Principles

Pare down your belongings.
Acquire only what you need. The concept of exhausting the essence of things.
Eliminate everything extraneous, and create a garden using what you have at hand. Even when you have only one of something, there are various ways you can put it to use with imagination and ingenuity.
In the course of your everyday shopping, before you acquire something new, give some thought to whether you really need it, and take another look at what you already have.
Acquiring lots of things isn't freedom.
What is important is acquiring the mindset of using things freely.

Arrange your room simply.
Doing so will simplify your mind as well.
If you wish to simplify your inner self, arrange your rooms sparely.
A lifestyle of simplicity is what is beautiful. That is the spirit of Zen.
Simplicity is about stripping away what is not useful.
Determine whether something is truly necessary, and if it is, then take good care of it.
This is different from frugality. Frugality is about subsisting with things of low value. By value, I'm referring not only to its price; it also includes the depth of feeling towards such items.
Acquire only good things that will truly be needed. A lifestyle of simplicity is the fundamental practice that will hone the mind.

Eliminate unimportant tasks. Eliminate busyness and replace it with productive activities.

Put a value on time

Programming is understanding

Never repeat anything more than once. A program can do it for you.

Eliminate rekeying (inefficient and error prone)

Functions should do one thing.

Blog to learn!

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Insure the catastrophic and not anything inconsequential

Begin with an end in mind. Plan all the way to the end.

Find ways of decluttering the mind. Journelling. Walking. Shutdown work thinking at end of day. No replay of work conversations at end of day.

Wood products are a store of carbon. Choose wood based products over plastic or steel.

Reduce waste. Paper and cardboard can be composted or burnt.

Principles for living well

If you have a backache or if your back is bent, roll a towel and lay on it for 20 minutes.

Drink plenty of water. Just drinking water can heal many illnesses. Toxins are excreted in urine.

Eat brown rice (not white).

Bathing keeps skin healthy.

Investment Principles

Be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy.

Look for a net cash position. Fortress like balance sheet. Debt is a four letter word.

Look for organic revenue growth.

Build a portfolio of compounders. The ingredients of compounders are:

• A rock solid and sustainable competitive advantage.
• The ability to redeploy capital at high rates of return
• In a large/growing penetrable market

Competitive Advantages:

• Network Effect (eg Facebook).
• I.P. (biotech)
• Switching Cost
• Economy of scale (Walmart)
• Monopoly (Microsoft)
• Brands (getting stronger or weaker?)

Build a portfolio of businesses with consistently very high return on invested capital

Sustainable Return On Capital above 20%

Stable profit margins

Excess FCF every year (not just good years).

Follow the free cash flow. Keep a lookout for companies that may be turning the corner on cash conversion related to past investments

Free cash flow subsidized by stock compensation? Particularly relevant to tech companies. Check growth in stock compensation vs growth in sales

Low operating margin by industry standards may indicate possible margin upside?

Understand what and why the company capitalizes. Look for postponement of expenses via line items such as software capitalisation on the cashflow statement

Look for discrepancies between revenue and operating income growth. Dig deeper.

Review both parties disclosures on the merger of businesses to best grasp the true economics of the transactions

IT Security Principles

Encrypt everything. End to end encryption for all applications.

Abandon the flat network. Segregate by geography and Function. Use firewalls and VLANS to create boundaries to contain malware and slow lateral movement by intruders (and also provide additional logging & detection opportunities)

Least Privilege. Default is RO

Data security is paramount

Defense in depth

Minimize complexity

Traffic monitoring is essential.

Disable workstation to workstation communication

It is important to understand what normal business traffic looks like and to detect any deviations from the norm. The associated ports, protocols and applications used to conduct business should be documented.