Labour vs. Capital Mindset
There is a significant but less spoken thing in making money. It is the difference between “labour vs. capital”.
If you are employed in a company, and your livelihood depends on the job or salary, you are participating in the “labour market”. You are trading our time for earning money.
If you own a business or some shares or a stake in a company, you are participating in the “capital market”.
Compounding wealth and growing it comes from being part of the “capital markets”.
You can be in both the markets too. You can work for a company and invest in shares or hold ESOPs/RSUs of a company. It means that you are renting your time but building a safety net for your future self and planning more independence. I think buying shares is not the only way to be in the capital market. You can have bonds, ETFs, gold or any asset that has growth potential.
(I found this clarity to be refreshing. It was nicely articulated in a podcast with Chamath Palihapitiya )
Cohort-Based Courses
I have been interested in learning for a while. My pursuit of learning how to learn was triggered by this quote from Lincoln: “Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
My motivation for learning has always stemmed from personal growth and improvement or becoming a better version of myself. I now realise that it is the wrong approach. I need to approach it from the abundance mindset and curiosity, rather than becoming better. I had this profound realisation last year when I attended a course called “Art of Accomplishment”.
MOOCs or massively open online courses were the first innovation in online education. They were great because they levelled the playing field. Any lecture given in a prestigious university was reserved for a select few. It was now open to anyone with curiosity. It led to the creation of companies like Coursera, Udemy and so on.
This model turned into a marketplace later on. Udemy and Skillshare got high-quality content/skill creators on board and wanted students to have a subscription or membership. But even then, I am told that the course completion rate is abysmally low. Close to 96% of the students enrolling the classes don’t complete it.
If MOOCs were an attempt to unbundle universities, it was not a success because they provide three things: knowledge, credentials and community.
MOOCs were ticking the knowledge box. The credentials were not a big USP as the completion rates were too low. Many companies made all the course content free, but you had to pay to get the certificate. Companies like Udacity created an alternative for the university with nano-degrees too.
(… to be continued)
Thoughts on a Netflix Show, “Bonding”
I started to watch the Netflix TV series Bonding, and I was very pleasantly surprised by it. My kind of artwork is usually entertainment + illumination. I want to learn something new, small or big, but I want the art form interesting. More than interesting, it should not be boring. My favourite YouTube channels, documentary movies or in general, any art form follow this pattern.
Bonding is a perfect TV show for my taste. It talks about a new world that I am not aware of. It talks about the world of the dominatrix, BDSM and kinky stuff. It is easy to brush off, saying weirdos and specimens do it. But I love the show for its thoughtful nature of combining many themes: psychotherapy, role play, vulnerability, self-worth and loving others without owning them. I learnt that this TV series is like a personal memoir of the director. His experience inspires him to move to NY city and become an assistant to a domme. No wonder the topics discussed are authentic and resonate well with people.
Bonding follows two main protagonists. A girl who wants to be a therapist and trying to complete her grad school. A guy who wants to be a standup comedian. The girl is doing a side gig of being a dominatrix to fund her grad school. The guy joins the girl as an assistant for a dome. We see a rollicking ride of these two into a new world, their challenges and their disappointments and how they find happiness and meaning in their life. We are even introduced to a course they go through called “Domme 101”. It is so fascinating to see that Dominatrix can be viewed as a craft. If used sensibly, it can bring relief and meaning to a lot of people.
I got introduced to the sadomasochism world through Paul Giamatti’s character in the hit TV show, Billions. Through Billions, I understood why people get pleasure through this unknown world of BDSM. A simple explanation for that is, that it is like a different cuisine. If you are a vegetarian, you will never know how delicious seafood is! You can judge non-vegetarians, but you miss out on a huge portion of exploring the taste of seafood. If you don’t want to try, seafood it is totally fine. BDSM is like that. It is a new way to open yourself to a different experience that your psyche demands. That’s it. There is no value judgement needed.
I approached Bonding with this mentality, and I was truly rewarded for watching this. It is so funny and irreverent in its take on feminism, patriarchy, consent, and the gaze of a gay person. One dialogue that really resonated with me was: “The best thing that a male can do in expressing love is to want to marry someone. It is mainly to own me and not enjoy or let me be myself“. It was so poignantly said by the character that shows the wide chasm in the expectations between two people in a relationship. In a world, where we consider marriage a pinnacle of relationship and commitment, some people approach relationships differently.
I am still curious to find out what I like about it. Is it a gay couple’s challenge of coming out to a parent, when the gay couple doesn’t know that, the parent is involved in a BDSM activity? Or the way consent works? Or how we as a human species have so much diversity in expressing our various needs? Or how the concepts of psychology from the likes of Freud and Jung are shining in the acts of role-playing? Can we consider this kind of act to be a part of a new genre of therapists? (In Billions, the key character Maggie Siff is the performance coach of a hedge fund. She is a master psychotherapist, and she and Paul Giamatti’s character do the kinky stuff). Maybe all. Or maybe I now have the vocabulary and lens to appreciate this nuance; I am blown away.
If a person born in the 1800s sees this TV show, they might be repulsed by it and find it odd. Or maybe they will be happy that many things kept under the wraps in that generation are spoken with ease and shared in public. I don’t know the answer, but I am sure that we live in unique times where we as a species are flourishing so much with our modes and means of self-expression.
Interintellect Salons
I have been attending the Interintellect salons for the past 4 weeks. An Internintellect Salon is like a dinner conversation. You have a topic and host (or more than one). You have a few guests who are interested in coming and talking about the topic.
I have been part of at least 6 salons so far. I want to connect with interesting but curious strangers and talk about topics or ideas of common interests.
My first salon was on authenticity. Maybe it was too late for me, and the topic needed more focus and attention, I exited from that salon quite early and slept off. The second salon was with Arden Leigh and Visakan; it was about aesthetics, symbols, and super interesting. The third salon was on objects and our relationship with them. Anna Gat hosted it. The fourth one was a super salon with the author Nir Eyal and Anna Gat.
I loved that super salon because I have been interested in Nir’s works for a while and I wanted to read his new book, Indistractable. It sounded a wise investment to have a 2 hours conversation with the author before jumping deep into the book. So I signed up for this salon. It was super fun. I also met @haideralmosawi in that salon. I liked the interintellect salons because they are not lectures or sermons. But it is more like an elaborate dinner conversation. What really attracted me to Interintellect Salon was the comfort and my yearning for belonging. I wanted to be part of a community or fly on the wall in some interesting and curious discussions.
Nir Eyal’s session was really a good example in which I wanted to know more about the topic. I could have invested my 8 hours of attention in reading the book or listening to the podcasts and so on. This salon was so interesting, and if the topic was really controversial, I could have asked my questions directly. I could decide if I need to delve deep into the book based on the conversation. After Nir left, we talked about where we criticised the viewpoints and shared our concerns and doubts. This was a wholesome experience.
It is like being part of a dinner conversation with friends or family. You invite people to a restaurant or a party. You host them, and you try to see what connects with them and the common things that we share. We will definitely have differences, and our level of knowledge will be different. But the great thing about such conversations is the cross-pollination. An expert in one field can immensely benefit from getting some blindspots addressed by a novice or a newbie. A newbie can gain a completely different perspective in approaching a problem in their field based on an expert’s thinking in another field. That is what makes the conversation so powerful and effective. It is something uniquely common for the human species. We, after millions of years, have perfected this art after various iterations. Our languages and mediums of expression have evolved in various ways to reach the pinnacle of conversation.
Yet, the medium conversation can be a double-edged sword when we focus on differences and try to prove who is better or good. If used in the right manner, a conversation is a delightful tool to unveil another person’s vulnerabilities and strengths. You can even peek into their childhood, their culture, and their taste through the art of conversation. It is another medium in which too much preparation also helps or hampers. But if you are in the mindset of a host: a gracious, warm host, who can gently steer the conversation, it will be a delightful experience. I am so thrilled to explore more into the interintellect salons and perhaps host salons in the future.
Thoughts on “Streak”
Thanks to @jasonleow and @therealbrandonwilson for your kind words on my yesterday’s post. I want to ruminate a little more on that topic today.
I wrote in the LifeLog why I am against the streak and the craziness behind not breaking it. My point is, I find that maintaining a streak is a tough job. I don’t want to feel worthless or bad for breaking the streak. I have seen people on social media posting that they have completed all three rings in Apple Watch for one full year. “Congratulations, but so what?” is my question. Yes, you completed it diligently, if that is what is bringing you happiness, I am rooting for you. But I don’t want to join the bandwagon of the streak. Because I know for sure that I will break it.
It could be because I have various tiny interests and it is humanly impossible to maintain a streak. I like to invest in health, wealth and myself. On health, I want to consistently have a time-restricted feeding window with 14 hours of fasting and 8 hours of feeding. I want to work out consistently. Lift weights or do squats or keep moving. I want to write consistently. I want to have a gratitude practice with myself and also with my wife. I want to read for 30 mins. I want to read a new article every day which is out of my comfort zone. I want to meditate by listening to Sam Harris or Andi Puddicombe or Tara Brach. After all of this, I need to work as a product manager and live my life as a father, son, husband and brother. I have not included my passion for good movies or TV in this list :-).
With all this stuff going on, I find maintaining the daily streak very hard. I don’t want to paint a picture that I am doing because someone else is coming and forcing me to do it. I am opting in to do all the things I have listed above. I want to live life and do the above. I want a healthy body and mind. I want to produce a lot, by consuming a lot of good content. I want to spend a lot of time with family and friends. Eventually, I want to own my schedule and have more freedom. My pursuit of wealth or in general anything in my life is mainly to enable the above.
Do I have a clear answer on what is the alternative for the streak? How do I get more accountable for my goals? The problem here is I don’t have any strict goals. Take the example of my goal in LifeLog, I want to consistently publish 50 articles. When I wrote this I was pretty clear that it is not in 50 days. I want to publish 50 articles in Q1, that is 90 days. That’s quite a relaxing goal with a lot of buffers.
What if I don’t meet that 50 posts in 90 days goal? Should I self-flagellate myself? Should I curse myself and feel like shit? I understand why people do that. I am not at all judging that. I have been in that position. The point of being hard is to force some accountability and continue the practice. I get it. But what if there is an alternative. I don’t have a clear answer yet for that, but I invite you to think along with me.
I want to bring my “needs vs wants” perspective to this debate. The streak sounds like a “need”. That I need to write every day to maintain the streak. But what is the “want” behind that “need”. Maybe I want to become a writer or maybe I want to publish a book or maybe I want to be known for a good body of work in my writing portfolio or newsletter or blog.
If “I want to publish a book” is the want, should I beat myself up for missing the streak for a day or a week? Or is “publishing a book” a more of a need than want? “I need to publish a book because I want to leap forward in my career”. If I dig deep into my want, I may even think like this “I need to leap forward in my career because I want to be viewed worthy or I want to be valued by my family or friends”.
I have always dug deep into my needs vs. wants rabbit hole in the past months. Consistently I get into the wants of feeling good about myself and feeling worthy to my loved ones or having the feeling of adding value to a family or relationship.
The funny thing is when I focus on “feeling good about myself” or my true want, I get motivated to do things that are mostly defined or measured by streak. I want to write my morning pages when I feel fresh and very good about myself. I find that to be easy and be in a flow state and write my morning pages. It is easier than saying that I have woken up now I need to find my morning pages as the first thing. So when I miss writing it for a day or a week, I don’t want the streak to question my “worthiness” or “value” or in general, feeling good about myself. I missed it for a week, so let me come back and get started again.
It is not only my “feeling good about myself” that motivates me to write here in LifeLog. It is also the community. The community that resonates with my ideas, which pokes them with curiosity and gives points and counterpoints. These two factors are the main reasons for me to come back and write, not the pursuit of maintaining the streak.
(Hope to go into a little more on what I want from the LifeLog platform in the next coming days)
Back After a Break
I am back after a good break. I took a mini vacation with my family and I feel refreshed to be back.
One thing I feel different this time in LifeLog compared to 200WaD is this: I have no guilt in breaking the streak. Nil. Nada. I feel thankful to comeback and write. But no guilt or not feeling good of not maintaining the writing streak.
To step back, I am consistently breaking the streak not only in LifeLog but many other places. My Apple Watch nudges to close all the rings everyday and I break that streak time to time. 750words.com, Readwise app, Kindle app, Zero app for fasting, Oura app for sleep. All of this have the streak in built into it.
I understand the need for this. But I want have an option to switch off the streak. I just want to come in consistently but not daily.
I am happy to life weights and do strength training just 3 days in a week. I am happy to write 3 or 4 public posts in LifeLog. I don’t beat myself up if I miss a day or two in my morning pages at 750words.com.
I am not bound by or defined by my streak.
The mental model I have for streak is “holding a feather”. Sometimes letting the feather go, seeing it beautifully float and catch it gently, is more fun than holding it tightly and crushing it by not letting go.