On Driving
I am not a car enthusiast. Even though I am a gadget fanatic, I have never gotten why people get so excited about nice cars. (Well, Tesla is an exception. It is more a gadget than an automobile. đ)To be specific, my hate is not towards the car; my hatred is for the act of driving.
The focus you need to put on the act of driving, the safety precautions you need to take, the adjustments that you need to do because of other peopleâs mistake and to keep me busy with entertainment. Ooof. It is cognitively exhausting for me.
I know many people who love driving and feel relaxed to steer the wheel and zip through. One of the classical musicians of India, Pandit Ravishankar, said in an interview, his way of unwinding is to drive at high speed in deserted highways or roads.
I am an average driver with a history of no major incidents, other than minor scratches while trying to park for a couple of instances â touch wood đ.
I am a pragmatic driver. I drive because no else in my family drives. I drive because I love the comfort of listening to podcasts and audiobooks. I drive because I can mark books as completed in Goodreads, after a long drive or a week of a commute. I used to ride my scooter with bluetooth earphones listening to my favourite audio shows/books. But a car is a much safer and secure option.
I got a mid-range car, a year ago. My main criteria for choosing a car was the support of Apple CarPlay đ. Nowadays, my commute time is my entertainment. I catch up with the podcasts, get updated on the pop-culture, listen to good audiobooks. I donât even find commute distance of 15 km or the time of 45 mins to be irritating at all.
Human beings are just a creature of habits. What we do something repetitively, comes to define us and our identity.
Now I am thoroughly addicted to audio content. The only way to listen to audio with very less distraction is while I drive (I am quite comfortable in manoeuvring through traffic with a stream of audio pouring in). So I have started to love my commute and driving.
My Experiments With Sleep
I am a fitness enthusiast. I have written about my investments in sleep in some early posts. If you are asking, why fitness and sleep are related, I believe you were living in a cave. Welcome to the real world, where a lot of interesting studies have strong conclusions about the importance of sleep.
(If you are new to this arena, would recommend you to start reading a masterpiece by Dr Matthew Walker. It is the best gift you can buy for yourself and reading it is really very well spent time. If books are not your thing, then he has been on multiple podcasts, recommend starting from here.)
I have tried all the hacks available on the internet as well as the suggestions. Be it blacking out the windows, having a cool temperature in the night, having a hot water bath before the bed, sleep supplements (not inducers) before the bed, reduced gadgets usage before sleep, blue filters on the phones. All of these small things have had a deep impact on my sleep quality. I used to not pay any attention to these things but now I am very conscious.
I really want to get better at sleep. What that means is, I want to have the following:
- Get my resting heart rate below 50bpm
- A good amount of deep sleep
- A good amount of REM sleep
Resting heart rate needs to be below 60bpm for almost everyone who wants to have a good sound sleep. But I really want jealous of Jack Dorsey, when he posted his numbers after a Vipassana retreat. He got the resting heart rate to 38bpm. That is really awesome and inspiring. Jack really pushed the bar for me and made me realise that I definitely have a scope for improvement.
I started to read about cold and hot therapies. Again, there are scientifically proven benefits of sauna and cold shower. But I live in Chennai, a tropical town which really doesnât have a sauna facility. Nor it is not cutting edge enough to have a cryotherapy facility like this. Heck, I donât even have a bathtub to immerse myself in Epsom salts. (I am very privileged and lucky to have a great life in Chennai, but these are all peeves of the first world).
But I found this in Chennai based on a recommendation from my fitness coach. Have booked a slot for this today. Will share my experience tomorrow.
I came to know about Chennai Floats through a word of mouth recommendation. They are a spa for muscle recovery and relaxation. Unlike other spas, where a human gives you a massage or a physical therapy, this is different. Chennai Floats has an immersion pond with truckloads of Epsom salts in it. Because of the density of the minerals, you simply float in the pond. The pond is individualised, like small pod and completely enclosed. For sixty minutes you get to float in a small double-bed sized pool, which is fully enclosed. The water is lukewarm to make the pores of your body open up. You get a chance to be in dark and with mild music. If you are claustrophobic, you can keep the light on.
It was a unique experience for me. I took a shower before the session and popped in an earplug as per their recommendation. Then I got into the pod and closed it. I could float without any fear or worries. I chose to switch off the lights and be in darkness. The water did cause a mild irritation for my eyes as it is loaded with lots of salts. There was a small bottle with fresh water inside the pod with which I cleared my eyes. All in dark.
For first minutes there was a piece of mild and soothing music played and then it was switched off too. It was dark, silent, warm and I was comfortably floating inside. I wanted to consider it as a 60-minutes long meditation practice but just after 10 minutes, my monkey mind was back to work. I was thinking about work, tasks, projects to followup and so on. I just let it run and I was giving no fuck about it. A couple of times, I came to the sitting position and used the clean water to wash my eyes. Other than that it was a complete 60 minutes floating experience.
After the session was over, as an indication, the music started to play. I came out of the pod, took a nice hot shower and I was actually feeling really nice and euphoric. After a small talk with the person at the spa, I started to drive home and I was really feeling relaxed. At home, I got into bed and started to sleep like a baby in 5 minutes.
I woke up around 7:30 am without any alarm. I was curious to check my sleep performance in Oura. My resting heart rate hit an all-time low of 51 bpm. Now, I donât know if it is because of the Epsom salts but I would love to believe that it had an impact.
I have another session in the next week and I am told that the session has a compounding effect on sleep. I will update you soon on that.
Thanks for reading.
Money As a Voting Mechanism
My thinking toolkit got enriched with a new tool of thought. Thinking money as a way to vote.
(We all have one life. Itâs better to learn from the mistakes of others instead of doing our own. If learning the best from smarter people is a motto for your education, then Mike Dariano is a vice-chancellor in that university. He has an excellent blog, where takes meticulous notes from podcasts, books, videos of many smart people. He links it with his previous learnings. It is very inspiring to see his writings and learnings. He indeed is an ambassador for the âGetting 1% better everydayâ way of living.)
In Mikeâs monthly newsletter, I came across the book recommendation. It is Invested by Danielle Town. It is a book about value investing written with a beginnerâs mind and highly recommended. So I started digging about Danielle and bumped into a podcast episode and a TED talk.
(It is short, and I highly recommend it, if you are interested in improving your skills in understanding investing and pick better stocks. I will be reading the book in the next months, and I will share my learnings and notes here.)
The critical thing that I gained from her talk is that: anything that we do with our money is a vote for something that we value. If we are buying a sustainably made product or organic clothing or anything that we consciously choose, we are making a statement to the society, to the market as well as the company. If we are buying a can of Diet Coke, we believe in the Coca Cola corporation, and with money, we are choosing them and sending a signal to the market.
Why is this little notion important?
As a consumer, we have power in choosing things and buying with our money. The same lens can be used as an investor in picking and choosing the stock.
By buying a stock, we are voting for that company. For its values and the beliefs, we cherish closely and expect it to be reflected or honoured in that company. Very similar to Warren Buffett saying, by buying a stock, you own the business, you are in a partnership. Will you commit to a partnership without doing enough research and diligence about the partner?
In some ways, this notion frees up your mind as an investor. You have straightforward ways to pick and choose a company. But it is not easy. Hoping to learn more about this and share it with you all soon.
Inboxification
We live in an age of abundance. We are flooded with news from social media, newsletters, RSS readers and instant messaging app. I want to share my technique of managing this. I treat every source of information as an inbox. Let me list down the inboxes in my current life:
- Gmail (Official and Personal)
- Reeder (RSS feeds reader)
- Pocket Casts (app for listening to podcasts)
- WhatsApp (for communicating with family and friends)
- Slack (for being part of some interesting online communities)
- Facebookâ/âInstagram (sometimes you get interesting articles in these)
- Browser Tabs (tabs opened in my desktop or mobile or tablet)
There are four important tools that help my workflow:
- To do list manager (Things)
- Read-it-later app (Instapaper)
- Calendar (Google Calendar)
- Note taking app (Evernote)
I try to do an active triage two or three times a day. Any item in my above inboxes goes through this decision:
- Check if I can act on it in 2 minutes.
Is it a mail, that requires my reply and can I do it in two minutes, then I reply.
Is it an article in my RSS feed that can be read in two minutes, then I read it.
- If it cannot be done in 2 minutes, it either goes into:
To do list (or) An event or appointment in my calendar.
If it is a long article, it goes into my Instapaper queue
I make a point to do this declutter and maintain digital hygiene in all my inboxes. Even though I may not declutter and clear it out every day, my Saturdays are marked with a recurring task for this.
The biggest advantage that I get out of this inbox-zero is mental peace and clarity. My to-do list is always up to date on what needs to be done for the day. It also reduces the probability of tasks slipping out of my hands.
I fully rely on the four main tools that I mentioned. I try to sweep my mind out of everything to do into these digital tools. I got the inspiration for such thing from David Allen, who has a nice way of putting this as:
âYour mind is for having ideas, not holding them.â
I am far from perfect in my workflow or optimal productivity. But leveraging the superpowers of the devices present our pockets and bags, are a starting point.
Perils of Retirement
Venkatesh Rao of Ribbonfarm had said in one of the essays that:
If your identity was defined by your job, you never really had a real identity.
Yes, it sounds very common sense and logical. But it is not. I am talking about my dadâs generation.
My dad joined an insurance company in his late teens and retired from the same after 35 years.
My dad was the sole breadwinner for our joint family. It was a huge one. My dad had four brothers and two sisters. My granddad didnât have a fixed income. We all benefitted hugely out of my dadâs stable job and a steady salary. It was a luxury. My dad was particular of marrying a woman, who has a focus on career and also a regular job and salary like him. My mom was a bank employee.
From whatever I remember of my childhood, mine and my younger brotherâs focus had to be only on education â the only known weapon of the lower-middle-class families in India.
My dad really sweated his heart and soul out in the big insurance machinery. It was inevitable for him to adopt the identity by his job. He steadily climbed the ladder in the organisation. He was quite popular in our town and the nearby villages, because of agriculture insurance and cattle insurance.
My dad also had a relatively decent network of friends and colleagues, mainly because of the insurance company. He also had friends from college and hometown and a relatively huge set of relatives. But he gelled well with his colleagues and acquaintances because he merely spent a lot of time with them. Conferences, deputation, transfers and blah blah, kept him very occupied. He enjoyed the challenge.
Meanwhile, the family also progressed; his brothers and sisters were getting married, had children. My brother and I were growing up and had to move from schools to colleges. My dad and my mom fuelled the engine of our family with their salaries. (I will have to write separately and in detail about my momâs contribution in her efforts.)
Bottom line is: for my parents, their jobs were their primary identity, or it was as close as their identity as a mom or dad or a son or a daughter.
Given this condition, I had persuaded my parents to retire, after me and my brother started working and making good enough salaries.
My mom handled the impact of retirement very gracefully, but with my dad, all hell broke loose.
My dad had a health issue. He had minor brain surgery (he is fully recovered and completely fine now). Because of this episode, for six months, he was on leave. When he went back, he took an administrative position. Earlier, he was in business development & management roles, where he was interacting with customers, managing a team of people and handling a region.
Post surgery his bosses suggested to take it easy and moved him to an administrative position. Also, he was three years away from his actual retirement. In his new role, he got exposed more to internal politics and faced some brunt of it. Many times, he used to lament about his current work and talk about other colleagues who were taking early retirement.
All of our immediate family members discussed and concluded that early retirement would be the way to go. Dad was also fine with it. But after the retirement, he found the day to day life, very mundane and irritably boring.
There were temper tantrums thrown, a lot of lamenting, sometimes what-if-aboutery, like why did I do this in my life or my career? Why did I not do this and blah blah blah?
It was almost a year after Dadâs retirement; Mom also took early retirement. But the manner she handled it was fantastic. My son had been born then. Mom made herself the primary caretaker of the family. She got herself busy with something or other activities. She formed her kitty party gang. She took up aerobics and yoga. She also enrolled in a Sanskrit class and attends it, to date, very sincerely. She has cleared a couple of exams too.
Despite this happening at Momâs end, Dad was still in his mode. It was during this time; we moved from Bangalore to Chennai. Luckily, we were living in a high-rise building together with 200+ families. Dad got into a group of senior citizens. With them, he got himself busy with stock trading, going to pilgrims nearby and WhatsApp forwarding đ. But this took almost five years to happen after his retirement. Those five years werenât easy for him as well as our family.
I used to wonder, how Mom handled it different than Dad. The answer to this came from the excellent book of Viktor Frankl, Manâs Search for Meaning:
He knows the âwhyâ for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any âhow.â
Viktor is a Holocaust survivor, psychologist and one of the most influential writers. His book is a gem, and I cannot summarise its value in one single quote. His ideology revolves around âfinding meaningâ in oneâs existence, and all other things in life will fall in place comfortably.
My mom saw herself more than a bank employee. But it took time for my dad to realise that.
If any con-artist philosopher or salesman, entice you with the lure of retirement, be wary.
Retirement is a thing of a past. Living a happy life with vigour, by reinventing ourselves and learning should be the thing to strive for.
iPad Parenting
My 6-yo son is a digital native. He has an old but working iPad with a proper child-proof case. He uses it mainly for watching YouTube Kids and Netflix Kids. He browses for some kids crafts and ideas on Pinterest in my wifeâs phone. He occasionally plays, Angry Birds or Candy Crush in my momâs device. He always checks my, and my wifeâs fitness rings in the Apple Watch. Because of him, me and my wife, compete in closing all the rings.
General advice we get is to reduce the screen time for kids. But I donât follow it. Simply because I think we donât have enough data to prove the ill-effects for the gadgets on kids. We really donât restrict on time spent on devices. But we are extremely careful about the kind of content he watches.
We have a few videos/channels that are blacklisted. Some of the Indian cartoon series for kids are blacklisted. Indian cartoons, like Chotta Bheem, are very insensitive to many issues. They do fat-shaming, gender stereotyping, minor violence and so much crap, in kidsâ cartoon, as it is very natural for us Indians.
We have also blacklisted Ryanâs Toys Review. I root for the kid Ryan as he has made huge money out of the YouTube platform. But for me, my kid watching his videos has a high probability of a dent in my wallet.
Other than that he can watch anything, anytime for however long he wants. I love the impact of YouTube videos and Netflix kids on my son. He can enjoy stories, articulate his feelings, empathise with many subtle situations easily. I am grateful to the makes of fantastic shows like Peppa Pig, Ben and Holly, Masha and the Bear, Alphablocks, Porroro, Pocoyo and so many others. Because of them, my sonâs language has improved a lot.
Surprisingly, my sonâs screen time is really minimal. His watches videos only when he has food, which is approximately 60 to 75 minutes a day. In the weekend it might be for around 90 to 120 minutes, as we both play Nintendo Switch together. Super Mario Odyssey is our current favourite. It is super fun.
I find it quite relaxing not to have this rule of screen time strictly imposed on the next generation. Our kids definitely cannot avoid technology or gadgets. As a parent, we can teach them how to be a boss of the tech or gadgets, instead of being bossed by them.
More thoughts on this:
I find the current obsession of âlimiting screen timeâ is similar to the paranoia against âfatâ a few decades ago. Now many studies have shown that âfatâ as a macronutrient is not a villain or doesnât cause cardiovascular diseases. Instead, they say sugar and excessive carbs consumption might be the problem.
I frankly donât know any studies that are statistically significant which shows the ill-effects of gadgets usage on human beings. Hold on.
But studies have shown that sleep and play are important for healthy living. Play for kids and exercise or physical activities for adults. In recent years, sleep has been recognized as a superpower. Many activists are proposing the idea of changing the school start time to 10 a.m instead of early mornings.
My point is: instead of focusing on limiting gadget usage, we should let kids know the importance of sleep and play.
If my kid is to say that he is going to watch/play with iPad, I will say: âFine, you can watch but in the living room. But I am going to go and sleep because I value sleep and rest immensely. Itâs up to you on when you want to sleep. Good nightâ.
In real life, I have never faced this situation, because whenever I say that I am going to bed, my son tries to rush into bed before me. Gleefully he says that he was the first to reach to bed. We chat sometimes and his bedtime routine starts.
Kids imitate and learn for the parents. More than what we want to teach, they learn from how we are actually doing things.