Hello everyone!
I’ve been spending more time on “investing” now that Avery is born. After all, I have to make sure her tuition fund can support her to go to school right? Or else I’ll be a terrible dad.
I started investing since I was 20 when my mum gave me US$10k, but I never had time to really dig into it until the last few months.
The other day I watched this talk from Chamath Palihapitiya about compounding. It is such an important concept so if you’re also interested in investing, go check it out. Chamath is super visionary by the way.
Why I bring this up is because I’ve started to see how raising a kid can also apply this concept.
When we’re an adult, the compounding effect is so minimal that we can barely see it. If we have McDonald’s for breakfast one day, the effect on us is not obvious.
But when we have a newborn around, the effect is obvious. Every day, Avery is getting a little brighter and bigger. What we do seems meaningless to her, yet in fact they make a huge difference.
Now we make sure to talk to the baby, play baby development music, and read stories to her every single day. We want to compound our way to help her develop.
What else am I going to talk about this week?
- Might be a culture shock for you: our well supported system around Avery’s birth
- I finished the first 5 chapters for the #BuildingInPublic guide - Yea
A confession: we’re so lucky
I have always been thankful about what I have. My feeling of being lucky is now stronger than ever.
When I look at how things are going with Avery’s arrival, we’re living in a luxury because we’re able to get a lot of support.
In our culture, it is quite common to hire a confinement nanny to help take care of the mum and newborn in the early days.
This way, the dad & mom don’t have to stress about everything and can take time to rest and learn the basics. The confinement nanny stays with us, takes care of the newborn 24/7, and cooks nutritious meals for the mom (which means also for the dad, lucky me).
Lydia can focus on recovering and breastfeeding (which is a lot of work!) and dad can focus on supporting everything else (okay, more like chilling out and playing with baby).
I know this is a luxury, and I was so curious that I asked people on Twitter what it is like in their country (which I awkwardly mixed up midwife with confinement nanny). In some culture, it is all on the new parents. In some, grandparents jump in to help. In our case, we hire someone 24/7 plus grandparents.
Now you know one good thing about living in Hong Kong.
My #BuildingInPublic guide is taking shape
I’ve been living up to the #BuildingInPublic spirit and openly share how I’m creating this guide. I shared a few threads on Twitter (#1, #2, #3) and also reached out to a small group of people as my early readers.
By doing this, I was able to create awareness and anticipation around the guide. A number of people have said to me “I cannot wait to read your guide!”. I also have people reaching out to me and say they’d love to be early readers.
More importantly, they offered solid feedback on the content, formatting or even grammar mistakes etc. Now I’m able to quickly refine my early chapters before I continue to spend hours on the other chapters.
Now you can see the power of #BuildingInPublic.
If you’re planning to create something, an article, a guide, a book, a website, don’t be afraid to reach out to a few people to ask them to be critics. The moment you lower your fear of being judged, it is the moment you can improve a lot by embracing feedback.
So, to thank you for patiently reading my weekly thoughts, you get early access to the first 5 chapters too. Here is the link. If you have any feedback, feel free to email me back and let’s talk!
Inspirations
The best 2020 annual review I've read. Nat spent two weeks thinking it through.
How can one be good at something?