The routine of the work week and the pressure of our job responsibilities can often get the best of us. However, whether it's putting more effort into your job, or finding one that makes you truly happy, its time to commit to your career.
"Completed this week:
- Meetings with
o Roberto
AF: things going well; effectively vice of Kashif; next step MD promotion; Kashif supportive in principle but I don't see much in action. RS: it's a 2 years process; start the process now so you can get promoted in 2027; manager needs to give credit for all achievements to you; sponsors for KK were Rob Fairbairn, Steve Cohen, Charles. Discussed with Joud how to rescue KK after he lost years for things that didn't work in his previous roles. Joud is a force of nature; speak with Charles and notify Kashif you're scheduling time with him; tell Charles: I have a project to pursue a promotion, can you tell me what is needed of me to get there; "get in the long list this year so that I can get promoted next year" (unclear); 12 years of work experience is still very early for an MD promotion.
o Ellie (chief of staff to Anne)
EE: Involved on BMIF launch: stressful because LPs/GPs contingent on others and if one doesn't materialize then things don't go ahead. Worked on WTW product which went to Emirates Airlines. APM involvement in ME mainly based on her Consultants role. Speak with Harry Becket (GCR). AF: involved in the retirement work, exciting to work on these, if there are ways for me to work more closely with you and APM let me know.
o Seun (close to Anne)
Considering collaborating with government of Bangladesh on new retirement scheme, 160m people, but concerns from compliance risks
o James (close to Beccy)
mixed signals on whether cash strategies in ME have enough client demand (some say $20m, others more)
Cash is separate from GPS, product strategy is within GPS itself
team broadly split in portfolio management, BD, marketing
you have at least 20% of assets invested in overnight instruments which helps you pay yield on an ongoing basis even if rest of assets have scattered maturities
o Anne Parthiot Mons
AF: presented work I'm doing in FMA ME overall and on retirement specifically. Personally very interested and excited to collaborate.
APM:
Retirement work: need to approach it in detail/bottom-up. Ecosystem mapping:
- Who's speaking with HR & Benefits teams / do we need that
- How do we approach corporates that don't have consultants
- Who are pension admins?
- Where consultants are: actuaries, people doing etc.
- Who's speaking with the actual beneficiaries
- Who's going to be RM for Emirates
Brainstorming session
- Involve Massi, Seun
Receive example of UK document used for similar brainstorming exercise
"We don't need many people"
Need to double down on outreach intermediated by consultants
o Simona Paravani
o Asteris (chief of staff to Rachel)
o Beccy
o Scott (recently promoted to MD and good friend)
MD promotion is not necessarily a 2-year process. I started the process in Jan 2025 and was promoted in October. I asked sponsorship to Sarah Melvin (boss of the boss of my boss) and she was supportive. So I bypassed all the people below. Sarah used to be my line manager in previous roles. She spent many hours helping me with promotion nomination form. You need to identify the biggest weaknesses in your storyline and turn them around. My biggest weakness was "sustained impact" because I had changed roles many times. Promotion form needs to be punchy and show tangible outcomes: generated x bn in NNB, x mm in new revenues, conducted xx meetings, acquired xx clients. Scott is an expert at writing forms and can help me with mine. Sarah even used to ask Scott to improve promotion forms of other people. You need to get around 100 ppl onboard. Need to be careful not to piss off anyone.
o Peter (Europe MD who needs to approve of my promotion)
o PDK: there’s an impression of serious team issues in the Middle East due to Kashif not behaving as a people leader. You need to set the tone: make people feel like you care about them. Communicate excitement about things. Be present in team meetings.
Priorities next week
- Meet Charles (align with KK and Kashif before)
- Send win note for Finstreet
- Work on retirement project based on feedback from Anne
- Share docs with Asteris on PIF and Digital Assets
- Send update note to Yazeed and Tarek re. SAMA Aladdin
"
"Dec 7th 2025
Began my day today at 11Am. End day at 9pm. Task included tracking debts and bills, continuing Spanish coursework, running a vm on my computer, managing purchase payments for hobbies out of 7 days a week… Errors uploading images/not able to upload…"
"solid week --- closest i ever got. this video at 5.19 is a keeper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZ6cdIaUZCA&t=333s.
overall, YR litigation became the big attention. and eased back to SG litigation. between health and court, i missed this update. dang it. solid work with Tosch too. More on scrivener."
"Dec 6th 2025
Today was a pain in the ass. Began the day continuing to track spending habits and ultimately updating my spending habits from the last two months, along with some other reminder task. Got my ass kick today trying to run a virtual machine on my pc. Anticipated this task would take max 2 hours. So much errors going on. Can’t even say for certain how long of a timeline this installation will take. Here’s to better days tomorrow "
"Today is the 5th of December, as I have seen what problems wb has, I decided to hold the first sale for the 2026 year because of all the problems that is happening right now at Wb warehouse"
"Went to school today for my final chem lab from 2-4:45pm. Forgot to take a picture. I also had a chem tutor in the morning for two hours. For some reason, I feel really drained today. "
"Post 1: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DRzgOSXDgr3/?igsh=ZWZ1azlpYXlvbmQ0
Post 2: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DR020enDozd/?igsh=MThka3luNWtieHpkNQ==
Post 3: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DR07dTwjqSh/?igsh=MTJsd2FiaWZ4eDNsdg=="
"-today I will watch the start of a full course on computer science.
video chosen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mAITcNt710 (might change later)
currently listening to 1 A.M Study Session Lofi 🎵
Notes:
•"Computer science isn't about sitting in isolation with your computer, it's problem solving altogether."
•"There's nothing more gratifying then getting something to work in a field like this."
•"what ultimately matters in this course is not so much where you end up relative to your classmates but where you end up relative to yourself when you began"
Binary
000 -> 0
001 -> 1
010 -> 2
011 -> 3
100 -> 4
101 -> 5
1 zero = 1 bit 1 one = one bit
123
100, 10, 1 (10^2, 10^1, 10^9)
###
2^2, 2^1, 2^0
count higher than 7? -> add a bit.
what about the alphabet?
A = 01000001 = 65
128 64 32 16 8 4 2 1
1 byte = 8 bits
ASKII -> Unicode
Time reached: 36:05
tomorrow: continue the video"
"- scheduled and prepared for London meetings (10 meetings including potential sponsors and their chiefs of staff, mentors, stakeholders who need to approve of my candidacy)
- met with Tarek Chouman (Senior MD) in Dubai
- reviewed market strategy and other docs on cross functional topics + continued work on cross functional projects that can give visibility "
"Even before trying to get into enterprise certifications, i have decided to use the video books to read tech books again and change my career path instead of reading more books related to product management. I also have to keep applying to remote opportunities before I can begin."
"I'm struggling! But I think I'm going to start doing record speed-dating like Jenny did with books... Sort of. Just compete with myself to see how many notes I can finish in an hour. Shoot for an hour a day rather than 35 records a day because that's just a lot. And I will get caught up this way. It's more manageable. It'll take longer. But I should be able to actually do it. Because when I succeeded at this before, I was doing 40 minutes a day rather than a set number of records. I think that was good. So...starting with 60 minutes a day this week, and then we'll see if we want to increase that or stick there. (and I can do more if I'm on a roll, of course!)"
"Nov 29 2025
Today was eventful. Continue tasking through Spanish program, tracked and fixed billing issue, renewed health insurance, tracked StickK losses, research for credit card, etc.."
"It was an incredibly frustrating mixing day. I failed at trying to fix the dynamic range with a limiter on the master, I think because of the return tracks summing up and doubling the volume. I couldn't find a way to fix it, and I think it's time to lay that track to rest. I feel like I got as far as I could with it. I'll start a new one today, following a course this time. "
"Nov 28th 2025
Today I applied to jobs, corrected confusion with support on tuition for Spanish program. Attended a virtual consultation screening for job, simulated a mock interview, and sorted through bills."
"more solid -- mcii: if neighbor or turo cohost go psycho, i do my best step and move forward. doc wants me to try vyvanse. ok. strattera + focalin are going on now. risk seems low so that's good. there must be an element of i dont want to to the immediate task even if i want other parts of the task and the overall goal. in some ways, i may never be able to either figure it out or have mastery. i must keep moving. a warm room feels good even on 11/28 with all gas down. cool. cold water in the tub oddly feels very good. working with yebin is nice. an older istp like wendy will be a lot better. running 10M, cuts a 750k check. wow. in that sense the returns and distractions from real estate and other ventures pale in comparison. good to get closer to vc yields and perhaps a disruptive structure. time to wrap things up. i feel good on the aob even though what i needed to do several months ago was scrub the record and make notes and feed them to chatgpt but i am there now and gpt is better and by the luck of god, I have a shot. i can craft other plays in parallel."
"Nov 27th 2025
Today I sorted through email. I followed up with employment opportunities. I scheduled phone screenings and other interview possibilities. I applied to other jobs. I began my goal to learn multiple foreign languages.
Ref do not fail me. Starting anew"
"Today I felt better, went to the lribary and worked on the entwork analysis. I did soem brainstorming, thought about what kind of plots I want to make and tidied up the code"