Bits of Chris: Augment, Stay Human

What if I told you that controlling just three factors could significantly increase your ability to build wealth?

In this episode you’ll learn:

* The higher probability path to success in markets

* How to shift your mindset to be a market winner in the long run

* Why your Savings Rate is crucial

* Rules of thumb for Asset Allocation

* Basic return drivers of Investments vs Speculative Assets

Disclaimer

This is not financial advice. I am not a financial professional. I do not know your personal situation to be able to offer advice. Before making any investment decision consider the risks involved and consult a financial professional.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bitsofchris.com

Taking notes is the shortest path to unlocking your full potential.

In this episode you’ll learn:

* How I have new content for each episode daily

* The compounding effect of note taking

* The benefits of having a second brain when you take notes

* How note taking can make time move slower

* A few tips on making note taking part of your life

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bitsofchris.com

Key Points

* The three types of people using AI today

* The Augmented Engineer

* Focus on your thinking and soft skills

* Use AI as tool for 90% of the code

* Thinking will make you stand out

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bitsofchris.com

Key Points

* Market bubbles happen often

* Bubbles are only obvious with hindsight

* Understand the fear vs greed when money is at risk

* Accept the uncertainty and ignore the people offering you guarantees

* Manage your FOMO by understand it’s triggers

* Risk what you pay for returns in the market

* Buy when everyone is fearful, and sell when everyone is greedy. -Warren Buffet

Disclaimer

This is not financial advice. I am not a financial professional. I do not know your personal situation to be able to offer advice. Before making any investment decision consider the risks involved and consult a financial professional.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bitsofchris.com

Key Points

Find your niche or your Ikigai by reflecting, building awareness, and following your curiosity.

* Reflect by asking yourself questions

* Be aware of activities that leave you with more energy

* Have a Victory File to listen to the world

* Follow your curiosity, not trends or money

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bitsofchris.com

Key Points

* Motivation is fleeting, you can’t rely on it

* To do big things, you need consistency

* You get consistent by making it a habit

* You get a habit by starting small

* You start small by taking the big thing you want and setting a process goal around the smallest unit of work you can do everyday

* I then shared two examples of how this worked in my life:

* Writing my first book

* Transitioning from finance to tech

* Time will pass no matter what

Transcript

  Welcome back everyone. This is episode two of the bits of Chris' show. Thank you for joining me yesterday. I really appreciate it. I also appreciate some of the feedback I got in listening to myself. I noticed I already have a few things to work on. I think I said like, and so a bit too much, we're going to try to work on that today. But day two, I woke up and I'm not motivated to do this anymore. And I thought, oh s**t, this is going to be a long, 30 days. But that brings me to today's topic, how to do big things. When you're not motivated.

I think motivation is fleeting.

That's pretty obvious it comes and goes. And if you think you need to be motivated, you're not going to get much done.

If you're waiting around for motivation to hit you. You're never going to go after the things you want to do. So motivation is not the answer with how to do big things. In my opinion, the answers to build consistency. Consisting meaning you show up every day and you just do the thing. There is a quote from bill gates that feels relevant right now. He said most people overestimate what they can achieve in a year. And underestimate what they can achieve in 10 years. Well, I think we could take that a step further. And just say most people overestimate what they can do in the short term. But underestimate what they can do in the long term. So, if you think about a to-do list for a single day or a week, You're probably overestimating what you can get done, but then if you zoom out to maybe a month, two months, or even a single year, You're probably underestimating what you can accomplish. And I have a few examples of this that I'll get to later. But if motivation is not the answer to doing big things, then how do you. Be consistent.

And the answer there is. You make whatever you're doing a habit. So, how do you build a habit? There are some amazing books on this topic. I won't get into those today, but I think one or two pieces of advice on how to build a habit. The most important thing is to start small. Make whatever habit you're. Trying to do. A bite size, tiny step that, you know, you can succeed at every day. Because. If doing this podcast is Edie evidence.

You can lose motivation very quickly. And so you need to just build it into your routine to find that consistency to power through those dips in motivation. And as you do more. As you get a little more success that motivation will come back and it might come back stronger and it will be easier at times, but it definitely ebbs and flows throughout any big project. So it's important to have whatever habit or whatever thing you're trying to do.

Be small, something attainable, something you can do every day.

So if our goal is to be consistent and we do that by building habit and the best way to build the habits by starting small, how do we start small? Well, you should take that big thing you're trying to do and try to find the smallest unit of work. That you can do every day. And make that goal a process-based goal, not an outcome based goal.

So, for example, if you're going to write a book. Make your goal, a process oriented one. I don't say I'm going to write a hundred pages. And don't say I'm going to write 500 words even. The process there is writing a little bit every day, but just set a timer, make it really focused on just showing up and doing it. For example, when I wrote my personal finance book, my goal every day was to just write for five minutes. And I would say 70% of the mornings that I woke up. I did not want it right. And a lot of times I would just right for the five minutes and walk away, go do something else. But some of those days when I didn't want to write, I would write for five minutes and then I would keep going. And. That could have taken up to an hour, some mornings again, starting from that rolling out of bed, not wanting to do anything. So starting small can lead to. Some real powerful results. In the day-to-day. But it also just keeps you moving forward. And I think one of the biggest problems with a long project is. Humans.

We want that instant gratification more or less, even if we are disciplined or thinking with the big picture. And so you have to. Give yourself these little wins to keep it going forward.

Jerry Seinfeld has a famous story or method that he shares where he put an X on his calendar every day he was writing jokes or doing stand-up, something like that when he was coming up. He had a goal to just either perform standup every day or write jokes every day. And as long as he did, he put an X on the calendar and then his focus became just doing that every day.

So he could put that X on his calendar and string together. Those successes. And I think that's really what you need to do when you're trying to be consistent and being consistent is the thing you need to do. In order to do big things.

Another way you can start smallest trying to scope down your initial milestone. So again, with the example of a book, Instead of thinking you need to write a 300 page book. Just make your goal right now, writing the first chapter.

And with that smaller scope, you get a little closer and as, and as you get closer to that finish line. The motivation tends to come back in my experience. So if you set incremental milestones, you can have maybe a more consistent distribution and motivation to make your day-to-day easier.

You can always expand the scope later. So don't be afraid of scoping it down now. And you can have that longer term vision in mind as you work towards more intermediate milestones.

So to recap. In order to do big things. We don't want to rely on motivation. We want to build consistency. To build consistency. You need to make. The thing you're doing a habit in your daily routine. And the best way to do that is to start small. By using a process oriented goal every day that you can achieve. And scope it down. And if you're thinking.

You don't want to be patient enough, or if you're thinking. I need to get my big thing done now. And you bite off more than you can chew, or you take too big of a swing right away.

You might regret it. And I would suggest you really heed the advice of starting small and scoping it down.

Now I want to share two examples of how this has helped me over the years. I started to touch on the first one, which is writing that book. And it took me 10 months to write. But the key was doing it every day for at least five minutes showing up to right. Because as I said earlier, most mornings I did not want to write.

And it would have been very easy for me to never make progress and just do other things. But because those days I didn't want to write. I moved the needle for five minutes. I was able to get closer to finishing a chapter or finishing a section. And seeing some progress and then motivation would tend to find its way back, making the next day easier.

But also the magic of just getting started with that small process oriented goal of just doing five minutes. Would often lead to me doing way more than five minutes. But by making that barrier to entry super low. It became really easy to get those consistent wins. And I knew every morning, That's all I had to do.

So it became easy to take some pressure off. And get a success that day. So I think when you do find that small unit of work, really make that process go for yourself. Just as small as possible, you can always do more than that. But make it small so you can build a habit, especially when you're starti…

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bitsofchris.com

Episode Description

* Expectations for the next 30 days

* Reflections on writing for 45 days straight

* Struggles finding a niche

* Joyspan - the framework that fits all my interests

* How to maximize your Joyspan

Transcript

Hello. I just think on. All right. I think so. Well, hello, everyone. Welcome to the first episode of the bits of Chris' podcast. I am not sure what I'm doing. So please bear with me. But for the next 30 days, I figured why not record myself speaking and try to figure this out. So here we are. I'm sure it's going to be. Bumpy and I'll make mistakes.

And like I said, Not really sure what I'm doing. So we're just gonna learn as we go, please. Any sort of feedback or suggestions would be appreciated, even if you tell me I suck because then. I can think about it. What, what actually sucked? What, why didn't you like, how can I do this better? So let's get into it.

My me try to speculate how I think this is going to go. And then maybe get into the reason why I'm going to do it for 30 days. And then I'll give a little context of where this all came from and what I learned from trying to write 45 days straight to start the new year and where we ended up. So one thing I think will happen is between this first episode and 30 days from now, We'll have 30 episodes, which has given me pretty cool.

Assuming I don't give up halfway, which, because I'm telling you I'm going 30 days. I don't think I will give up halfway. If I do, you can call me out on it.

But I do think the tooling and the scripting and the flow of the episodes and the structure is going to get so much better by the end of it. I also have no idea on how to take the show notes or how to organize things. So we'll see how that improves too. I don't have a logo yet. I don't have much of a name, I guess we'll just go with the bits of Chris' podcasts, but it should be fun. One thing I do know is I had a taste of podcasting at work earlier this week, and it was a blast. I started emceeing this community meeting and at the end. I decided to add a new segment with some feedback from folks. To interview a person. In that meeting live and that was so much fun. That I was like, this, this is a signal I need to talk more.

I, I like doing this, so that's the one thing I do now. So even though I'm not qualified yet to really have a podcast, I know it's a lot of fun, so I really don't care. So I promise you over the next 30 days, I'm going to learn some stuff. This will get incrementally better, especially if you're giving me feedback. And it's also, I think, a fun way for me to explore ideas. I've had a lot of ideas and I've been trying to write more online. But writing is slow. And I think you have to be more polished when you write. But podcasting, like anybody can start one.

You're just talking into a microphone and who cares if nobody listens, but at least you're getting your words and thoughts out there quicker. So I'm going to try for that sake, like exploring the ideas, maybe outlining future things I might want to write about. Or just giving me an outlet to talk.

So I don't drive my wife crazy from talking too much. Or I think even chat GPT has had enough of hearing from me. With all my ideas and questions and things I want to explore. So I think this is going to go great. I'm excited to see what happens over the next 30 days. And let's just get into today's episode.

So, as I mentioned earlier, To start the new year and actually even a little before then. I was writing every day online and publishing something short. And I did that for, I think, close to 45 or 50 days in a row. Where I would wake up generally had an outline in place from the night before. And I would write. 300 to 600 words. Try to quickly edit it and then publish it. And this was. Obviously new for me. I had been writing online for a few years, but very ad hoc, like maybe something once a month. Once a week, never anything this intense. And also rarely publishing it in a place where people could see it.

So a big part of this challenge was to put it out on social media where you could actually get in front of readers. Forever. I just had it on a personal blog that I'm pretty sure. A hundred people a year might've came across from Google. If, if that, so this was actually more intimidating. I thought just like doing this today is because you're getting content right in front of people and sharing it.

So that was interesting. But one thing. Doing this 45 day challenge was you get to go through ideas very quickly and you get to iterate on a bunch of stuff quickly, and you get feedback very quickly. And all that helps you figure out what you like. What you like to talk about? What's working like what other people like, and find interesting. And so I try to pick a specific niche. For that, and I kept changing it and I'm still sort of changing it. Some of the advice you get when you start writing online, if you want to build an audience is to get super specific and niche down. And the people that fit that niche will resonate so greatly with what you're saying, that they'll start following you or the internet will help you find those people.

All those platform algorithms will bring you the exact people that are looking for the content. If you're speaking to them, Well, I find that very challenging because I have a lot of things I want to talk about. And a thing I've been struggling with for the past four months or so. Has been trying to put myself into one box and niche down to, to speak to a single. Audience or on a single topic. And I don't know if it's just me or if I haven't found it yet, but I can't do that.

So. One thing, the writing for 45 days straight and what this podcast is, hopefully can help me explore is what's most fun for me to talk about. Now I've definitely narrowed it down to a lot of topics. And I think. If you're interested in writing or creating content, you don't want to just.

Sit. In your room and plan and think about it. I think you need to balance what I've called the learn. Do reflect or learn, do think cycle. Where you consume some information, but then you spend equal time doing, like using that information, whether that's creating or writing code. And then you spend a little bit of time reflecting, like thinking about the process. Thinking about what it means, thinking about what you like. And so with the 45 day writing challenge

I was so busy doing, I didn't have much time to consumer reflect.

And I think that was good because it jolted me out of a cycle that most of us are in, I think, which is. We consume way more than we produce.

And once you get going with the PR producing, you learn a lot and you start to figure out what, what you do like to talk about what you do have a lot to say about.

And we'll get into that journey, but that's what I want to use this podcast to explore is. A lot of these different topics. But ultimately where I'm at today is. I'm a staff engineer at a data company, mainly focused on data analytics. I'm a former day trader. And I w. Years ago, wrote a small book on the basics of personal finance. And I find this money part of myself. I just really enjoy talking about investing, trading money and I've put that on the back burner for a long time.

While I focus on growing my tech career. But it keeps coming back. And I think that's a signal that I should pay more attention to that part.

So the topics I kind of have in mind for the rest of this podcast are things around money trading and investing, especially at the intersection of data and data engineering, which is what I do for work now., especially around like cryptocurrency markets and web three, because the technical nature of those different platforms and the different tokens that are being created are really fun or interesting to me. Also have a couple ideas around work-life balance and being a parent, how that ties into work. I have this concept of work from home fire for financial independ…

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bitsofchris.com