Hello World!
Welcome to Aspect! aspect.sg was registered on 24 Sep 2022 on a whim, as I thought that it was quite cool to have it as a potential side hustle or consultancy business in future, where I go and solve problems by reducing friction for other organisations. So why did I hold on to that friction?
Consultancy work or going solo is obviously a very tall order for someone who back then knew what he wanted to do but was not even sure of his own identity so couldn’t brand himself effectively, much less a business plan or commitment I could ever uphold. And so it sat for 4 years while I deliberated about my future career trajectory.
However, I am very certain of my core motivation is and it is unwaveringly to reduce friction and improve the work by being more efficient and effective. I am not an engineer nor IT and won’t be able to come out with a physical product that others can use, but I see it through the people lenses and cut down on unnecessary work and processes.
And 4 years later, ta-da, Aspect is finally born on a random Saturday in July 2026. The spark was a random ask to Claude to build me a visualisation of a blog to house my essays — learnings and reflections from things such as stupid TikTok challenges to why do we stand on the left and walk on the right of escalators when evidence has shown that standing on both is faster?
From four years to four hours, Aspect finally went live. Four years of stalling undone by lowering the stakes. I realised I could just have something nice for myself, and it doesn’t even have to mean anything else. No fancy grand plan, just me speaking my mind on how I perceive the world.
In removing or reducing friction, I actually held the friction myself by making a domain name so big and intimidating that I couldn’t even imagine beyond it. I reduced the friction for myself and gave myself a place to be creative, to be free, to speak my mind on matters that bother me.
And so today, I learnt that it’s not always just about reducing friction to make processes smoother. It’s really understanding what is the right friction. This also alludes directly to choosing our battles to fight, and knowing what we can win rather than fighting aimlessly. Shipping it as “just a blog” wasn’t giving up on ambition, it was removing the friction that was strangling the thing. The serious question is the one that stopped me, and the unserious framing is what actually made me make it.
This register, rather than blog actually, has no dates intentionally. My thoughts and reflections don’t follow a date and work and processes will always follow a rhythm and recipe, and those don’t follow a date too. I want to be intentional about learning first then letting things fade away over time. This is life encapsulated, we live life forward, but can only learn backwards.