Hard Work doesn’t Speak

What I'm Up To (Work Sprint), What I Reflected On (Reviews), and What's Occupying My Mind (Personal Finance Systems)- all part of Allen's Friday Flights

Hello Professionally Curious One!

Welcome to my Friday Flights, a collection of seemingly random things.

Cheers,

Allen

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Past Publications

• Unfinished Writings from 2022

• It cost $2,216 in fuel to go 30,000 miles

• A Debrief on the Kraken v SEC announcement

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What I’m Up To

TL;DR: Work Sprint

Photo by Matthew Brodeur on Unsplash

The Things:

• John B. introduced me to the concept of a Virtual Assistant and I would be lying to you if I didn’t start incubating ideas on where I can implement them.

• There’s a blizzard warning. In Southern California. While a low temperature average temperature of 41 was experience, I in Irvine enjoyed…36. I don’t like it.

• Doing a flash visit to Stanford, CA this weekend to watch my favorite composer, Christopher Tin.

• Cat Grass is a wonderfully cheap and healthy treat for cats and it’s exactly what you think.

• I will be in ETH Denver for a hot second next week. ;)

• Nerded out on 529 College Plans & Roth IRAs with both Bridget & Michelle.

• Lost by Linkin Park & This is Why by Paramore released in 2023 and bring me back to 2007.

• Plan B Terraform is a fun terraform of a random planet early stage game similar to Factorio. I sped run to all their available content, and it was quite addicting.

• Quickbooks is a sack of shit when dealing with Crypto Revenue, Cash Proceeds from Liquidation, Realized Loss on Sale of Crypto, and FIFO.

• Obscure PSA: If you are 30xx Ampere Series GPU User, you will have a bad time on 4k 120 hz Dolby Atmos setting.

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What I Reflected On

TL;DR: Hard Work doesn’t Speak

Photo by Oleg Laptev on Unsplash

Does Hard Work Speaks for Itself

Growing up, I was surrounded by the core Asian Male work ethic of “Hard Work Speaks for Itself”. Put my head down, don’t stir the pot, do my job, and someone will notice me and reward me.

Key emphasis on the last part - someone will notice me. Like me boss. Or bosses boss.

And from there, they will save me.

Yeah I don’t subscribe to that and I hate it.

My Contrarian Take

I think that’s the most selfish and entitled way of viewing things. This notion where I hope and expect someone to notice me, and I haven’t done anything to make it easier to be noticed, seems quite one directional…toward me.

At core, it reads:

• I don’t do anything.

• Someone else will do something for me.

• Someone else has to define the meaning of what I do.

This didn’t sit right with me since there’s so much room for miscommunication and mistranslation.

In this age where information is overtly abundant, time is finite, and attention is fickle - my job is to make myself matters to others by crafting the narrative, as well as delivering the results.

That means I focus on the story of my work. I provide clarity and direction on what matters to the audience - almost spoon feeding it.

• What I you do?

• Why did I do it?

• What makes me proud to do it?

• What would I do better next time?

• What was the most challenging part it, and what did I do to overcome it?

• What’s 1 thing I would recommend to others about the thing I did?

• How did the work you did lead to clarity or better decision making?

In the work you do everyday, there’s a lot of rich context left unsaid. The emotional attachment, sense of pride and confidence, the decision making - unless you clearly state what you did and why it should matters, the rest of us can miss that boat.

But I’m doing my job, doesn’t that count?

Executing the job matters - that provides real value. Telling the story about the job you did also matters. This provides perceived value. Real value is tied to your task output; perceived value is tied to your brand and what your boss and bossess boss is thinking of you.

Think of the channels that your supervisors have of you. How would they actually know what you did and what it meant? How much energy do you want them to expend to figure that out?

I have great disdain for the very Asian Male way of doing things, which is to be silent and assume my work speaks for itself.

It does not.

There’s the work, and then there is the story of the work.

And it’s very selfish to assume and expect the audience to figure out your work, guess your expectations, and reward you - if you don’t even tell your story.

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What’s On My Mind

TL;DR: Finance Frameworks?

I’m reading a lot of finance literature and improving my own financial intelligence.

I’ve been hunting frameworks and collecting them as they get understood by me.

The simplest one I got that speaks to the flow of earnings was from Ramit Sethi’s I Will Teach You to be Rich, where in the above framework. If you read his book, he breaks down what bank or institution or piece of software he uses to manage each one.

The other one I got is more so an illustration on how to figure out your cashflow, and arguably a great reason not to jump with starry eyes into buying a home and have it be a significant cost center of your decade.

But in this pursuit - you know what I discovered is missing?

There’s no personal finance software that handles:

• Visualization of Cashflow

• Budget & Reconciliations (with household and others)

• Financial State

• All financial account managements (can I initiate a pull on one bank account, through a core app?)

Right now I’m toying with the idea of trying out Quicken, Quickbooks, and Personal Capital - but as I read their specs, I find so many limitations or they only do “1 thing sort of”.

Eh.

Maybe we’ll get there one day.

Someone save me.