Kartik Sharma's Blog, page 3

Ich liebe Ish

A Love Letter to Kazuo Ishiguro

The phrase ‘Ich liebe Ish’ translates from German to ‘I love Ish’. Salman Rushdie fondly refers to the man of the moment, Kazuo Ishiguro, as “Ish”. This is, then, a love letter to an author whose body of work I admire greatly and who just received the 2017 Nobel prize for literature.

When he found out about the recognition, the 62 year old author said he thought, “I am too young for this,” before realizing that he was actually somewhere in the middle of the pack, age-wise. He was caught off guard when he found out about becoming a laureate, as I believe most are. But unlike Dylan last year, who acknowledged the award weeks later, he was gracious. This kind of freshness is, in part, what makes his writing such a pleasure to read.

Being a true lover of fiction, I am glad that the Nobel Prize committee has awarded a fiction writer. After the last year’s award to Dylan, this is a welcome relief. While authors push the boundaries of literature and ensure that it keeps evolving, it seemed to me that the committee had taken it upon themselves to disrupt the definition of literature. I love Dylan’s songs, but I am sure a part of the reason for his delayed acknowledgment was his inability to keep pace with how the times they are a-changin’. For someone who told the world that very thing, little should be surprising. So you can imagine my shock.

Coming back to Ishiguro, I’ve been following him ever since I picked up Never Let Me Go more than a decade ago. He came across as an unjaded and uncomplicated writer, who speaks his richer-than-normal mind with an impressive fluidity. His writings call out to a part in each one of us whose existence we often don’t want to acknowledge. His characters struggle with their interpretation of historical events and their involvement in those. Their inability or fear of confronting the truth impedes an honest introspection. They take a trip down the memory lane which is either blocked off and needs to be reopened or is rendered unreliable with the passage of time. They start out by feeling secure in their beliefs to later discover that they are not as infallible as they imagined. He’s one of the finest writers who explore the idea of an unreliable narrator owing to his mastery over the subtlety the subject requires. Each one of his books is a feat in itself and that is probably why it takes him four years, on an average, to write one.

It’s a very human failing, one that I’ve also been guilty of. Reading him makes me aware of that failing and makes me want to introspect objectively. It forces me to break my defences to reach that gnawing truth. He makes me believe that it’s both easier to do and to digest while it’s still recent. It saves one from building the skyscraper of their lives on a weak foundation which might collapse when it gets older.

Someone took my copy of Never Let Me Go. I hope they cherish it.

Another thing about Ishiguro’s writings is that his evolution as a writer is noticeable. The promise of the little known author of ‘A Pale View of Hills’ in 1982 was evident. But then with ‘An Artist of the Floating World’ in 1986, he took the unreliable narrator concept to a whole another height. ‘The Remains of the Day’ published in 1989 is, to me, the pinnacle of his achievement on the concept. His later books, ‘When We Were Orphans’ (2000) and ‘Never Let Me Go’ (2005) are slightly different, with the protagonists searching for their past and origins. The beauty of ‘Never Let Me Go’ is how organically he extended the same idea to the realm of science fiction, declaring his authentic literary capability to world. People might start reading his works now and I would recommend reading his books chronologically. It’s the best way to read them. It’s not easy to keep improving when you start with near-perfection but he has done exactly that.

There was a seed of worry in my mind when I learned the news: does the award mean that the experts have declared that there’s no room for further improvement for Ishiguro? But on reading his acknowledgement interview, the fear vanished. He called it out himself when he said, “I hope it doesn’t mark some kind of end.” That’s all the assurance that I needed to be safe in my belief that the literary world will continue to be enriched by his writing. He’ll keeping pushing his boundaries as a writer which would, most definitely, lead to evolution of literature itself.

Retirement Planning for The Young

The Why, The What and The When with some digression

The Why?

Why is Retirement Planning important for young people? Simple answer to why it’s important for me — because I find it hard to answer questions like “what would I do if I didn’t feel compelled to earn money for my version of survival?” It becomes a hypothetical question if I don’t even know if I’d ever be able to get there. And my reason for not knowing “if I could ever get there” was that I didn’t know what “there” meant or entailed. It’s easy to get confused by the multiple scenarios that start emerging when you start thinking of a retired life, especially if you are planning an early retirement.

But if you know that it’s a possibility, you can start thinking about what will you do once you don’t have to get up and go to work everyday.

The answer might be to quit and do nothing at all. Or try your hand at something different — hiking, painting, writing, etc. — which I like to call the pursuits of spirit. These activities don’t typically cost much, but do not necessarily entail a monetary reward. Financial independence allows you to undertake pursuits whose reward may or may not be financial. Or even material.

The answer might be – doing some other work, which might be lower paying or riskier. Like working at an NGO as a contractual employee, maybe. Or interning with a movie production house. Or volunteering for organizing a sporting event. You’ll get a little money, but whatever you earn it’s all for splurging if you have planned your retirement!

The answer might be – to get up day after day and go to the same place of work you are currently at. That it’s your true calling. Even then there are benefits of doing this planning. Once you have your ideal retirement corpus, you start understanding that you are not doing your job because you need it. There’s no sense of compulsion. Rather, you want to do that work. It gives you a sense of meaning or purpose that you truly value. You might actually start liking your work a little better when you don’t feel encumbered anymore. You might be able to take a few risks which you might not have taken if you weren’t financially independent. You might find the sacrifices that you need to make with your job a little more bearable because now that you are unencumbered and still like it, you are valuing it more than you used to.

A retirement plan is critical if you have a Why. If you don’t have it yet, make a plan and it will ease the search for one.

The What?

I want to start this section by saying that retirement corpus is not dissimilar from The Number (you know, the one you want to hit before you call it quits for good).

The Number, is not your salvation. It’s not the answer to everything. It’s a step in the long game of chutes and ladders. It’s just an answer to an oversimplified question: Ceteris Paribus (all things remaining as they are), how much money do you need to ensure that you can live your life peacefully?

I’ve been reading a lot of articles of late on retirement corpus planning. What I’ve realized that these articles tend to get into complex, and often times confusing, mathematics. When I started to plan my retirement, I approached it exactly the same way. In hindsight, I could have benefited from a simple approach — which just gets me started on my planning. When you are finally ready to take the plunge, step your foot off the gas, want to stop being a cog in the wheel, declare #SYGIGH (I can go on, but I shall exercise restraint here), you should of course undertake a much more rigorous analysis and ensure that you are actually in a good position, financially speaking, to retire.

The approach that I am outlining in this post, is only to arrive at a ballpark figure. As corpus planning is never an exact science (in that you can’t plan down to the last cent), I believe a simple approach should at least help you make a realistic plan so that you know by when can you expect to retire. This will also help you to stay motivated to start saving, start moving along that path, at least. The promise, at the end, is of financial independence.

In very simple terms, how you should be looking at it as follows:

Let’s assume long term inflation forecast is i% and the post-tax rate of return you expect on your corpus is r%.

Footnote 1: Clearly, r needs to be greater than i for there to be any meaningful money left in your bank account in 20 years. Most investment vehicles would help you beat inflation, so whatever combination of debt:equity:gold:real estate exposure you are comfortable with should be fine. Well, not exactly, but for an optimal exposure to each of these you can find plenty of resources.

Next, you don’t want to eat into your corpus for as long as possible, so the smart thing to do is plan a corpus size that allows you to live off the interest alone. That’s your (r-i)% — the spread or return over inflation. This will ensure that your corpus keeps growing at i%, so it’s always inflation adjusted. If you have $1000 in savings today — which buys you 100 big Macs, you’ll always have money to buy 100 big Macs, if your corpus keeps growing at the rate of inflation.

After this, it’s simple. Imagine the life of retirement. What expenses would you have? Be reasonable about it. Include everything that you like in the first run — rent (if you don’t own a house — more on that later) or house upkeep costs (if you own one), internet, mobile phone bill, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video membership, buying books, groceries (This was an after thought. I thought I got all the basics above.), eating out, travel, new clothes, electronics, replacement of white goods (phone, fridge, washing machine, etc.) every 5–10 years, etc. Most of your expenses are running expenses, so that’s easy. For the periodic expenses (travel, replacement of white goods, electronics, etc.), try and annualize these costs.

Crap, I forgot insurance. Thankfully, I asked someone to review before publishing. Not because the list above is supposed to be exhaustive, but because I can now update and fix my model. But this helps me make another point. The plan needs to be flexible. You’ll always be adding things to it till you actually decide to quit. Have faith that it’ll be robust enough to absorb minor things. And after all, you do have to always be prepared to wing it. That does not and should not diminish the importance of planning or deter the planners from planning.

Now, for simplicity, let’s say you need $E per year for your living expenses.

Footnote 2: E can be calculated at today’s cost of things. Because when you take the inflation adjusted return of (r-i)%, tomorrow’s cost of things become immaterial. Rather, you’ve already factored those into your plan.

Your retirement corpus (C) is supposed to generate E at the rate of (r-i)% annually. So,

C*(r-i)/100 = E

=> C= (E*100)/(r-i)

That’s it. Plug your numbers in. Arrive at your number. Start planning how you’ll get there.

Typically, I assume that a corpus will generate 1–1.5% spread over inflation. But I also tend to be cautious in my models. If it earns a higher spread, you can take an additional trip that year. Or you can buy that gadget that you’ve been wanting to buy. If you really want to splurge, buy popcorn at the movies during interval!

But if you use 1–1.5% inflation adjusted return on your corpus, your corpus should be simply between 70*E to 100*E.

Footnote 3: This way of calculating your corpus makes it easy for you to know when you can retire — whenever you get to 100E. Most other form of retirement corpus calculation start backwards from the age of 60, which has it’s own value, but it’s a different problem from the one that we are trying solve.

The When?

This is the last step. Look at the past trend of your income and it’s growth. Try and project that going forward. Look at how much of your income you’ve been able to save. Project your saving rate going forward as well. You can build a simple model that will take you to a point where your cumulative savings will reach C. That’s your when.

If your C’s too little, and you are already there or can get there soon, great news! You can also feel free to add more expenses. Sounds awesome, doesn’t it! It’s unlikely, but it happens sometimes — for example, if you are an investment banker with 5+ years of work-ex without a super extravagant lifestyle. Or if you live like a hermit.

If the C’s too much, take a knife to your expenses. Think on what all you can cut without feeling too bad for not having it. Tweak the calculations and arrive at a C that you can reach in a reasonable amount of time, if that’s what you want. If you don’t want to reduce expenses, you’ll have a very long retirement horizon. But this information is still useful, right? At least now you know that you need to keep your foot on the pedal. More importantly, hopefully you also understand the “why am I doing this to myself?” a little better now. Knowing something more about yourself and your situation than you knew yesterday seems like a good thing.

The Promised Digression: Buying a House vs Renting

People buy houses for a variety of reasons. Most of those are beyond the scope of this article. But if it’s an entirely financially motivated decision, it’s not always obvious who wins the Buying vs. Renting bout. Here’s why:

In the calculation above, let’s assume that E is your annualized expense inclusive of rent. If we assume R to be the annual differential between rent and the upkeep cost of an owned house, in case you own a house, your retirement corpus (C’) becomes

C’ = (E-R)*100/(r-i) or, in the above assumption, 70 to 100 times (E-R).

For simplicity, let’s assume r-i = 1%. Then, C = 100E and C’ = 100(E-R).

This implies that (C-C’), the additional corpus needed on account of not owning your home, is equal to 100R.

Hence, you can buy a house for 100R for it to be a corpus neutral decision. Basically, you either add 100R to your corpus and keep paying the rent from the spread over inflation that you earn on the corpus.

Footnote 4, the usual list of pros and cons of buying vs renting also apply here.

Footnote 5, your assumption regarding the return you expect over inflation might be different. If you expect a 2% higher than inflation return, for example, the value of corpus-neutral house that you can buy is 50*R.

Footnote 6, it is assumed that the house is not an investment since you’ll be living in it. How the real estate appreciates is rendered irrelevant by this assumption.

Now coming to the real dilemma that this poses and the reason for the digression.

More often than not, a 100x multiplier on the annual rent is going to make buying a house the right choice. A simple reason for this is that the way we are calculating the retirement corpus, we assume that we are going keep living the way we live for a million years. Till perpetuity really. If mankind becomes immortal in our lifetime, you will still be good with this model.

So effectively, you are building a corpus that will let you pay the rent for all of eternity. When you decide to buy a house, on the other hand, a chunk of money goes into the house now but reduces your corpus requirement.

Does that mean you should buy the house? Similarly, should you buy a life time Netflix subscription? Unfortunately, the answer to that is slightly complicated.

First up, let us understand the limitations of this way of thinking:

We don’t factor in a life expectancyAs corollary to 1, we don’t target having no money in our account when we die to fulfil some poetic fantasyAs corollary to 2, we plan to leave behind good money when we dieIt might however be a sound buffer to have in case you need a major surgery or if you need to buy a nice car when you are close to popping

Basically, this approach in some sense gives you an upper end estimate of your corpus. Think of it as something that helps you meet your needs (factored in to E) and leaving a healthy buffer for exigencies or for other people to inherit.

Alternatively, if you want to arrive at a more reasonable estimate of your corpus (the lower end, in which you will be left with little to no money in the end), it looks something like:

Let x = (1+i)/(1+r)

Complex C = x*E*[x^n-1]/[x-1]

Where, n is the number of years you think you got left.

In the example above, assuming you have 40 years ahead, inflation is estimated at 6% and post tax return is estimated at 7%, then:

Complex C = 34E (approximately)

While this seems rational, we had to estimate a lot more things than previously. Also, these are not in our control. Return over inflation is. Well, more in control at least. The probability of these estimates being correct over a 40 year horizon is also very low. Also, while you’ll be left with 65% of Complex C in your account by the end, it would barely be 2x of your annual expenses at that time. Given that you started with 34x, that’s cutting it too close.

In this scenario, however, following from above, a house worth 34R or 34 times your post retirement annual rent expectation would be corpus neutral.

That house just got much less fancy.

In summary, you can plan for your Corpus to be somewhere between the C and the complex C. That should ensure that you not cutting it too close and also bring the retirement horizon a little more closer.

And don’t forget to also find an answer to your Why while you are at it. Without a strong enough why, none of this is of any real value. The maths is fun, no doubt, but it’s not a theoretical problem that we are trying to solve, is it?

Thank you, Anshul!

Thank you, Anshul! It’s great to know that the post helped. And I am reasonably sure there’s more where that came from (

No, not yet.

No, not yet. The section about recalibrating where you are at, making a new plan, with new timelines is about that. It’ll take some time to prepare the final draft of the new plan. Hopefully, that’ll form the foundation of another post!

Thank you!

Thank you!

It’s strange that what is conventionally considered the easier, more natural way— the don’t stress about things idea, the let it be spirit, the destiny argument, the have faith in the lord above philosophy — are actually difficult for a few people. For them, the best way to approach situations (be it decisions, or plans or TBD, in this case) is with The Brain. If The Brain isn’t given adequate time and space to do its thing, nothing else seems to work. And it’s a problem because Unrelated Things start falling apart because it’s difficult to predict which thought or feeling will do what in the subconscious.

I think it’s a difficult balance, but the idea is not be in control of everything. It’s more to just be able to understand in a real, and deep, manner who you are, what you feel and why.

Thoughts are an evolutionary gift and words are the necessary tool to decode the thoughts to make sure that your thoughts don’t become your nemesis.

It should absolutely do that (make you laugh)! And I am glad that it did :)

It should absolutely do that (make you laugh)! And I am glad that it did :)

depressing day because of a [generic but major work problem]? Or was it [something fundamental]? :P

Of Milestone Birthdays

which has little to do with turning thirty… NOT!

I am going to turn 30 in a few weeks. While some of you might wonder why would I write this post in advance of the big day, others might understand the throes that you are in for a better part of the six months leading to The Big Day — TBD from here on— also known as Thirtieth Birth Day or The Big Decision. As soon as 29.49 turned to 29.50 (April 28 this year), I was 30 from a mathematical perspective. While I continue to answer my age with 29, I know (deep in my heart) that I am cheating.

The other reason why I think it’s critical to write this now is that I don’t want to spend my TBD thinking or worrying about these things. If I can, I would rather have well processed and neatly synthesized material to go through on TBD to save myself from the frustrations, panic driven profundity and epiphanies. And, most importantly, keeping “the grump within” in check on the day.

So, what is about turning 30 that makes you feel a little pink? (I actually like blue so ‘feeling blue’ for me is a good thing. Pink is just another arbitrary color that I don’t have particularly strong feelings for). It can be a variety of reasons - some of which I have heard in the past and go like:

I’ve lived three DECADES!I am now older than my parents were when they had me (in my mother’s case, she had a five year old kid)I am now more older to my dad than I am younger to him (if he’s under 60)

While these are mostly said in a comic way, the underlying sentiment in my case was about a clipboard. It’s the mental check list that I had in my mind about the things I thought I’d (a) accomplish, (b) do and get over with, (c) not do and (d) not do (ever) again. A lot of the times during these past 4.5 months, I have really wanted to not look at the bloody clipboard, but that only makes it more prominent in my mind’s eye. Like that empty packet of chips that I stuffed under the couch so that my wife doesn’t see it one fine Friday evening when we were watching a movie on Netflix. It was all that I could see throughout the movie, figuratively speaking.

I think about now is a good time for a caveat. So, here it goes — if you are not prone to analytical and diagnostic introspection and creative liberty laden prognosis, this might not be the right post for you. I would have shared links to some cat videos for you to jump to (note, it’s not dog videos — which I sometimes actually like), but I am trying to grow up to be a little mature. So you’ll not see condescension coming from me.

Speaking of growing up, I recently came across Tim Urban’s post on The Marriage Decision (posted on his website: Wait But Why — welcome to Medium, by the way!), which lays out his super nuanced mental model with the menu of pathways available when thinking about something important — (1) Procrastination / making it someone else’s problem , (2) Primal Forces: Love, Fear, Ego, Others, (3) Gut and (4) Brain. This certainly helps improve your understanding of others who might be using different pathways while struggling with the same things.

What happened with me when I was going through my TBD pinks (refer above for why it’s not ‘blues’), was in fact, an amalgamation of all these things in steps (more fancifully called Phases).

So here we go…

Phase 1 — Morning Procrastination or Making It Someone Else’s Problem

This is the time when the thought starts gradually dawning on you. You try and push it under the carpet, ignoring it as much as you can before you can’t anymore. In this phase, you are basically postponing dealing with the issue that you know is coming at you, head on, but is reasonably far away for you to be able to afford not dealing with it. There are changes happening but your subconscious mind shields them from your conscious mind.

While it rests in what Joe & Harry describe as the “Unknown Self” in the fourth quadrant (Q4) of their famous Johari window, life is good. If you cross reference the Johari Window with a slightly flipped Eisenhower Matrix, you get what we can call “The JHE Box” for the purpose of this discussion.

When Joe & Harry met Eisenhower — Illustrated Johari Window, cross reference with Eisenhower Matrix or “The JHE Box”

While the TBD is in Q4, is neither urgent, nor important. This was probably about the time I turned 29. Gradually, however, the TBD starts looming large in your psyche and eventually starts bursting at the seams of the fourth quadrant to slip in to the second quadrant (Q2) of “Blind Self”.

Now, while the demon of TBD rests in Q2, it starts troubling people around you. Since it’s not urgent yet, you don’t find the time to get to it. But the people around you start sensing that there’s something off. They can’t, of course, put their finger on the problem for you, but they know something’s going on with you. It might manifest in different ways ranging from anxiety, hyperactivity, inability to chill the way you used to, etc. Whether you like it or not, you have just let your problem become someone else’s.

In my case, my interaction with my wife and colleagues at work got a little strained. I was short on patience and not able to relate with things that I normally consider important. To me, it seemed like, the whole world was focusing their energies on wrong, immaterial things. Nobody was focusing on the ‘crux of the matter’ ( — I love that expression!). But eventually I realized that it was me — I wasn’t focusing my energy on what needed attention.

Eventually, somebody called me out on it. Nothing breaks the sand castle of ignorance like that. It crushed my pride (too dramatic, but it did do that a little) to make room for an expanded knowledge of my own self. This is when the leftward journey on The JHE Box begins.

But it’s not without hiccups.

Phase 2 — A long nap of denial

The JHE Box

This is when the TBD slips into Q3 — “The Hidden Self”. For some reason, you can’t ignore the problem anymore. You now know that you have a problem.

In my case, it was something to do with the TBD, sure, but what exactly? I didn’t know that yet. I didn’t want to confront the problem because that means setting aside time and energy in trying to first articulate it for yourself and then for the benefit of the few who you care to explain things to. Then, you have to actually have the conversation too…

But we are getting a little ahead of ourselves. The first thing is articulating the problem. This requires a lot of introspection, asking tough questions that you may not like the answers to. It calls to action the inner-knight, but he’s rusty because you haven’t really needed him in over a decade.

So you start telling yourself that it’s nothing because you can’t do much about it. So when you start trying to address it, it suddenly seems unimportant! You feel like you have it under control. Knowing about it, helps in ensuring that you are no longer troubling the people around you. You take that success and try to bury the problem under the carpet or the couch of denial.

But it does get you in trouble.

Phase 3 — An Evening Dance With The Primal Forces

The JHE Box

While the problem is still in the third quadrant of the Hidden Self, your inner-knight starts gradually getting up from his slumber. He answers his call to action, thankfully.

On a typical Wednesday evening in August, I was watching a rerun of one of my favorite Bollywood movies with my wife (we had never seen it together before). And there it was — a sudden, unprovoked surge of a wide variety of emotions that created a strange turmoil in me.

The TBD demon had now crept into the first quadrant where it was suddenly Urgent and Important for me to deal with it.

It needs to be said here that denial / bottling things up is not a good idea. Don’t brush things under the carpet or the couch. In my case, that instruction is both figurative and literal! (Remember that empty packet of chips?)

So there, in the midst of that tempest in my heart and mind, in the midst of that work week, I decided to ask myself the really tough questions.

Do I want to continue working at my job or just quit and write full time?Why do I want to work? Is it based in love? Or is it fear? While my job is in public health and it entails doing a little to save lives (awesome, isn’t it?), do I actually like what I do?Am I working only because I seek external validation? Is it a fear / insecurity of being irrelevant if I quit being a cog in the wheel of society that only respects people who are productive?Why do I want to write? Do I really think I can write as well as Rushdie someday? What’s the point if I can’t!I hate Person 279 for being born into privilege! He went to Columbia to do a masters in Creative Writing. I can’t go there, even if I spent all my savings!

Etc. — I know you are thanking me for using this, right? You got the point a while ago. I am thankful to the word etcetera too, otherwise I would have had to go on for another 1,000 words…

But yes, probably because the real problem was buried alongside a lot of other stuff, it takes time to find it once you start digging under that carpet / couch. In the meanwhile, there are a ton of existential questions that crop up. Every single thing that you find in the state of mind that you are in seems like it is important. How can you prioritize between things that are existential.

Eventually you do have to. Everyone has these doubts and these questions. You realize, all over again, that it’s not super critical to have answers to all these questions right now. It’s more important to get them right when you do. So you neatly stow these away in the “Not Urgent, Important” quadrant on The JHE Box.

And while you are at it, please throw the empty pack of chips in the dustbin.

Phase 4 — That Magical Bonfire Moment With The Gut & Its Guitar

Among all the existential stuff, you also find the Clipboard. That’s the set of plans or the list of things that you had wanted to before you turned thirty. Be nice and congratulate yourself for what you have accomplished. For what you haven’t, it’s probably a good time to think why did you not accomplish these things? Did you chicken out or did you find new information that makes the plans, that you might have made when you were 20 or 25, unrealistic?

But at least you find the real questions which brings you many steps closer to the real reasons behind why you are freaking out about the TBD. You need to re-calibrate where you are at. Re-prioritize the plans for the future by adding and subtracting generously. You understand that you need to make a new plan with a new timeline.

But to do that, you need to some critical answers so that you can figure out how to pole-vault over this TBD obstacle. It starts becoming clear that it’s more than just crossing into the new decade. Is it because you fear that your prime is behind you? Is it because you don’t have much left to look forward to? Do you see a decade full of resentment in which I am resigned to whatever the destiny has to offer?

So how do you go about finding the answers to these questions? There’s no possible analysis that can answer these questions for you. At least there’s no simple analysis that can do that.

In this situation, you are left with your best friend — The Gut. It has answers to most questions that the Brain finds hard to answer given all the pros and cons that are almost always equal in number, forcing you to assign weights to everything — which isn’t exactly scientific, right?

The best way to talk to the gut is with hypothetical questions or thought experiments (see more details on the Wait But Why article). For example, if I were to die today — what would I feel? Joy for doing the things I did? Or regret? What is that I would regret? You might be able to feel your brain do a “Pfft…” but your Gut already has the answers.

Although it’s not a perfect solution, it’s a necessary step in the way. The Gut will give you some answers . Mine told me that I should be happy that I will have two published books, a good body of work professionally, some great friends and some people who I have helped along the way. But it also told me that it’s likely that I would feel a little regret for not completing the other 5 books that I started.

But what this does is generate fodder that you can pass through the final stop on the way to resolution.

Welcome to Phase 5.

Phase 5— Coming To The Final Frontier of The Brain Later That Night (for Night Owls; Next Morning for Early Risers)

At this point, I am going to borrow generously from Tim’s WBW post (no, I am not on first name basis with him. But I would love to be, someday.) which I referred to in the beginning of this article:

Adapted from Tim Urban’s WaitButWhy post: The Marriage Decision

Take those answers that you got from The Gut and put them in these neat buckets in your Brain. I felt a sudden relaxation because it was finally out there. There will be weeks of adjustment time between now and internalizing this, but at least I have some semblance of plan forming in my brain. It’s painful to junk the old plan without checking all the boxes and embark on this new one — but that’s for after TBD. Even after that, the plan will have to be refined and finalized, but this is the ideal time for that intermission that ensures least interruption.

But at the same time, coming back to The JHE Box, you now have to make sure that people know this about you too so that it becomes rightfully established in the first quadrant of “The Open Self”. That’s about when you can move on. For me, however, the true catharsis happens only when it’s written down. So, thanks Medium!

This, however, poses another challenge: What and how do you tell people?

Here are a few scenarios:

Me: Hi Person 1. I am having a crisis of sorts because of this upcoming birthday. Do you want to get some wine this evening and talk about it?

Person 1: Yes, sure man! Even I had a [generic, but major work problem] at work today. My boss is questioning [something fundamental]! I want to talk to you too, bro!

Me: — — — — —

Let’s try that again…

Me: Hi Person 2. I am having a crisis of sorts because of this upcoming birthday. Do you want to get some beer this evening and talk about it?

Person 2: Yeah, alright! We might as well do this today, man! I found out a few days back that have to relocate to [another city] in two weeks. My [better half] can’t. Do you think we can do long distance? How was it for you?

Me: — — — — — —

And these are the easy conversations, believe me. I had the bloody ground pulled from under my feet in one of the more drastic conversations.

But coming back, it’s not a ‘real’ problem. I acknowledge that. People, almost always, have bigger worries than this one. In face of those real worries, it’s almost like a ‘first world problem’.

I don’t have a solution for this part. But I realized that persistence does work. I fortunately found the right opportunity to talk to a few people about it, which helped shape this post too. I think I did a reasonably good job in explaining the whole thing, but it wasn’t this neat (Ok, fine… but this is much neater than those conversations!). Some of them seemed confused on some of the unformed thoughts on some of the steps.

For clarifying any doubts from our conversations, and for those of whom I couldn’t explain this to — welcome to my first 10+ minute non-fiction read on Medium!

To wrap it all up…

I am sure I’ll get some questions on the lines of — “So, how goes/was the big day?” and “Now I will get back to you over the question you asked me on my 30th — How does it feel to be over the cliff?Ha ha ha!”. That’s from peers and seniors. From juniors, I expect nothing less than the genuine curiosity and ‘ingenuity’ of snickering which has marked my calls and greeting to my seniors on their 30th. To all of you — beware! I shall have a long answer to read out if in case I don’t make you read this before!

Wisdom from the future

Don’t get spooked. Or do.

Dear June 30 2017 self,

How goes it? Just kidding. I know the answer. It was a rhetorical question.

Anyway, I was thinking today that you’ve been chilling a lot. And being lazy. I want you to know that you going to feel like you accomplished little in 2017 if you go down the path you are currently on.

I know you feel like you need a break. That you need to chill for a bit. Trust me, you are going to feel guilty-as-shit if you do become me. So here’s hoping that you get your act together for the rest of the year.

Finish that book quickly. The one resolution that we made for this year was to read 12 books and try and also cover up for the 8 you read last year. It’s not that hard! You’ve read 4 in 6 months — no improvement! You don’t typically lose steam in the first half! But you did, now you’ve got to cover up the lost ground!

Finish the one you are writing too. You’ve been sitting on the near final draft since January and on comments since May. I know it seems hard to be clinical with the editing now, but you know you’ve got to do it some day. Better now, right?

You will not have abs by December. Stop dreaming about that. Enough about that already! It’s not funny anymore.

Try and not stress about turning 30 when you do. I know it’s hard for you — can’t ask you to change that fundamentally. But you should know that I am on the other side and things are a-ok! Nothing changed. Well, that’s not entirely true. Your hair are slightly better now, actually — so you’ve that to look forward to!

I know if you read this and change your ways, I will cease to exist in the dimension that becomes your eventual reality. So we won’t meet. Tomorrow you can start on a new time loop. You might not end up inventing this cool trick of sending letters into the past, but that’s a small price to pay. Just remember to take care of your hair. I’ll break the continuum to ‘find you and kill you’ if you don’t. Also, please watch fewer Liam Neeson movies.

Your today is as meaningful or as arbitrary as my today. And I have to deal with all this pressure of partying on a Sunday evening. You on the other hand have amazing weather and Friday evening going for you. There’s Okja on Netflix — guess you already know that. Or get around watching Le Dolce Vita or L’Avventura finally? Celebrate the half year a little.

Happy remaining half of the year!

Cheers,

December 31 2017 self

I completely relate with that.

I completely relate with that. People say that Kindle is not like a screen at all, it’s just books (no distractions) and it doesn’t have a back-light — but I just respond saying, “Is it paper?”

Feel important to be important

Learning life lessons from a stand-up comedian's piece on a great leaderSource: Inside Barack Obama and Ted Cruz’s Awkward Flight on Air Force One | GQ

I was watching Trevor Noah’s Afraid of the Dark on Netflix the other day and boy is it a brilliant stand-up! It was funny but it’s core subject matter is the serious isms of today — like racism, nationalism, protectionism and feminism — which is very fine line to thread.

On one hand, if you are serious in your discourse about the serious isms, you are not doing stand-up but a lecture. And most people don’t pay for that after school, am I right? On the other hand, you can’t afford to be funny in a crass way or you run the risk of being seen as too cavalier about it, making light of a serious topic, which most people won’t find funny. They might find it disgusting, though. Most stand-ups today struggle to do that in a manner that actually preserves the sanctity and seriousness of a serious topic, while still tickling the funny bone. That’s why I adore John Oliver! But his is a very different brand of comedy compared to Trevor Noah’s.

The thing about this show that got me really thinking was the bit about Obama. I am not going to go into details of what he said, so there are no spoilers here.

I realized from the 3-minute piece that Noah does on the ex-POTUS that the way Obama conducts himself — the voice articulation, the pacing of the words in his speech, the swag, the way he carries himself — it all points to a belief in himself that he’s an important person. He conducts himself with an aura that’s hard to find even in the most charismatic people.

I then understood that if one doesn’t believe that they are important, or if they don’t conduct themselves in a manner that non-verbally communicates their belief that they are important, nobody else is going to take them seriously.

Sounds simple enough, right? Of course you’ve heard that before — I am not professing that this is an original thought. But sometimes how one arrives at an understanding of something that might be cliched is also critical in driving home the importance of the subject. I am certain several people have told me this before as well, but I don’t think I took it as serious advice — something that should make me want to put in the enormous effort that it’s going to take to change something about me. Inherently, I tend to be lazy unless propelled into action by the circumstances.

For a very long time I believed, and naively so, that substance is all that matters to succeed in life. If you are standing on a solid foundation, no one can shake it. That’s all you need to succeed. That’s what schools typically tell us when we are young and impressionable. But that’s not entirely true. Or rather, it stops being the absolute truth as you grow up. It’s true that it helps immensely in school and college. Even as a young employee, when one enters the corporate world, that’s indeed the quality which will see them do well at their job. Even as one rises through the ranks, one still needs that quality. But it quickly starts becoming just basic hygiene.

In mid to senior management roles in any organization of repute, there’s a high probability that one will be surrounded by people who are more or less par in caliber. They are intense, dedicated and cut throat because everyone ambitious, quiet understandably, wants to be the best at what they do. Which is how you’ll find most intellectually engaging workplaces —with peers who are very smart. It’s important, then, to up your game — to find another edge that you didn’t yet hone or develop it anew.

And of course, it’s not something to stress over. It’s not a must have, but rather a fun thing. It’s just one of the things under what I would call a must have quality — a constant endeavor to change, being dynamic and open to rediscovering or remolding oneself. There’s no fun in being the exact same person you were a few years ago. That’s the kind of static on which moss grows fat.

And what’s the best way to be a better version of yourself? Learn from the best!