47 posts tagged with "musings"

Out of sight​

Our routine is sacrosanct. We regularly do activities with the same set of people - meal with family, evening walk with your dog, watching netflix with your significant other. Such activities become a highlight of our day - and a disruption in the activity for even a few day disturbs our balance.

Heart grows fonder​

Absence diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind extinguishes candles and fans fires.​

Absence or distance from an activity or a person can make you feel relieved or anxious. You might be left with a feeling of respite or longing. Focus on when you are longing for an activity or a person. Appreciate it and show your gratitude.

You should sit in meditation for 20 minutes a day, unless you're too busy, then you should sit for an hour. If Tetris has taught me anything, it's that errors pile up & accomplishments disappear. Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.

Tetris revisited​

Today morning, I decided to do 4 km swim. This is my first 4 km of 2023 and I had done one in 2022. I took ~97 minutes to complete it and had a phase of thoughtlessness in between.

When you are in water for so long in a swimming pool, you think about many things and once out of topics, you really observe. The pool where I go has tiles (colors blue and dark blue) on the floor. Organized they look like a game of Tetris.

Making pieces fit​

In life, the circumstances change every month and year. First you want something, then if you get it, you include it in your entitled list. With all the moving parts, it is in a way a big game of tetris. Not all pieces are the same color, nor are they the same shape or size, but they need to be in sync and balance. Juggling with pieces, the constant move is what makes life beautiful.

Slow it down​

Slowing things down and reducing the pace is a conscious and effective way to enjoy. Such slowing is usually accompanied by reducing the number of activities you have planned. Enjoying the now, especially slowly, is very satisfying. It helps you focus on the present atomic moment and experience life as you truly should.

You are always in a rush - wanting to be elsewhere. Slow it down, relish what you have now. Be like a child, enjoying the now.​

When to slow it down​

If you listen to your body and mind, it tells you when to slow down. When you experience fatigue, slowness or burn out - listen to it and take a day off. Sit in the sun or curl in your bed. It is okay, be kind to yourself and switch things down.

You cannot win for long by fighting against your body and mind. Listen to them closely and you will know.​

How I slow things down?​

I like to do the following to slow it down and energize. They invariably help me in orienting myself:

• Start a new book.
• Speak to family over a video call.
• Go for a long walk and listen to my Liked Songs

serve: to be useful or suitable for a particular purpose

Service and life​

All the macro systems around us are build with the objective of rewarding people for activities that they are good at. In other words, human beings - in groups - have since time ago have created systems, customs and rituals such that people who are good at serving other human beings get rewarded. In the modern economy, the equivalent is that if you have skills or resources or capital which serves others around you (or the globe), you enjoy status, power and wealth.

I have deeply thought about the purpose of life many times - 2nd year of undergrad and year 2021 were phases of longer deliberation. I have concluded that serving others is a primary purpose of our life. In the process of doing that, you discover your quirks, strengths, weaknesses and what you enjoy. In fact, how we enjoy giving the service changes with age and the definition of others also changes with the environment.

Secluding from serving others​

For a variety of reasons, many a times we resist serving our purpose and get stuck in a rut. These situations aggravate when we are stubborn about what we do not want to do. Resolving by excluding things not do is a valid strategy but applying it in serving others becomes a long frustrating process of brute force experiments. In such times, look back and think about the enormity of life around you and realize that service is the constant companion of the living being. When you stop serving, you stagnate and stop living life in its full sense.

Stagnation is the enemy of sanity.​

The hard part isn't knowing what the right thing to do is. The hard part is doing it

Breaking down a problem statement​

If I break a tough problem into atomic sub-problems, the order of difficulty reduces drastically.

Let's take an example, if I want to run a marathon (which I do not enjoy), I know that I will not be able to start with 21km running. If instead I break it down to training routine like below - thanks to Puneet Yadav for breaking it down, I have a greater chance of picking it up:

• Week 1: 2-3 km with 2 breaks
• Week 2: 3km with no break
• Week 3: 5km with 2/3 breaks
• Week 4: 5km with 1 break
• Week 5: 7.5km with 2 breaks
• Week 6: 10km with 2 breaks
• Week 7: 10km with no break
• Week 8: 15km with 2 breaks
• Week 9-10: 15km with no break
• Week 11: 18km with 1 break
• Week 12: 21km with no break

Knowing vs doing the right thing​

The above conversation with Puneet was from Mar 2022, an year ago. It is one thing to know the right thing to do and another to do it.

I have found committing to a plan works well if the following conditions are met:

1. You write it down, print it out or keep it top of mind digitally.
2. You discuss the progress with friends or family. Especially when you are struggling.
3. You celebrate the milestones - e.g. gift yourself something meaningful when you hit Week 5.
4. You zoom in and zoom out repeatedly, seeing how far you have come and how far do you have to go.

Personal playbook​

Below is a cheat-sheet for some of the important qualities that bring a lot of structure to life. It can be termed as a Personal playbook and should be relevant in most personal situation.

The following aspects build my playbook:

1. Clarity​

A clear sense of direction about the following 4 aspects of life - work, personal growth, health and relationship.

Everything has tradeoffs, all choices come with a cost. At an annual frequency, determining what I want is very important and pre-paying the cost of the choice adds to clarity.

2. Following my gut​

Over time, I have accepted that following the gut is who I am fundamentally. My personal mantra has become - not all decisions in life are optimizations or need to be rational. I discuss important decisions with people who I respect, but the final call is always mine.

3. Idealization Visualizations​

I have taken some important decisions by fast-forwarding life over two timelines - 2 years & 5 years. In these visualization grids, I run scenarios of the final outcomes being - good, average or bad. Visualizing life in such a grid helps in thinking about upside vs downside in a more long term manner.

4. Being with the right people​

Humans are like apes, we subconsciously copy the 5 or so people around us. We tend to gravitate towards the same usage of time and attention.

I have struggled to maintain and make friends who can interact regularly and be a positive influence.

5. Planning for setbacks​

Setbacks are part of every aspect of life - work, personal growth, health and relationship. Yes there will be days and months when:

• I will lose work, shut shop
• Break a leg or suffer in health
• Lose relationships or people around me

Planning for setbacks and visualizing life in absence of these aspects makes me more stoic and prepared.

6. Work is worship​

As naive as it may sound, I do not feel good about myself if I do not work on any day including Sunday. Work brings structure and purpose - being an entrepreneur - the scope of work is really broad and beyond the conventional working from office routine.

7. Lifelong learning​

I wasted a good 5 years in not learning regularly. It made me stagnant as a person. It influenced my mindset negatively and over the last 2 years, I have found learning from the following sources satisfying:

• Reading new books on Kindle or paperback
• Listening to books on Audible
• Listening to podcasts on Spotify

8. Peak to peak​

Life is ups and downs. Embrace the downs with open arms as I embrace the ups. The negative emotions and feelings are as important and natural as the feeling of joy. When things are going well, protect the downside and build skills for the next peak.

9. Resilience and bouncing back​

If you have to bounce, don't break.

Our daily awareness of reality is like - problems, problems, problems and crisis. Responding to crisis defines the orbits of life. These are moments where I need to be calculated, enterprising and logical. They define the trajectory of life in the long run.

10. Unshakeable optimism​

An average human in current times has more luxuries than the average king 500 years ago

Life is beautify and beyond the thoughts in your head, people around you and your fears. Optimism is contagious and has an upward spiral to it. It is limitless.

11. Courage​

Ability and willingness to face my fears is my courage. The fears have and will change over time as I get older. Courage is the spirit of moving forward, taking decisions, owning outcomes. An important learning is:

The more I chase security, the less I have it.

12. Self discipline​

Self discipline comes with persistence or rather persistence is self discipline in action. The ability to make myself do, what I should do - especially in the long run - 2 years or 5 years is a superpower.

In conclusion, I am not playing a game of life where I choose the outcomes that matter to me and I get to decide how to focus my time and attention around it.

Life is like microeconomics and we tend to live it like macroeconomics.

Hard to reverse progress​

A sign of highly intelligent people is that they ask the question - Why? - very frequently. The topic could be money, progress, learning, lifestyle, relationship or self. Changing yourself and making new habits stacks high up in the first decile i.e. 0 to 10 percentile. Also, they consistently ask the question - Why? - instead of - Why not?

Answering the question - Why?​

You will have to think deep and long to answer the why type questions. A few questions of this kind would be:

• Why should I hire this person?
• Why should I attend this meetup or party?
• Why should I read everyday?

Answering the why question is personal and individualistic. While answering it, you remind yourself about your preferences, goals and principles. If you are honestly answering your why and following up with answers. You will be more satisfied in the activity.

Answering the question - Why not?​

Either we or people around us ask the why not type question. A few questions of this kind would be:

• Why not grow the business faster?
• Why not have a long night?
• Why not to watch the next episode on Netflix?

Answering the why not question is backward thinking. While answering it, you argue in head altruistically. Answering a why not honestly can lead to dilemma, disagreement and discontentment.

Finding the why around your daily time spent is a great way to know yourself better Since 2021, I have started enjoying and taking more decisions around the why type questions over the why not type questions.