What Have You Changed Your Mind About Over the Last Year?
I have changed my mind about a few things in the last year. I don’t value productivity that optimises the time in calendars and to-do lists. I value productivity that emphasises connecting with oneself, checking it and optimising the energy levels. Any productivity that encourages me to take breaks, long walks, good sleep and good food is fine with me. Not tracking our sleep cycles, calorie counting and so on. But hold on, I think I have understood this in the past 2 or 3 years but have not fully realised it. The lockdown gave me time to understand this.
If I have to notice a huge change in my mindset it has to be on the concept of self-improvement.
I used to think that if I accomplished something by improving some skills myself, I feel good about myself. I feel a sense of achievement and worthiness. But little did I realise that the “need” behind self-improvement was fuelled by “not feeling good about myself”.
In other words, I didn’t feel worthy or good about something about me. I needed to invest in myself or some skills to improve and become better. I realise it is wrong. I was proven wrong on it, from time to time, after my interaction with Joe Hudson in the course Art of Accomplishment.
“Self-love leads to self-improvement” - This is the big lesson I learnt in 2020. As a card-carrying member of the human race, I don’t need any validation from me or other members of my tribe to feel loved or worthy. I deserve to be loved and feel worthy because I am a human being. Period.
Once I recognise and come to terms with this fact, improvement happens as a side effect. Because improving on certain this is installed in our hardware. By simply focusing on that aspect and not loving ourselves, we are hurting ourselves.
This is my key learning of 2020: “Self-love leads to self-improvement, not the other way”
2020: Reflections
2020, the year in which a decade-long change has happened, is over. Personally, it’s been a great year for me. None of the close family members were affected by COVID. Few distant relatives were affected but recovered. With less commute and more time at home and family, I am privileged and thankful to lead a healthy, happy life in this pandemic.
My main themes of 2020 are myself, money and mythology.
Myself: I had a lot of time to think about a few important things in my life. I also had some opportunities to invest in myself. I was lucky to be part of the first cohort of Art of Accomplishment by Joe Hudson. It had a profound impact on me. I connected with myself and understood my emotions a lot better. 2020 helped me to be more relaxed and be compassionate to myself. I will unpack more on the lessons from AoA in the upcoming posts.
Money: I am a newbie to personal finance and investments. I have dabbled in the stock market earlier. I have been lucky to witness the winnings and losses of my Dad’s side project as a stock trader. But in 2020, I took time to understand some of the key concepts of wealth creation. I understood the power of compounding, and the difference between investing and trading, thought well about my relationship with money.
Mythology: I enrolled in an online course about Mahabharata, a great Indian epic, comparable to Homer’s works. I have been fascinated by it and grabbed the opportunity to explore it with a group in this course. Stories have always captivated me. Stories bind us as humans and make us do great things. Yuval Harari calls everything from religion to human rights to country to money, as a story that we understand and relate to. Myths are your personal truths. Myths are full of such powerful stories that give meaning to life in terms of value and principles. 2020 was a time I used to understand more about such stories.
Back After a Hiatus
I was lucky to be part of the 200-word-a-day community. It kickstarted my habit of writing every day and introduced me to friends and like-minded folks. But as life caught up and things changed, I got interested in other habits and things. I lost interest in keeping my streak on.
I have even questioned my “wants” or my “needs” on why I want to write. Nowadays I don’t like things that become a “should” in my life. I want to be closer to my true and authentic self. I am trying to stay away from things that I “should” be doing because it worked for Tim Ferriss or some other popular person. I don’t hate Tim at all, it’s just that I want to be conscious of what I include as part of my life and make it meaningful for myself.
If writing happens to be my need, so be it. I will give it a try, even if “maintaining the streak” is not a necessity.
So I am back to this habit. Thanks to Jason for the work and for inviting me to be part of this community. I am truly grateful to have known you all.
My Fav Books of 2019
Open Borders by Bryan Caplan: This was fantastic. A graphic-non-fiction on a potentially complex topic. But the author’s magic is presenting it and arguing the case in an easily digestible manner. I have never heard any arguments for the concept of Open Borders. Like many, I have not questioned nations and borders. I also didn’t think much about immigration and its benefits. I came to accept the status quo until I encountered this book. It argues persuasively on the benefits of open borders, its impact on economy and culture.
The Courtesan, the Mahatma and the Italian Brahmin - Manu Pillai: Wonder collection of essays on the history of India. It is a tonic in our current age of right-wing revisionist history. It is divided into 3 parts Before British Rule, During British Rule and Afterwards. It shows the lesser-known characters in Indian history. Like the legendary historians, like Ram Guha and William Dalrymple, Manu is excellent in his research and writes it in a beautiful and interesting manner.
The Life of Frederick Douglass - David Walker: I am a newbie when it comes to the history of America or on the topic of slavery or the American Civil War. But what I love about the American pop-culture like movies or graphic novels is that they make all these topics in a fascinating and extremely accessible manner to a layperson like me. I have been hearing about the name “Frederick Douglass” in my social media feed for quite a while. So a graphic novel on him really intrigued me, as it is relatively easy to read and finish it. This book is such a great and quick primer into the era of slavery, American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln through the lens of Frederick Douglass. For a complete newbie like me, this was a fantastic crash course of history on the perils of slavery and the formation of USA. Highly recommend it, if you are curious about the politics and history of USA
Art Matter by Neil Gaiman: This charming little but heartfelt propaganda for making good art is wonderful. The art work accompanied by the brilliant words of Neil Gaiman is truly inspirational. It’s a very quick read. Highly recommend it.
Atomic Habits by James Clear: Unlike pseudo-intellectuals who look down on the self-help genre, if you are looking to improve some aspects of your life, like quitting some habits or building new habits, I highly recommend this. It is short, has very less fluff and it is quite actionable. You can actually finish the book in one reading session. All chapters have an excellent bullet-pointed summary which captures the highlights. James also provides a lot of templates and actionable tips. It differs from Charles Duhigg’s book on habits in two ways. It really provides tools and mechanisms to get started and implement what you learn. It is quite short and very less on theory.
Hit Refresh by Satya Nadella: I wanted to like this book because Satya Nadella is not the typical CEO. Usually, India born CEOs are either from IIT or IIM or Stanford. He studied at Manipal University. When many of the US migrated Indians are into baseball or basketball, Satya is into cricket and seems like he can play it well too. Satya’s father is a Marxist but served in Indian Civil Service. His mother is a Sanskrit scholar. Satya’s challenge with his special needs kid and his graceful way of handling it. His love for books like Carol Dweck’s Mindset or Marshall Goldberg’s Non-violent communication. His emphasis on empathy and culture, I can go on. But hold on. I was expecting this book to be a story about him, his transformation, his learnings on how he influenced such a big organisation like Microsoft and revitalising it. But it was a mega-bore. Other than the first two chapters where he talks about his personal life, cricket and his son, which was mildly interesting, the rest of the book was really boring for me. It read like an internal blog with frequent mentions about Skype or Windows or any Microsoft’s product. If you really want to know about Satya’s life, you can simply skip this. This book reminds me of Bill Gates’ Business @ Speed of Thought. (Bill is definitely my hero, I love his book recommendations but not this one )
Skin in the game - Nassim Taleb : I have been hearing about Taleb a lot for a long time, and I picked this one after a colleague was showering praise on this book. SITG by Taleb is refreshingly frustrating. Yes, many things he says might lack nuance, but he seems to know his shit. He is not foolishly dressing down Thaler or Pinker or Sam Harris. But I don’t see the depth of this topic. I would give four stars because of the novelty of ideas and for being commonsensical contrarian. On the first listen, what he says is new, nod-worthy and also gives that aha-moment. But to take his views seriously, I need to “read” the book and dig deep, instead of “listening” to this. My audiobook listening to SITG satisfied my goal. I want to understand in broad stroke why Taleb is being hyped up. In a way, he has “racked his gun” and got my attention with SITG. I will have to dig into the Taleb rabbit hole in the next weeks by listening to podcasts and other critiques of him to understand him better. I will revisit my ratings in some months
Five Love Languages - Gary Chapman: The cheesy title and corny cover made me hesitant to pick it up and read. But somehow through a push from a newsletter and insistence of my wife, I started listening to the audiobook. I am really thankful for people who recommended this. Yes, I can mock the cheesy title and corny topic. But I would have remained stupid if I had not read it. This book really worked for me because it gave me a lens to look into my marriage. It enriched our vocabulary to articulate the problems. Gary frames the communication problem in any marriage in a nice, simple and articulate manner. Every person has a way of expressing love and it is their “love language”. Every person has a “love tank” which gets filled when someone uses their “love language”. Listening to this book was really an epiphany because the love language of my wife is not the same as mine. I could easily figure out the instances of irritation and how it could have been addressed. I highly recommend this book. Doesn’t matter whether you are married or single or about to be married, this book is really good. It can equip with a simple framework, right vocabulary and a good lens to understand yourself, your spouse, your kids and your family.
Thanks a thousand by AJ Jacobs - A short and wonderful read on gratitude. The author tries to thank the people behind his morning cup of coffee. This sets him in a wonderful journey, where he meets the people behind growing beans, packing coffee, designing coffee cups and so on. I thought this will be cliched but it is really good. The author inspired me to have a gratitude journaling practice. It definitely calms down my anxiety and irritation which can be harmful and of no use in many circumstances.
The Mom test by Rob Fitzpatrick - I re-read this book for the second time. Simply because, this is one of the best books in giving you tips on how to talk to and understand the customers. Yes, reams of books has been published with theory and tons of blogs are available. But this is short, crisp and very well written books. It is extremely tactical and at the same time liberating with its commonsensical approach. Anybody who works in area to understand the customers’ need or “customer development” this is a must-read book.
(These days I don’t read much fiction because I get my dose of it from excellent movies and TV shows. I only read a good graphic novel and two audiobooks in fiction last year)
Theme for 2019 - Review
My theme for 2019 was this: year of creation over consumption.
It’s been more than a year since I started writing in 200WaD. I have written up to 250 posts here. It is close to 100,000 words. I also wrote quite a lot at 750words.com. I wrote up to 100 posts there. Again close to 75,000 words. I even published a newsletter and shipped close to 10 issues. That must be around 5000 words.
Just to put it in perspective: Not even in my wildest dream, I would have thunk that I would have written 1.8L words in 2019.
Maybe, 1% of those words, 1800 words, would be worth remembering or sharing forever to my audience.
Another insight I had in this year: I am not a photo or video guy. I don’t feel natural or at ease with Instagram or TikTok or YouTube. It is not that I cannot share anything there. I am not like my best in Instagram by sharing photos in posts or stories. I have seen many people who put a ton of work and adopt it like a fish in water, but I am not that person. I want to be on YouTube, making and sharing videos about topics interesting to me. But that is not an immediate goal.
I feel Twitter is my ideal network of choice. My strength is in words. I feel comfortable sharing things in text and words. I am at peace with it. So I want to focus only on Twitter and Facebook in 2020.
I am still ruminating the theme for the next year. I still have three more weeks to finalise that. But I am quite happy with my progress in 2019.
Just a habit and group of like-minded people motivating you can have a lasting impact in your life. I will always be thankful for the 200WaD community for motivating me in writing around 180,000 words in 2019.
Thanks to everyone who read my posts, wrote comments and engaged with me. Your actions mean a lot to me. Thanks again 🙏.
Second Best Innovation of the 18th Century
The best innovation in the past two centuries was: the steam engine. Can you guess what is the next best innovation?
Before I answer this question, I have another small quiz:
Can you guess the name of the company? This company was such a super hit that shareholders got compounding returns. Even the government could not control it at some point. They were very influential. This company determined the fate of countries and had a say on who is part of the government or not. Things weren’t rosy because of market changes. They had trouble and they sought the government’s help for a bailout.
Answer: It is not Facebook, as they are still in their prime. It is also not Lehmann Brothers.
Can you guess it? It is the British East India Company. It is a private company owned to a group of joint-stock owners called shareholders. It is a perfect example of a corrupt company with zero-corporate governance. It looted the country, India, which was then a thriving and established economy. Toppled governments, rewrote the borders of nations and starved millions of people to death. All in the name of profits and value for the shareholders.
The answer to my first question, the best innovation next to the steam engine, is the idea of Joint Stock Company.
What we call now as a private or a public company or a corporation was one of the best innovations. Why? It made common people own shares in a company. That, in turn, enabled the company to raise funds quickly and do things which needed the support of Kings or Queens earlier.
For the past two days, I am listening to the podcasts interviews with William Dalrymple. This one is the best. William is a brilliant historian. His new book, The Anarchy, is about the East India Company. I have heard of William but never read his work. His interviews are simply superb. The book’s blurb is very compelling:
It is the story of how the Mughal Empire-which dominated world trade and manufacturing and possessed almost unlimited resources-fell apart and was replaced by a multinational corporation based thousands of miles overseas, and answerable to shareholders, most of whom had never even seen India and no idea about the country whose wealth was providing their dividends.
British East India Company was truly the rogue company of its kind. They influenced the politician by bribing and lobbying. The executives were thugs and rowdies who rewrote the history in their favour. They starved people in one of the richest areas of an ancient country. They exploited their ruler’s weaknesses and used them for their benefits.
Funnily the company went bankrupt and now it is owned by an Indian. What an irony!