Magic Words : Book Review

 Book Review #22

Did you know, instead of asking kids "to help" if you ask them to "be a helper" increases their tendency to help by 33%. Turns out it is due to the difference between verbs and nouns. E.g., if I told you Rebecca goes running, and Fred is a runner, invariably you think Fred likes running more. If you have a tough time sticking to a New Year’s resolution, saying “I don’t” works better than saying “I can’t”

Wharton professor, Jonah Berger in "Magic Words" published this month summarizes analytics-based insights on the power of using words the right way to advance yourself, have personal impact and connect better. The six types of magic words strategies are

(1) Activate identity and agency: Turning action to identity is critical ("to help" vs. "to be a helper". Change "can’ts" to "don’ts" & "shoulds" into "coulds" (to enable creative thinking), talk to yourself, and drop the “you” to avoid finger-pointing language

(2) Convey confidence: Four major ways to express confidence: (a) ditch the hedges - avoid phrases like "I think" and "In my opinion" and replace them with clearly, definitely etc. (b) don’t hesitate - avoid fillers (c) turn pasts into presents - present tense sounds more definitive, e.g. he was a good team player vs. he is a good team player and (d) know when to express doubt

(3) Ask the right questions: Asking questions makes people think you are smarter and more competent. Four strategies for asking better questions are to: (a) follow up to get deeper (b) deflect difficulties (ask a reverse related question to avoid sensitive traps) (c) avoid assumptions, and (d) start safe, then build

(4) Leverage concreteness: Research shows that "linguistic concreteness" helps. Three ways to achieve linguistic concreteness: (a) make people feel heard (clear paraphrasing), (b) make the abstract concrete (no vagueness) (c) know when to be abstract (to convey a vision or big picture be abstract so people know who to vote for or who is to be promoted)

(5) Employ emotion: The Pratfall effect says that your likeability or appeal increases when you make some mistakes instead of being a perfectionist. Four ways to employ emotion: (a) build a roller coaster, (b) mix up moments, (c) consider the context (emotions are good for hedonic things but bad for utilitarian ones), and (d) activate uncertainty

(6) Harness similarity (and differences): Linguistic similarity is a big predictor of new employees becoming successful whereas people with dissimilar language style were four times more likely to be fired. In contrast, with art/music/lyrics, having linguistic difference makes creative output standout and be more successful. Similarity drives alignment whereas differentiation is linked to creativity and memorability

Overall "Magic Words" gives powerful new insights leveraging analytics and is a very valuable book to understand how the nuances in language drives influence and impact.

Jonah Berger #bookreview #influencing

Daring Greatly : Book Review

 Book Review #21

If you have grappled with the idea that being "Vulnerable" is a bad idea, then you must definitely read "Daring Greatly" by Dr. Brene Brown. Brene dispels the myth that vulnerability is a weakness and argues that it is rather an accurate measure of courage. Here are my takeaways

- The central objective is to live a life of wholehearted worthiness fully accepting our vulnerabilities. If we want to fully experience love and belonging, we must believe that we are worthy of love and belonging that is not linked to prerequisites like achievements, wealth, designations etc.

- Vulnerability does not mean hanging ourselves out to everyone; it means having the connection or means to share ourselves with people who have earned the right - with trust, mutual empathy and reciprocal sharing

- Understand the difference between shame and guilt. Guilt = I did something bad and Shame = I am bad. Guilt creates psychological discomfort, something similar to cognitive dissonance and motivates meaningful change. Guilt is just as powerful as shame, but its influence is positive, while shame is destructive

- Most people believe that shame is a good tool to keep people in line. This is wrong and dangerous. Shame is highly correlated with addiction, violence, aggression, depression, eating disorders, and bullying

- The secret killer of innovation is shame. A deep fear of being wrong, of being belittled and of feeling less is what that stops us taking the risks required to move our companies forward

- We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known, and when we honor the spiritual connection that grows from that offering with trust, respect, kindness, and affection

- Do not be afraid of vulnerability. In general, we operate with an idea that Vulnerability is the last thing I want you to see in me, but remember it is the first thing the other person looks for in you. Covering your vulnerability is like wearing a mask that won't reveal yourself to the people you love and sometimes you yourself are not aware who is underneath

- Foreboding Joy (thinking your joy will not last), Perfectionism (avoiding judgement and shame) and numbing (deaden the pain of discomfort) are factors that prevent you from being your true vulnerable self while retaining your sense of wholehearted worthiness

- To overcome foreboding joy practice gratitude, to overcome perfectionism make the journey from “What will people think?” to “I am enough.” and to overcome numbing practice shame resilience

- The space between our practiced values (what we actually do, think, and feel) and our aspirational values (what we want do, think, and feel) is the value gap or “disengagement divide” where we lose our employees, our clients, our students, and even our own children

This is a heavy book that made me read several sections again and again as so many examples were highly relatable.

#bookreview #brenebrown #vulnerability

Chip War : Book Review

Book Review #20

Silicon Chips today help run everything from cars and toys to phones and nuclear missiles. Last week, I finished reading "Chip War" by Prof. Chris Miller, where he outlines the evolution and the major geopolitical implications of the Chip industry in today's day and age. Here is a summary of this interesting story in my words

- Vacuum tubes with a positive (Anode) and negative (Cathode) electrode when combined with control electrode served as the first controlled amplifiers (transistors) of electrical signals. In 1947, William Shockley, Walter Brattain and John Bardeen created the world’s first transistor made out of semiconductor materials beginning the end for vacuum tubes

- In 1955, eight engineers working under Shockley, including Bob Noyce (who invented the Integrated Circuit) and Gordon Moore left to start Fairchild Semiconductor tracing the early beginnings of Silicon Valley. Moore predicted that the number of transistors crammed on a silicon chip would double every two years and this has held true since the 1960s. Noyce and Moore later founded Intel together

- Failure to land missiles on target cost the US dearly in the Vietnam war but microchips help solve this and powered a decisive victory for the US in the 1991 Gulf war. While Nikita Khrushchev's USSR slipped in chip technoligy, Mao Zedong's cultural revolution pushed the Chinese also behind through the 70s

- Trying to beat high quality/low cost chips by Japanese companies, the US brought chip manufacturing to Korea, Taiwan and Singapore and over time the industry has concentrated and today a tiny number of companies control chip production

- Morris Chang, overlooked by Texas Instruments for CEO, started Taiwan Semiconductor Company (TSMC) with government support and TSMC today carves microscopic mazes of tiny transistors smaller than half the size of a coronavirus. Today, western companies focus only on chip design leaving the fabrication to TSMC, Samsung, GlobalFoundries and few other companies

- China, as a late entrant, decided to invest in chip companies with government support first through SMIC in the year 2000 and soon after with Huawei. While Huawei had some initial benefits from intellectual property theft, much of their success was driven by efficient manufacturing and world-leading R&D. Huawei's ascendence and the fear of spying tools led to Australia, UK and US invoke a series of restrictions that weakened Huawei and made them divest part of their smartphone business and delay 5G rollouts

- China's array of warfare capabilities including long-range & anti-ship missiles and anti-satellite systems make them a powerful opponent of the US. While the optimists hope that there will be no attempt From China to invade Taiwan, the concentration of the chip industry in Taiwan (37% of the world's logic chips) puts the world at a huge economic risk should there be a conflict

Overall, a thrilling book and a must read!

#semiconductors #geopolitics #bookreview

Metabolical : Book Review

Book Review #19

Just finished "Metabolical" by Dr. Robert Lustig, a must-read for anyone who cares about healthy living. Metabolical = Metabolic + Diabolical - you get the drift. Here is an attempt to summarize the insights and action points from this super book.

- The book's core advice can be summarized in six words: a) protect the liver, b) feed the gut. Our livers are stuffed, and our intestines are starved—because of processed food.

- Pesticides are just 10% of our problem. 90% is due to processed food and is the primary cause for diabetes, fatty liver disease, heart disease, and tooth decay; correlative for cancer, dementia, hypertension, and depression; and plausible for autoimmune disease and anxiety

- Don't go by nutrition labels; it is not what’s in the food—it’s what’s been done to the food that matters

- Refined carbohydrate and dietary sugars are the biggest cause of type 2 diabetes. Mitochondria in your cells divert excess glucose (from carbs/sugar) into fat. When this happens in the liver, you get fatty liver, leading to insulin resistance

- Avoid food that has Fructose or High Fructose Corn Syrup. Fructose makes twice as much liver fat vs. glucose and generates 100 times more oxygen radicals causing cell dysfunction and structural damage to lipids, proteins and DNA

- Fiber is the single most important nutrient for health, as it protects the liver and feeds the gut. You don’t absorb fiber but it is for your the 100 trillion gut bacteria in your intestine

- Vegan diets and Keto diets are both extreme diets and either can cause problems. Big Food industry benefits from either and peddles both processed carbs and processed meat.

- Of all antibiotics sold in 2014, only 20 percent were for human use, 80 percent were used on livestock and poultry; these antibiotics survive slaughter and processing, and reach our intestines

- Seed oils are high in omega-6 fatty acids, that are highly inflammatory; Omega-3s, found in fish, nuts and seeds, are anti-inflammatory

- You can grow green vegetables almost anywhere—and it’s Real Food. And you can turn dirt back into soil. It’s called regenerative farming. You just need a cow :)

- Genetics explains only 15% of chronic disease, 85 percent is environmental

- Avoid and detest packaged food and instead eat real whole food; Robert's cookbooks are available free at www.eatreal.org

- It is a long and arduous fight against Big Food. Example, the dangers of trans-fats were first known in 1957 and Fred Kummerow fought till 2013 (he was 99 by then) when FDA finally acknowledged that trans fats weren't safe

- One way or another, you’re going to pay. You can either pay the farmer or the doctor—which would you prefer? Make a conscious choice

Eat Real and stay healthy.

#bookreview #food #healthylife Robert Lustig

The 12% Solution : Book Review

 

Book Review #18

I just finished reading a very short and interesting book called "The 12% Solution" that promises to help individual investors with a long-term systematic investment strategy that can consistently beat market and prevent big losses during market correction.

The author, David Alan Carter says this book is for you if
- You are afraid of a major market correction because you have already seen at least one major market correction
- You purchased one too many “hot” stocks touted by influencers/TV gurus only to blow up your hard-earned money
- You tried mutual fund investing but your returns always lag the S&P 500

So, let me quickly summarize the essence of this investing approach for you.

1) Momentum investing and rotation are at the core of this rules-based investing approach. Decades of data confirms that momentum investing holds that trends can persist for some time, and it’s possible to profit by staying with a trend until its conclusion

2) The best way to make money is to not lose it. In other words, the ultimate success of any investment plan depends on one simple element: minimizing losses

3) Every month, few trades will be done at the end of the month (last trading day). For this your investment corpus will be allocated in a 60:40 ratio across a mix of equity and bond funds. A 3-month lookback period is defined as the optimal history for determining which ETFs to rotate the money across, and only monthly trades are advised to screen out market noise

4) The 60% on Equity is the "risk-on" part of the investment. At the end of every month, the ETFs for our risk-on trade are - SPY (S&P 500 ETF), MDY (Mid-cap 400 ETF), QQQ (Nasdaq-100 Index™ and features Apple, Google, Microsoft etc.), and IWM (US Equity small cap). At the end of every month, you review the 3-month trend of these four and move your equity component to the one that is showing the best trend in the last 3 months. And if all of them are showing negative returns then you move the equity component to cash or the cash-equivalent ETF (1-3 Year Treasury Bonds). This is called the cash trigger

5) The 40% on Bonds is the "hedge" part of the investment. At the end of every month, the ETFs for our hedge trade are - JNK (SPDR High Yield Bond ETF) and TLT (20 Plus Year Treasury Bond ETF). As with the equity part you reallocate your hedge component to either JNK or TLT.

6) The only other trade that remains is to do the trade that will rebalance and ensure that you maintain the 60/40 mix of risk-on and hedge investments. After this do not let the daily market noise lure you to do anything

The author has put up his results on the website https://lnkd.in/g_sXW8ZH and the results are for us to see (see pic 2 attached). Definitely the approach beats the S&P 500 and for most investors who cannot actively trade and time the market it seems to be a very effective method.

Thanks Stephen Christopher, MD for the book recommendation.

#bookreview #investing #money