2020 is a year of remembrance. A year full of life lessons and teaching, here is my list(not in order):
Family is important
Family is really important. I have been living away from my family for more than 6 years before lockdown. As work-from-home started, I left my place of working and almost, living with my family for around 8 months. I though know about the importance of family and have back support, but living with family after years, made me realize it much more. Conflicts do happen, but it divides the things you solely manage. At a certain point in time, we as individuals demand unconditional support and it’s been satisfied only by family.
Journaling with bulleted points is better than write-ups:
I have been journaling for more than 6 years (regularly) and more than a decade that I write and forget about it. I have always opted for a long paragraphed based writing that put out everything about a single incident or thought. but it’s too one-dimensional. Even on the highest of my writings, I can’t track things or memorize my day overall, except for one or two things that I write about.
At the start of this year around May, I started journaling in bulleted points.
For last 2 months, Journaling in a bulleted way wrt 1. Health 2. Wealth 3. Learning 4. Reading 5. Writing 6. milestones 7. Happening Earlier, I was continuously journaling for last 5 years in an elaborated way. This misses out fine details and can't tab on many every component.Writing 5 journals/diary in parallel:
Daily Journaling (as above)
Thought Journal: Longer and elaborative. Ad-hoc. Mostly in Hindi. Includes goals, literary pieces, accomplishments. Though my writing frequency reduced it’s good to have a separate diary to record thoughts or wanted to write in detail.
Learning Journal: Notes on online courses I pursue, webinars.
Office Diary: Daily to-dos, office work notes.
Poetry Journal: record all online, offline self-written poetries. Frequency reduced in last 3-4 months.
Add one personal item to your work to-do list each day (Inspired by Matt D’Avella)
I got this idea from Matt D’Avella’s video below. Though all the ten small changes he mentioned in his video are worth being part of your habits, this one particular point (point 2.) I can vouch for it. It’s in my daily routine to write a to-do list(Similar to point 9 in the video) before starting my work. Including this change in my todos, made me realize about things we need to do other than our work. A personal thing reminds us of what we’re working for.
Investing is about confidence and patience but hold a rope, not a knife.
I have been investing for more than 4-5 years. There’s plenty of information and resource out there to learn more and more about the art of investing. This year, I have completed three certifications in Introduction of Stock market, Technical Analysis, and fundamental analysis. Every day, you learn something new about the market, technicality, or cognitive behavior of investors. To my knowledge, investing rely on two major components. Firstly, it is about confidence. Confidence builds through:
a. fundamentals of the company that is its promoters, their business model, the tailwind of the trend, reports of the company.
b. technical aspect of it, which tells you when to enter or exit the stock
And secondly, Investing is about patience. About controlling your emotions in the highest high and the lowest low. I made my mistake on this, like selling the stock quite early, buying at higher valuations. Also, mistakes like buying shares, which I find fascinating while skipping the research behind it. But again, patiently, you need to hold something which shouldn’t be a knife.
Try things to serve curiosity, but not too much at the same time. follow “do what you’re doing” principle
I regret doing multiple things at the same time, but eventually, I can’t control my curiosity. I need better models to keep many things doing independently. I was keenly searching to make it better and non-conflicting or confusing. Recently, I came across this simple and efficient technique — “Do what you’re doing“ from this piece.
Pay attention. Almost everything else will fall into place if you do. Don’t think about revisions in the tax code. Or anything else. In Latin: Age quod agis—”Do what you are doing.”
Every day has a story. Write it down, it will shape one
You won’t realize it, but every day has some story to tell. These will be revealed to you when you write about it. Explaining a simple phenomenon or patterns or incidents of your days can be turned into a story if you start penning it down. It will eventually be shaped into a pattern of a story, which has a start, body, and end. a lesson. Most of the time, we ignore it by mentioning it as boring or uninteresting, but not every story is about war, freedom, drama, it may come from our daily lives.
Vacating is more important than traveling
2020 is a different kind of year where we saw the government put up restrictions on territorial travels. In the lockdown phase, we realize the importance of traveling. Is traveling just enough?
Why there’s a need to travel?
To vacate from our mundane life and experience the unknown or better. Emptying your mind or vacating is the purpose or essence of traveling. As naval puts out —
We say “peace of mind” but really what we want is peace from mind
and I realize that we became too hostile to our environment that our soul needs something to get out of such patterns and responsibilities.
Understand the power of clarity
Around August of this year, I started a Twitter thread for my reading clarity. I lack clarity and certainty even after several readings on any particular subject. It lacks details. This Twitter thread is to track what I am reading, and it helped me recognize my reading pattern. It helped me to for better understanding and better clarity. These Twitter threads worked magic as my understanding has grown well, as well as I can able to memorize things better.
One thing which I lack is confidence, and it makes my mindset very confused. I took it seriously this year and remind myself that I need to increase my power of clarity. I try to organize myself better and understand the purpose of things. It helped me gain ownership of the project I am working on, recognizing the mistakes that can be avoided. Clarity helped me think from a long-term perspective.
Selling is harder than building
Last month, we started e-commerce of apparel and t-shirt customization. After a month of running it, I realize that selling is quite hard than building a product.
Good Product + Good Sale = Success
Good Product + Bad Sale = Failure
Bad Product + Good Sale = Success
Selling is tricky as you've engaged with customers, come up with more creativity, attract more eye-balls, and gain trust. In the long term, building something sustainable makes its mark, but selling is way harder, flexible.
Social relationships are long-term investments where returns increases when you don’t seek returns
Reading a book without reflecting on it is a waste of time
I read more than 15 books this year which is fairly enough and gave me a bunch of time to even reflect on it. There is a book called: “Atomic Habits”, whenever I end the chapter of the book, I think about the purpose of the passage and how to fit this in my life.
I even wrote a summary of few books like: “Coffe Can Investing”, “Zen mind beginner’s mind”, “Almanack of Naval Ravikant”, “Steal like an artist” in certain places that helped me to understand it better.
Here’s the thread on books I read this year:
There’s no freedom without discipline:
Discipline is key to freedom. This is like my byword for this year. When lockdown in Kashmir happened and former CM of the state, Omar Abdullah was on house arrest, he wrote this:
On a lighter note if anyone wants tips on surviving quarantine or a lock down I have months of experience at my disposal, perhaps a blog is in order.This discipline thing sticks to me. Financial disciple leads to financial freedom. Discipline in investing, monitoring your capitals, planning travels, and planning every input, helped in saving a lot of time.
80:20 rule or Pareto principle which I have been following for the last 2-3 years in which one needs to focus on 20% of the task to get 80% of the things. These principles helped in growing overall discipline.
Poetry eases the soul
I wrote more than a hundred poetries combined in years 2017 & 2018. Poetry to me is the language of the soul. In 2020, poetry helped me soothe the harsh realities of the current political scenario. In 2019, I disowned poetry as I find it irrelevant to the current time. Some abstract thought won’t even matter to anybody. But in the year 2020, my perception of poetry developed and I feel that like music, poetry is a healer.
I keep my eyes on good poetry.
Money matters, but can’t buy health, relationship, and family
In the initial days of lockdown, I feel too concerned about my health. I’ve very weak immunity and easily prone to viral and diseases. I always realize that sufficient money matters, but you can’t buy health and relationship with this. I love this quote by Naval —
A calm mind, a fit body and a house full of love must be earned
The pandemic gave me another reason to take off our physical as well as mental health.
Stay organized. it solves 50% of your problems
Staying organized solves 50% of your problems. As a developer, we have a habit of reducing redundant actions that will increase efficiency and give clarity.
I keep myself very organized.
a. Writing: Keeping different Journals.
b. Reading/Watching/Listening: I write down every book I read, every movie or series I watch, and different Spotify and youtube playlists for music and videos.
c. Stock Market: Created google sheet for portfolio, stock summary, and trade.
d. Assets: Recorded every asset like Savings, FD, real estate, Mutual funds, stock balance in a google sheet for tracking. I kept a separate spreadsheet for my aspirations as well. I wish I would de-clutter and automatize it more.
Both Google sheet and Google Keep are very beneficial tools for organizing regular stuff. Recently, I started using a very impressive app: Notion from regular Google keep.
You can’t change how society functions, but keep doing your bits
“Dittay Wichon Dena"
I came across this video in mid of year. This video of prolific Urdu writer Ashfaq Ahmed blinked randomly on my youtube, but I need to admit, it changed me a lot.
Dittay Wichon Dena can be loosely translated into “Giving from — ‘to be given’ wealth”. It’s our privilege that we are in the position of the giver.Sunk Cost Fallacy
At the starting of this year, I read a very interesting book — “The Art of Thinking clearly”. In this book, there’s a concept called “Sunk Cost Fallacy” is also included which says:
The sunk cost fallacy is most dangerous when we have invested a lot of time, money, energy or love in something. This investment becomes a reason to carry on, even if we are dealing with a lost cause. The more we invest, the greater the sunk costs are, and the greater the urge to continue becomes.
Of course, there may be good reasons to continue investing in something to finalise it. But beware of doing so for the wrong reasons, such as to justify nonrecoverable investments. Rational decision-making requires you to forget about the costs incurred to date. No matter how much you have already invested, only your assessment of the future costs and benefits counts.
This helped me with the financial set up as well as a personal relationship. Earlier, I have a habit to keep averaging the falling stock in a hope that it’ll gain some other day but instead it on limited capital, I instead increased the sunk cost.
Talk to yourself randomly
Have you ever talk to yourself? Do it regularly. Ask yourself random questions like “Are you okay?” or “Are you taking care of yourself” or “So, what’s the plan”?
Sometimes when I am done working late at night, I sit quietly and do this “let's talk” session with myself and, it helps me satisfy internally or pace down things.Quoting James Clear —
The most important conversation is the conversation you have with yourself each day.
It’s okay to be unproductive, unclear, or feeling self-disgust