Kelly Huang

Author: kelly huang

  • Money update: chunks of one time expenses

    November is a month with multiple large one time bills; we’ve almost doubled the monthly expense from NT$82,558 of October to 165,212 of November. There are 3 expenses that contributed to the inflated number.

    1. MacBook Air M3 13-inch (NT$35,600): the old Macbook Pro 2015 wasn’t able to keep up anymore, it was the right purchase since I had a chance to run it for an interview over Teams on Chrome. A task that the old Intel i5 just couldn’t keep up.
    2. TOTO toilet and sink (NT$30,750): replacing a crack on the previous toilet, this is obviously for safety reasons. Sink was not a necessary expense, but it was nice to see them in a set.
    3. Gym membership (NT$26,000): this is on Linda, some tasks and habits are easier when there’s a professional tracking it.

    It accumulates 55% of the November expense; without those, the November expense is 76,138. The baseline expense is actually lower than October.

    Some observations

    • I’d pay more for convenience. I could have paid less price for the toilet with a lesser known brand, but TOTO was a 10 minute walk from home and I don’t have to figure out the drainpipes myself. It’s just easier since I was finding time to meet work, family, and interviews.
    • The family number. Linda and I merged our income numbers on the same spreadsheet, it required a habit tweak, relocating accounts, and discussions for both of us. I wonder if it’s true that two will work faster than one.

  • Do difficult task with sugar and junk food

    Sugar and junk food rewards the brain, releases dopamine to make us feel happy. Eat it while we are working on a difficult task makes the task feel less stressful by building a reward loop.

    To take advantage of dopamine release,

    • Eat healthy most of the time to establish a baseline, when sugar high hits, it actually triggers the reward loop.
    • Learn to distinguish difficult task. Some task are naturally more difficult, requires structuring of information, long process, or multiple hard decisions; sometimes mediocre tasks seem difficult because we feel tired.

  • Benefits of an actual radio

    Radio has become the staple for family meal time.

    • More fluent user experience, simply flip a switch. No face unlock, no finding through apps.
    • Less decision making. No search for the “best” channel or topic.
    • More focused. No screen, no pop-up.
    • More engaging. Not all hosts or music falls into our likes, but that turns into a dinner table discussion.
    • Practice accepting imperfection. Less favorable songs, hosts, uninterruptible ads; the fact it can’t be swiped is a reminder to accept what happens in the moment.

    It’s an outdated, single purpose technology, but it reminds us to live in the moment, even if it’s imperfect or unpleasant.

  • Exercise when feel not to

    Unless it’s health related, these sometimes turn into a great exercise.

    A long day of work; exercise becomes a switch of thoughts.

    An argument with family; exercise blows the steam off.

    Emotion can be flipped with motion.

  • Lean team and big team

    Teams come in 2 sizes, lean versus volume. Former focuses on mission execution and the later focuses on strategic formation.

    Recently, I traded 1 headcount in exchange of removing video production from the responsibility. The team becomes leaner and easier to focus on go-to-market planning, asset creation, and channel enablement. It made sense since video production is resource intensive.

    It has, however, got me thinking if I naturally opted for a leaner team that dedicates on critical mission execution. It would eventually lead to a different career path since no Secretary of Defense ever came from a special operation role. Major management role requires overall strategic formation.

    A leaner team also creates more personal relationships from the accomplishment of execution. This attachment could be contradicting in strategic planning; decision of sacrifice or letting go is more difficult.

  • Keep a side project

    Sometimes things get tough at work or in life, sometimes it creates a domino effect into other aspects. A badly done project at work leads to a bad mood, unintentionally brought it home and it leads to an argument with our partner; then it kept us from sleeping at night and the lack of sleep leads to a bad performance at work. It turns into a loop.

    Keep something small everyday, a 5-line journal, read for 15 minutes during lunch; something that reminds us of “accomplishment”. It helps when things get muddy.

  • 33/34

    Results for 33

    1. Exercise is progressing after the dip

    Total minutes of exercise
    Average minutes per session

    Ever since my daughter born in December 2020, the exercise volume axes in half in 2021; then I transit to product marketing in November 2021, the number hit rock bottom in 2022 and 2023 as I tried to balance between raising a toddler, rebuilding a team, and personal habit. There were multiple breakdowns these two years.

    Life becomes more controllable after she turned 3 and work become more stable after year 1. Here’s the temporary schedule that worked: read bed time story at 9pm, leave for the gym at 10-ish, and begin workout at 10:30, end around 11:30pm.

    At 33, the metabolism slowed greatly compare to the 20s, 2 years of missing exercise made the it difficult to recover. The body is keen toward bloated after sugary or greasy meal. On average, I gained 1.5kg to 2kg of fat in the past 2 years; removing it is the next short term goal.

    2. Family first

    The transition to product marketing introduced bureaucracy in a new height. After endless leveraging, setting up barriers, picking sides, the one thing that remains is myself and my family. At the end of the day, family is purpose for financial income and a good sleep is related to keeping my core belief.

    3. The world is BIG

    I visited Thailand, Japan, and United States this year in personal travel and business trip. The opportunity to take a step out is a great reminder on the size and possibility in this world. If this boat flips, it probably won’t drown me.

    The adrenaline of experiencing the unexpected felt great. We tried two day micro trips for the weekend and saving 5% of month income for the big one.

    4. Financial number gaining traction

    As the investment surpasses NT$ 2m and the global stock market continue to raise, I finally felt the effect of compound interest this year. The overall market growth and dividend re-investment accounts for 30% of the current portfolio value. This is not the best return, but it’s not about shooting the moon in the short term, it’s about a good sleep everyday.

  • Right question, easier decision

    A choice between NT$35,600 Apple refurbished M3 Macbook Air and NT$31,900 new M2 Macbook Air. Which one to keep and which one to return?

    The price difference is NT$3700. There are few ways to justify the difference:
    – 2 display output vs 1
    – SoC performance
    – Dynamic caching

    ChatGPT says a MacBook typically gets 7-8 years of OS update. The question that ultimate strikes “Will I pay NT$3,700 for 2 years of major OS update?”.

    Yes, an easy yes.

  • Better date code for filing

    Before: “2024-10-04 Project ABC v2”

    After: “241004 ProjectABCv2”

    The old way worked in year 1 and 2, but as the folder hierarchy piles, two problem surfaced.

    1. Limited readability on the mobile device. Most of the time
    2. Limitation of characters in Windows file path

    The objective is to achieve both the need for file sorting and to identify the context.

  • Ask for help

    The airplane stuck on the tree while we’re at the park today. I tried knocking it down with branches. I tried climbing and shaking it. I have told people to shut up, but I did not call for help. My wife did, and we got our plane back.

    Some problems aren’t solvable with personal ability. There’s no wrong in admitting defeat and call for help if it reaches the objective.