An Experiment in Retirement

What I learned from my Volunteering attemtpts

2011-12-07T17:45:00.001-06:00

I wanted to share a little of what I learned about volunteering. First let me share the background of my volunteering efforts. The lessons are at the end of this post.

Like many of us, all my working life, I kept telling myself that once "I had a lot of time" I would devote a good chunk of it to 'volunteering efforts.' Prior to 2008, my volunteering efforts were mostly those sponsored by my company. We'd drop off something for occasional food and clothes drives, or buy, gift-wrap and drop off a toy for "underprivileged" kids during the Holidays. And a couple of times each year, in exchange for donating our time on a Saturday (races-for-causes, painting school classrooms and the like) we'd receive a logo-filled T-shirt, a goodie bag and the accompanying warm glow.

There were many occasions when I wondered if the amount of time and money that our corporation spent on organizing the event (the logistics, transportation, food for us, the T-shirts etc) weren't better spent by simply collecting money and giving it to the organization instead. But I am also pragmatic, and I understood that there is a "team building" aspect to these events.

Once we left our jobs, my wife and I looked for volunteering opportunities. We did try out several. (I am a big fan of the "marketplace" model that VolunteerInfo.net uses in many cities – matching non-profits with would-be volunteers.)

Of course, just because we showed up didn't mean that the organizations had the ability to utilize our skills. To oversimplify, what a lot of organizations needed was really some administrative help. Many of the small and local organizations really needed to improve their operational efficiency. Anyone who's spent time volunteering can tell you that. The feeling that for a few dollars an hour, anyone could have done what I was doing never went away. It wasn't what we had hoped for, but we did help out. However, with us moving from city to city frequently, we couldn’t be of much long-term help to these organizations.

What I felt was really lacking in volunteering at these places was 'scale.' I was more inclined to give my time if it would positively impact a lot of people rather than just a handful.

When I was in India, I chanced upon an email about an opportunity at NPTEL. I responded and was included almost right away. This was a nationwide effort to create instructional videos for engineering students (very similar to MIT's OCW). The scale and scope was there, plus they needed someone like me. Also, because this happened to be my alma mater, I was welcomed back and knew ways to get things done. The professors were churning out good videos. But not many people were watching them online.
My task was to help get the word out. And I even had access to a sizable budget. Plus, I had knowledge of both sides. I had taken some of these courses, been a student in one of the colleges and taught similar material during my grad school. I knew the strengths to tout and what needed to be improved. Also, the effort needed was quite similar to what a lot of middle managers do, so I had the experience. I felt very much at home. We organized workshops, visited colleges and it worked great for a few months.
They kept asking me to take a salary and become an NPTEL employee so that they could give me more responsibilities. The problem was that after a dozen years of corporate life, I didn't want to become an employee. I didn't want to have a boss to report to. I liked the autonomy that came with doing everything voluntarily and without pay.

I can now see that what I thought was a virtue was the real stumbling block. Since I didn't have a "contract" of any sort, it never went much beyond helping out on an as-needed basis. And then it was time for me to come back to the States.

Which brings me to my current thinking on volunteering efforts.

Lessons about volunteering:1.    Just because you think of yourself as capable doesn't mean that a non-profit can readily use your 'skills.'
2.    In my case, my efforts felt meaningful only when it was at a large scale, something that would impact many people. Also, somewhat paradoxically, whenever my volunteering efforts closely mimicked what my regular work was like, it felt satisfying. In other words, doing what I am reasonably efficient at doing, but doing it pro-bono felt good.
3.    Unless one becomes officially affiliated, one can't expect to be handed lots of responsibility and opportunities.

The Happiness Book that influenced me the most

2011-11-06T10:25:00.002-06:00

This is a long overdue post. While commenting on one of my posts on happiness, Chris P. asked me two questions: 1.What's the best happiness book you have read; and 2. Are you happier now?

The first question is easier to answer. Without a doubt it is Stumbling on Happiness by Harvard's professor Daniel Gilbert. This is not a self-help book, at least not in the shallow sense of the phrase. This is a very accessible book covering the latest research on our very human failure to predict what makes us happy. (It is full of cleverly constructed experiments that expose how our cognitive biases conspire to make us imagine the future poorly.) Prof. Gilbert is smart and articulate in the way we wish all our teachers were.

Before I read this book, a lot of my ideas about happiness were naïve. I first encountered a lot of new (to me) concepts in this book. Concepts like having a happiness "set point", the differences with which we rate our current experiences versus our memory of past happiness; and our skewed loss versus gain assessments. Perhaps the most important concept I picked up was that of Hedonic Adaptation.

Many of these concepts had a deep impact on me. I learned not to put too much weight in statements like "Once I get [ABC], I will …" or "As soon as [xyz] happens, my life will be wonderful again." This is the book that taught me to distrust many of my emotion-based expectations and anticipations.

I must add that Stumbling on Happiness was the first book of this genre that I read, which is one reason why it had a big impact on me. When I later read Sonja Lyubomirsky's How of Happiness, a lot of the material was already familiar to me, and thus that book didn’t have quite the same impact that Stumbling on Happiness did.

If you haven't read any of the books in the "Happiness Lit" genre I strongly recommend Stumbling on Happiness. It might change your life, just a little.

Chris's second question is: Am I happier now? This one is more difficult to answer. The short answer is yes, I am. Yes, because I am a little more aware of the underlying mechanisms at work. Perhaps an analogy would make my point better. Reading this book is like attending a movie appreciation class. The movies you view may not change, but you are able to see deeper into the ones that you do watch.

Year End Sunset

2011-11-02T11:11:00.000-05:00

When this calendar year ends, I am planning to stop updating this blog.

I have been at this 'Time Off' thing for 3.5 years. I will have 2 more months to make any new posts. I will try to post my lessons learned (hopefully they won't be platitudes.) There will be around 200 posts in all.

This blog was a good way to work out my thoughts and ideas in a somewhat public forum. But I feel that I have already shared whatever thoughts I wanted to share about taking sabbaticals/Time Off/Early Retirement.

3.5 years is roughly around 10% of most people's working lives. Seems like a decent point to stop this blog. And time to try something else.

Tim O'Reilly - Just don't run out of gas

2011-10-23T14:20:00.004-05:00

To me, the following analogy by Tim O'Reilly seems to be referring to 'money during retirement'. When thinking about how much is enough, the metaphor of 'gas for the road trip' seems very apt.

Tim O'Reilly: It was at this time that I formulated an image that I've used many times since: profit in a business is like gas in a car. You don't want to run out of gas, but neither do you want to think that your road trip is a tour of gas stations.

Replace "profit in a business" with "money during retirement." I have referred to the quote before, but I read it today in Tim's Google+ post, where he muses about the legacy that Steve Jobs left behind, and the wisdom of Tim's analogy hit me afresh.

Great Courses by The Teaching Company

2011-10-20T10:53:00.001-05:00

This might sound like a paid advertisement, but it is not. I am just a consumer who's always been impressed with The Teaching Company's products.

This company produces quite a number of audio and video courses under its Great Courses series. I have listened to and watched several full courses. They take time, but they are invariably excellent, no exceptions.

It turns out that I have been using their products for over 10 years now, but I only started to pay attention when Bill Gates mentioned them by name, in his GatesNotes blog. I had been searching for around 3 years for a macro-economics book whose material would be accessible to me. Bill Gates recommended a macro-economics series by Timothy Taylor titled America and the New Global Economy. This course came the closest to what I was looking for. My wife and I watched all 36 episodes earlier this year.

Bill Gates also recommended the "Big History" course by Oxford's David Christian and we are watching parts of it now. I don't have the words to describe how good this course is. (Bill calls it "his most favorite course" by TTC.)

As an aside, I am delighted (and grateful) that someone with my modest means can get to enjoy the exact same products that Gates with his purchasing power can.

If TED talks are fast food for our brains, then the Great Lectures are the healthy gourmet meal plans for our intellects.

Most of these DVD set costs several hundred dollars, but I am also seeing quite a few for under $40. Personally, I have always borrowed these from the libraries. Do check them out from your library and give it a try.

Each episode of any Teaching Company disk that I watch serves to remind me of why I should always chose time over everything else -- time to spend viewing the Great Courses.

Biggest Worry

2011-10-11T09:14:00.001-05:00

Quesiton: Deep down, what is your biggest worry?

Response: That someday I could become unexpectedly physically incapable, and my savings won't be enough to cover my healthcare costs. I really believe that we can weather all other contingencies. For now, we have a high deductible health insurance. But healthcare costs are where we are rolling the dice.

Handling Uncertainty

2011-10-07T07:55:00.003-05:00

Back when I worked for an airline, we'd go to the airport to fly "standby." If the plane had empty seats, we'd get on. If everyone showed up, we went home. By definition we couldn't book hotels, or have concrete travel plans. A few times we ended up in cities very different from the ones we intended to visit.

We never liked it, but we figured out ways to deal with the uncertainty. Most airline employees do. Not once did we end up with no hotel room to sleep in for the night. If you have a credit card, you can find a room, albeit at a high price.

Anyway, all that is back-story. I guess we learned from our "standby" mode of existence. I am no longer with an airline, but we are still doing 'stand-by.' When there is fluctuating demand and supply, there will be instances of over-capacity or over-demand.

The people I consult with call me for short projects when they have a need (higher demand). Other times I don't work. Home-owners or landlords sometimes look to sublet for a month or two (overcapacity). We rent from them. In the end, it always seems to work out.

So why do I do this? My shying away from long-term commitment stems from the belief that Flexibility equals Autonomy. And I want (the illusion of) autonomy over everything else.

If you can handle a level of uncertainty, you can make things work.

Conviction (Pirsig Quote)

2011-10-05T11:42:00.000-05:00

You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it is going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.

Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Early Retirement: The Only Criterion that Matters

2011-10-01T10:38:00.001-05:00

Question: Can I retire early?

Response phrased as another question: Do you have kids (or plan to)?
If yes, no you can't.
If no, yes you can.

What you really need to get by

2011-09-29T09:30:00.003-05:00

For nearly three years now, my wife and I have tried to be 'location independent people.' No apartments with long term leases. We move from place to place, seeing if we can make this mode work.

Repeatedly settling in and winding down over and over seems to be instructive. It has forced us to be efficient, to examine and rethink each of our possessions. (As an aside, here's my suggestion for anyone looking to de-clutter – Move houses)

So after nearly three years of doing this, here's my whittled down list of what I really need to get by: One big suitcase of sensible clothes, a sturdy set of multi-purpose pots and pans, a reliable car, and the very best electronic gadgets that I can afford to buy.

Everything else is only 'nice to have.'

A Few Quick posts

2011-09-27T09:26:00.000-05:00

I haven't been posting here much lately. Many reasons. Among them are the "rules" that I have created for myself. Rules on what to post, how to write it, how to not sound arrogant, what it should convey, and most important, my worries about who might misinterpret what I say.

All of that has stifled my output.

So I am attempting to break free. For the next few days, I will post a few short quick posts. I'll call them as I see them, not worry about my rules. If I offend, it is only a by-product, not the goal.

So take the next few posts with a grain of salt. All of them, for that matter.

Now is the time

2011-08-28T01:54:00.008-05:00

Even in Kyoto, I long for Kyoto – Basho

On paper, I have all the free time I can handle. And yet I don’t have enough of it.

This summer, my wife and I rented a condo in downtown Chicago for three months. We wanted to enjoy the city. The idea was to take leisurely walks and explore whatever caught our fancy. A summer vacation in our own city.

As soon as we moved in, we started discovering more things to do. Music concerts, festivals, library talks, author lectures, performances, new places to eat. I took on some consulting work. Thanks to Twitter, we discovered that there was great music every Thursday night, a neighborhood tour on Tuesdays, a foreign film festival every Wed, and jazz at lunch and lots more things. Friends and family came over to visit and stay. Pretty soon, we had so many engagements that we had to pick and choose.

In no time, my calendar was so full that I was just as busy as when I had a full time job. But this post is not about the numerous things to do in Chicago.

My main point is that there is never going to be enough time in life to do the things we want to. Each day, all of us are offered such an assortment of pleasurable diversions to choose from that we'll never have the kind of time in future that we secretly hope we will. Lennon was spot on when he reminded us to pay attention 'when we are busy making other plans.' No matter how many times we hear the cliché, this journey is the destination. This is it.

I am now convinced that our thinking is flawed when we say "Some day I am going to …" or when we tell ourselves "After I am done with this, I am going to get to the things I really want to." That's not quite the way things will unfold.

The real trick for each of us is to figure out how to do the soul-enriching things that we love and enjoy even as we do the things that occupy us day to day. Because this is it.

Emphasizing Mind over Material

2011-06-20T18:19:00.004-05:00

Discussions around the concept of time versus money interest me. I recently came across a couple of articles that discuss wealthy people's non-conventional approaches to spending their money.

The first one is an article in the LA Times (by Jessica Guynn) wherein she writes about how the new Silicon Valley millionaires who are shunning the traditional materialism of the affluent. They make up their own minds about what makes sense for them. "I have pictured myself owning expensive things and easily came to the conclusion that I would not have a materially more meaningful life because of them," says Moskovitz, one of the neo-millionaires mentioned in the article.

As Jessica writes:

It's not that this new generation of tech entrepreneurs doesn't seek status, Marwick said. They just seek it in different ways.

"This is not a community that values good looks, visible wealth or having a hot body. Those are not the ways that they distinguish high status from low status," Marwick said. "Technology millionaires don't hobnob with celebrities or buy a fancy car. They travel to Thailand or they fund an incubator. These things are just as expensive, but that's the classic hacker ethos that prizes the mind, not materials."

Read the full article here.

The second one is by Barry Ritholtz, a columnist for the Washington Post titled "7 life lessons from the very wealthy." At some level all of us know these lessons, but it is always good to be reminded.

One of Barry's lessons is:

Don’t become “cash rich” and “time poor.”
Work is the process of exchanging your time for money. Remember: What you do with your time is far more meaningful than the goods you accumulate with your money. If you are working so much to become rich but you ignore your spouse and miss seeing your kids grow up, you are actually poorer than you realize.

Barry Rithotz runs a blog called "The Big Picture." Read the full article here.

Assorted Links - Living deliberately

2011-05-16T11:55:00.006-05:00

A few quick assorted links for today. All of the following mostly deal with the idea of spending the limited time we have available thoughtfully and deliberately.

1. Merlin Mann of 43 folders on "Cranking."
Mann's day job is to write about time management. He posts about it and is writing a book on “how to reclaim your email, your attention, and your life." He wants us all to find the time and attention to do our best creative work. In the process though, he finds that he is not following his own suggestions. This post is in reaction to that realization.

2. Is a Well-Lived Life Worth Anything? (HBR)
Umair Haque laments the loss of "Eudaimonia" and says that we have replaced it with "Opulence" and materialistic pursuits. Some of the phrases he uses are worth thinking about: hedonic opulence vs. seeking eudaimonic prosperity. Let's hope that the Eudaimonic Revolution which he predicts does indeed happen, where everyone tries to "master the the art of living meaningfully well."

3. PenMachine's (Derek Miller) Last post.
Derek Miller's very last post. In this poignant read, he writes about everything he will miss, his family having to cope without him, and reminds us that we live in a "wondrous place."

Geoff Dyer - Otherwise Known As The Human Condition

2011-05-09T11:01:00.008-05:00

It takes a bit of getting used to, the idea that spending 365 days a year doing exactly as you please might be a viable proposition. – Geoff Dyer

I spent the better part of last week reading Geoff Dyer's latest book, "Otherwise Known as the Human Condition." The book, which is a collection of his reviews and essays on a wide range of subjects (essays about photos, book reviews and synopses about authors, about World War I, pieces about jazz and its music-makers and a number of "personal" articles that are category-defying), is an exhilarating read.

To label Dyer a polymath is inadequate. He writes with confidence and intimate knowledge on a very wide range of topics, sharing his candid opinions without holding back.

I learned about Geoff Dyer from a review by Lonely Planet's Tony Wheeler. I am not reading much fiction these days (my attempt at "culling") and so I didn't read his "Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi."

However, when I came across his Human Condition book, I picked it up. I have found that reading an author's "journalism in book form" is actually a very good way to get introduced to authors I have not read before. These types of books give us the option to read just a few articles to see if they resonate. If we like them, we can go on to read more of the author's books.

In this collection there were a number of articles that were often too literary for my taste. I was happy to abandon them and move on to the next article. I must add that this book is not for everyone. But I also discovered authors I should read –Rebecca West (her Black lamb and Grey Falcon) and Ryszard Kapuzcinski's (his real life adventures) and it was illuminating to read about what Dyer thinks of writers I admire—Cheever and James Salter.

I don’t think I have consciously thought about the difference between ambition and aspiration, not quite in the way Geoff makes them distinct, while also giving us a hint of what it takes to make it as a writer or an artist.

It is possible to have aspirations without having ambition – and vice versa. […] I had aspirations but was not ambitious. I liked the idea of writing because that was a way of not having a career. […] And though many of my friends aspired to be artists, not many of them had the will, talent, luck, or stamina to stick at it. Some of them were just too lazy.

In many of his nostalgic pieces there is an undercurrent of melancholy. Consider this section from his essay "On the Roof" where he wonders about what must have happened to all the people that he used to hang out with in the early 80's, the friends that he no longer kept in touch with:

The same things that happen to everyone: home ownership, marriage, a kid or two, disappointment, divorce, cancer scares, worsening hangovers, death of a parent or two, qualified success, school fees, depression, sudden rejuvenation following the discovery of Ecstacy, holidays in India or Ibiza, telly watching, coming out (as homosexuals), coming in (as heterosexuals), going to the gym, more telly watching, new computers, bad knees, less squash, more squash, more tennis, rewriting (and downplaying) of earlier ambitions to diminish scale of disappointment, fatal breast cancer, less sleep, less beer, more wine, more cocaine, hardly any acid, frightening ketamine overdose, total breakdown, more money, discreet tattoos, baldness, stopping going to the gym, yoga, even more telly watching…

The book has five sections, titled Visuals, Verbals, Muscials, Variables and Personals. After wowing the reader with his breadth of expertise, in the section titled "Personals" is where he becomes himself, descending from the super-human perch I had placed him on after reading the earlier sections of the book. He writes about growing up in the UK in a middle-class family with its economizing ways, and how he found a way out by becoming a "scholarship boy."

Geoff is very humorous and often self-deprecating in a confident way. Here he shares an exchange with a librarian at the exalted Institute of Jazz Studies in Rutgers, NJ, where the librarian gets to wondering about Geoff's audacity at writing a jazz book.

"So what are your credentials for writing a book about jazz?"
"I don't have any," I said. "Except I like listening to it."

Given where I am, there are many sentences and sentiments in the book that resonated.

[On his thoughts on getting a Ph.D as opposed to being interested in everything]: "Post-graduate work takes you down a path of greater and greater specialization (culminating in the supreme pointlessness of a Ph.D.)"

[On acquiring a taste for idleness]: "If Oxford had given me a taste for idleness, living on the dole in Brixton refined it still further."

[On choosing autonomy]: I have done pretty much as I pleased, letting life find it's own rhythm, working when I felt like it, not working when I didn't. I've not always been happy – far from it—but I have always felt responsible for my happiness and liable for my unhappiness.

In short, Geoff Dyer's Otherwise Known as the Human Condition delighted me while also making me ponder about many things that I haven't thought deeply about.

Sparked: Micro-volunteering for busy people

2011-04-28T16:43:00.005-05:00

Micro-volunteering. I admire the creativity of the marketing team that thought up this concept. Even though each one of us probably wishes to volunteer our time to causes we believe in, our schedules simply don't permit it. With so many little things that need taking care of, and errands to run, it is near impossible to even set aside (say) 4 hours on any given Saturday for volunteering efforts. These days, we are all overburdened sherpas teetering under the load of our personal and professional to-do's.

Which is where the genius of a site like Sparked.com comes in. By allowing us to "micro-volunteer" they are able to remove that barrier to entry. Not too long ago, I found a mention of Sparked.com, an online micro-volunteering site. I was intrigued enough to investigate and I am so glad that I did.

The sign up process is a cinch – you can use your Facebook login (if you like). 100s of non-profits submit their "challenges." We (the volunteers) can click on 2-3 causes from a list of 12 (education and poverty where the ones I selected) and then the "skills" that we have to offer. (Again, from 12 choices I selected IT, Design and Copywriting.) And that was it. I was enrolled and in.

I was immediately presented with dozens of challenges for my causes that could use my skills. Each challenge is a task that takes just a few minutes. Probably because I chose Design and Copywriting, I was offered the chance to review a fund-raising appeal letter, and to critique non-profit websites. I completed a couple of challenges and it was as easy as adding comments to blogs.

A side benefit for me was that I got to find out about so many neat non-profit efforts that I didn't even know existed. In 30-45 minutes, I was able to respond to a 3-4 challenges.

Sparked.com also sends me reminder emails (if I have not visited the site in 7-10 days) and sends me a teaser challenge or two, asking if I would help out. So I go back and oblige if I have a few minutes.

Please note that I have only tried out Sparked for a few weeks. Normally, I would try out a site for a few months before posting about it. But it occurs to me that perhaps the best way I can assist Sparked is to help get the word out.

Each time I help out on a challenge, I get a buzz that is sweet and pure. Be sure to try this out and see if micro-volunteering is for you.

Frugal options

2011-04-27T10:30:00.003-05:00

I came across this list, which is quite good, except that it romanticizes frugality. At first, I thought that this was a good list for early-retirement aspirants. However, if you are not already doing a good majority of the things listed here, then maybe you should rethink this whole early-retirement idea. Unless of course you are pretty sure that you have definitely saved up enough.

Two Quotes that resonated

2011-04-25T10:53:00.002-05:00

Here are a couple of quotes that resonated:

“If you can’t change the people around you, it’s time to change the people around you.”

That one is by Peter Shankman, in his great post "How to Jailbreak your Life."

"Time is not money, time is worth more than money.”

I got that one from a review of Adrian Ott's book, The 24 hour customer

So Many Good things, So Little Time… and Is that Okay?

2011-04-21T14:09:00.004-05:00

One big reason for me to leave my full time job was the hope of having more time to read good books, to watch good movies and to pursue other good things which I couldn't get to because I was forever pressed for time. To my way of thinking, my job (which I loved) took away from my pursuit of too many other good things.

I have come across very few people who felt the same amount of pressure as I did about time marching on relentlessly. (I've gotten much better now.) Therefore, it was a delight when I read Linda Holmes's NPR MonkeySee article and saw that she knew exactly what I was feeling.

In her post "The Sad, Beautiful Fact That We're All Going To Miss Almost Everything," she writes:

The vast majority of the world's books, music, films, television and art, you will never see.

This exact thought used to leave me depressed.

Linda then goes on to list out two possible responses to this immense realization. One response is active and aggressive culling -- to try to pick and choose what we consume because our time is so limited. ("So many movies, so little time.") The second response is surrender – to make peace with this realization of our finitude. The latter is the one I have trouble with but am making progress towards, albeit very slowly.

As Linda describes it:

Surrender is the moment when you say, "I bet every single one of those 1,000 books I'm supposed to read before I die is very, very good, but I cannot read them all, and they will have to go on the list of things I didn't get to."

It is the recognition that well-read is not a destination; there is nowhere to get to.
[…]

That's your moment of understanding that you'll miss most of the music and the dancing and the art and the books and the films that there have ever been and ever will be, and right now, there's something being performed somewhere in the world that you're not seeing that you would love.

The only part where I disagree with her post is where she tries to convince us that missing is actually a good thing.

"It's sad, but it's also ... great, really," she writes

Maybe I still haven't quite surrendered enough to see how it is so great. I can see myself coming to terms with the fact that in this lifetime, all I can ever hope to savor is a tiny cup dipped in a vast ocean of wondrous things. Linda makes it sound like experiencing is an all-or-nothing deal. But to my way of thinking, savoring two cups from that ocean is better than savoring just one.

But that's just a very small nitpick.

Linda's entire post is excellent. Don't miss reading it.

The 4 Hour Work Week - no middle ground here

2011-04-14T09:18:00.004-05:00

When it comes to Tim Ferriss, there seems to be no middle ground. People either love him, or detest everything he propounds.

Consider this comment in this blog from Mike:
I can see from your sidebar that you're reading the 4HWW. Please, save yourself the time. Tim Ferriss is, in my opinion, a digital snake oil salesman and his book is the worst kind of vague, bombastic hype.

I do see Mike's point. Each time I read a chapter of the book, I can't decide if Tim Ferriss is doing an infomercial, or if he really has figured out a few things the rest of us haven't. (More on that later.)

I did find one level-headed review is Charles Broadway's blog C. In the post titled "Is Tim Ferriss A Scam Artist?"

Charles writes:

The only person who can live the Tim Ferriss lifestyle is Tim Ferriss, but the value of his book and blog comes from his zany way of looking at problems and all the ideas you get from his lifestyle experiments. He is a lifehacker extraordinaire.

The entire post is quite good, and Charles is full of ideas and sentiments I agree with.

So here's my own take on the 4HWW:

I actually got quite a bit from the book, especially in terms of different perspectives. 4HWW is also full of great resources for marketing, especially if I ever dabble with an internet business of my own. In a sense, Ferriss is like Jacob of Early Retirement Extreme. These guys hold such extremes of their points of view and with such utter conviction that they force us to re-evaluate our opinions. It is good to be jolted like that from time to time.

What I don't like about Ferriss is that he mocks the timid and the conservative. Surely, he knows that his ideas are not for everybody.

Plus, I actually got the entire 4HWW as an e-book for free in some promotion that Ferriss did. (Wired magazine named Ferriss the self-promoter-of-the year!) I recommend that people check out the book (search the web for a free copy of the e-book) and decide for themselves.

Measurements that mislead

2011-04-07T10:51:00.001-05:00

After reading this article by Jonah Lehrer, I wonder if perhaps I have been placing too much faith in metrics and measurements.

In most jobs there seems to be no clear way to measure the truly high performers versus those who are lucky to be at the right place. When I worked a corporate job, I would often wish that all employees could be assigned objective performance ratings (something akin to the Elo chess ratings instead of the subjective ratings that their supervisors give.)

I know of several people (myself included) who can raise their performance when they know that they are being observed and evaluated. Even so, Lehrer's article in WSJ is enlightening in the one main point it makes: That it is important to distinguish between "maximum performance" under staged conditions and long term "typical performance."

Maximum performance has its place, but when it comes to ourselves we should be focusing on our typical performance.

Here's the link to the article.

That's Enough

2011-03-18T11:48:00.001-05:00

One of the most difficult decisions to make in the context of retirements or scaling down is to know if what one has is enough. I know first-hand that these doubts never go away. There are always scenarios in which the savings seem inadequate.

In light of that, I really liked this poem by a favorite writer of mine – Kurt Vonnegut. (I found the poem in Bob Sutton's blog, Work Matters)

It's a small poem that appeared in the New Yorker back in '05. I am posting it in full.

Joe Heller

True story, Word of Honor:
Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer
now dead,
and I were at a party given by a billionaire
on Shelter Island.
I said, "Joe, how does it make you feel
to know that our host only yesterday
may have made more money
than your novel 'Catch-22'
has earned in its entire history?"
And Joe said, "I've got something he can never have."
And I said, "What on earth could that be, Joe?"
And Joe said, "The knowledge that I've got enough."
Not bad! Rest in peace!"

--Kurt Vonnegut

Eudaimonic Well-Being as opposed to Happiness

2011-03-16T11:03:00.004-05:00

Here's a short article in WSJ that makes a distinction between Happiness and "Eudaimonia."

From the article:

The pleasure that comes with, say, a good meal, an entertaining movie or an important win for one's sports team—a feeling called "hedonic well-being"—tends to be short-term and fleeting.

Researchers have found those with greater purpose in life were less likely to be impaired in carrying out living and mobility functions, like housekeeping, managing money and walking up or down stairs.

A lot of it is common-sense, but it is good to remember that these two are related but quite different. The full article is here. Thanks to Sateesh for the pointer.

Another Perspective on Stability

2011-03-07T11:34:00.005-06:00

Stability in our lives is something that most of us intuitively seek out. Mr. Kukunoor, it turns out, has a very different perspective on stability.

Nagesh Kukunoor was a featured speaker in IIT Madras at this year's Saarang festival (2011). He narrated the story of how he came into movie making. He was working in Atlanta, GA, as an environmental consultant, leading a comfortable life. However, he harbored this lifelong desire to make movies though he had no training in it whatsoever. Mustering up courage he quit his US job, sold off all his stuff and moved in with his parents in Hyderabad, India. Using his own savings and his credit cards, and with a lot of assistance from both his parents he wrote and shot the movie "Hyderabad Blues." After starting out slow, the movie really caught on and Nagesh Kukunoor made a name for himself as a director.

Based on his own experience, Nagesh Kukunoor came to believe that stability (and the comfort that a regular paycheck brings) works actively against those who want to pursue their passions. He believed in this so strongly that he named his own production company SIC – which stands for Stability Is a Curse. He has gone on to make around a dozen movies under this banner.

PS – In that talk, Nagesh also narrated the story of trying to get Hyderabad Blues sold. India's Star TV expressed interest in the movie. Nagesh who had run out of money once the movie was made, and was headed back to the US asked for Rs. 2 lakh, which is quite a small sum. But Star TV refused to pay that and Nagesh dropped the asking price to Rs. 1 lakh. The network again refused and in desperation Nagesh said he'd settle for 0.5 lakh. The network wouldn't even pay that. In the next few weeks, the movie got picked up by a couple of international film festivals. Within months, Star TV came knocking and paid Nagesh Rs. 50 lakh (100 times his last asking price) for the rights to broadcast it.

The Early Retirement Dilemma in One Sentence

2011-03-03T11:36:00.003-06:00

Barbara Ehrenbeck in her book Nickel and Dimed (a good read) raises the question of why she gave up her job and proceeds to answers it herself.

I treasure the gloriously autonomous, if not always well paid, writing life.

It can't be stated more succinctly than that.
Choose only one: a) Autonomy or b) a good salary.

How An Economy Grows, and Why it Crashes

2011-02-26T11:13:00.001-06:00

My friend Kalyan liked the book "How an Economy Grows, and Why It Crashes" so much that he bought 4 copies, and gifted one to us. That's how I came to know about and read the book.

If someone had told me that any author could explain the differences between "Keynesian ideas" and the "Austrian school" to any lay person, I'd have been highly doubtful. But the Schiff brothers do it, in the first 3 chapters of this highly readable book.

Peter D Schiff is an investor with a great understanding of economics. Let's assume that 1 in 50 people work as teachers. But only 1 among these 50 teachers is a master teacher. Only they have grasped the subject to such an extent that they can explain it to others with lucidity and simplicity. Peter Schiff is one such teacher.

This book has much going for it. It is a book presented as one ongoing allegory. If you have read "The Richest Man in Babylon" or "The Wealthy Barber" you know the kind. This book follows that storytelling tradition.

The story starts with 3 guys (Able, Baker and Charlie) stranded in an island where they have to catch fish by hand daily to survive. Each and every concept of trade and economics is built as these three become sophisticated in their economic dealings.

The authors build seamlessly from microeconomics concepts to grander topics in macroeconomics. Using examples of two larges countries (US and China, very thinly disguised) the authors play out several dire scenarios. In its criticisms, the book is hard-hitting and opinionated, and doesn't hold back.

The authors come down very strongly against holding on to US dollars. In a way, this book serves a personal wake-up call to me, because I don't own any tangible assets at all, and all savings are in paper US dollars, which Schiff feels has to fall prey to eventual inflation.

In each chapter, boxed "Reality Checks" are sprinkled on the side margins for extra clarity. "Takeaways" are given at the end of each chapter to reinforce the economics concepts introduced.

The book is a very easy read, and can be finished in one to two sittings. Everyone who is 15 or older should read this book. I can't think of any exceptions

My Most Enjoyed in 2010 List

2011-01-05T09:33:00.004-06:00

Most Enjoyed in 2010

Books:
Fooled by Randomness by Taleb
Most enjoyed classic: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig
Why An Economy Grows, and How it Crashes by Peter Schiff
Happiness Books – The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin
Delivering Happiness by Tony Hseieh

Videos: Richard Dawkins DVD set – Growing Up in the Universe
Himalaya by Michael Palin (BBC)

Movies: The Social Network, A Year of Saturdays, Bard Songs, Certified Copy

Web Video: Numerous Ted Talks especially from Ted Global 2010 in Oxford.

Travel – India: Central TamilNadu road trip (so much to see in "my" home state).
US West Coast trip: 35 days on the road, with our car serving almost as a makeshift RV. (We slept in motels.) It was a great way to rediscover much that America has to offer.
Specifically, the 10 days that we spent traveling in New Mexico (esp. white Sands NM).

Sporting Event – Watching Tendulkar score 200 in a One day match (on TV).

Escape: Managing to avoid the 2010-11 Midwest winter.

Place to Stay: Candlewood Suites in IL – Hassle-free living, so much so that it felt like home.

Gadget: The iPad, (hands down). It changed the way we approach travel (and much of) planning and was invaluable during the road trip.

Project: Working on The One Paragraph Project, choosing 'Conflicts Around the World' as a broad topic. Just a little research made me appreciate so much more of the world news.

Software: Paint.Net (free graphics software)

Blogs: GatesNotes & Marginal Revolution

Food:
Freshly made guacamole with warm torilla chips.
Papa John's pizzas, esp thin crust.
Gits Rava Idli's.
Bryer's Raspberry and Dark Chocolate Ice Cream.

Home Appliance: Rice cooker: We bought a small (3-cup) electric rice cooker and it ended up altering what we ate during our West Coast trip.

Personal: My mother's remarkable recovery after a major operation. Spending time with my parents and (re)connecting with them.

RetiredSyd's "Most Enjoyed in 2010" List

2010-12-16T21:12:00.004-06:00

When I read Sydney's blog, Retirement – A Full Time job, it often feels as if I am reading my own thinking. In her clear manner, she explores the same topics that I am intrigued by. She was recently interviewed by NPR, and has a blog in US News called On Retirement.

Here is her response to my post request – her list of the things she has most enjoyed in 2010.

Sydney's Most Enjoyed in 2010 List:

1) Baby Luca (after my friend suffered several heartbreaking miscarriages, her dreams finally came true),
2) A month in Manhattan on a home swap (and in particular, learning to love baseball with my husband at Yankee's Stadium),
3) And just in time to watch our own SF Giants win the World Series!
4) Enjoying three trips to Las Vegas with incredible friends (and icing on the cake, coming out a few hundred dollars ahead)
5) Knowing that 30 million uninsured Americans will be able to get health coverage,
6) The chance to meet wonderful new readers through an opportunity to blog for U.S. News,
7) Enjoying a little part-time work for fun people that I admire,
8) Ram's link to HBR's "How Will You Measure Your Life?" That article made a huge impact on me.

Sydney

If any of you do create your own list, do send me a copy and I will be happy to post it here.

Related Post:
Requesting your "Best of 2010" List

How Irreversible is the decision really?

2010-12-06T11:42:00.006-06:00

When discussing early retirement with friends and acquaintances, I sense that in their minds this decision feels irreversible. As in, if you choose to give up your work and take up early retirement and it doesn't work out for whatever reason, you are completely done for.

I know this feeling well. This feeling of going down a one-way street. But this thinking is not fully correct. Sure, there are certain aspects to quitting a regular job that have long term consequences. But that is not the full story.

Let's tackle the biggest fear that comes up in any discussion first. What if one runs short of money? The fact that you won't be earning a salary, but might need some money (for unforeseen circumstances) can be scary. Fortunately, this can be mitigated with some planning and foresight.

People who have only worked full-time don't seem to fully appreciate the range of options that are available. Options like taking up part-time work or consulting or freelancing. It will initially take some time, but these can be a real possibility if you keep your skills fairly current (always with an eye on staying employable).

There are, however, certain things that are difficult to get back, if you do quit mid-career. Irreversible is too strong a word. What I really mean is "difficult to reverse." For example: If you were progressing rapidly on a career-path, it might be difficult to regain that if you take a long break. Or, say you are part of a great team that is doing excellent and engaging work. If you quit that, you may not easily find that sense of camaraderie and purpose again. Also, if you are currently very well compensated, it won't be easy to attain comparable compensation after a 2-3 year break doing something else. (Individual cases vary, of course)

So there are both aspects to the decision of quitting a full-time job. What feels scary is not really the irreversible part. But the difficult-to-revert aspects do have to be considered before any decision regarding early retirement can be made.

Requesting Your Personal "Best of 2010" List

2010-12-02T15:48:00.004-06:00

This post is a request. This is a request for you to send me your Personal "Best of 2010" list, so that it can be shared with others. Reading your list might inspire someone, remind them of something they too enjoyed.

Now that it is December, we can expect to start seeing lots of "Best of 2010" lists in the media. For over 10 years now, I have been creating my own personal "Things I most enjoyed this year" lists. I have also been encouraging my friends to do the same. Those who do take the few minutes it takes invariably say that they are very glad that they did. (And it is always a pleasure to review these 'most enjoyed' lists I created a few years back.)

This year, I thought I will ask here and see if any blog readers want to participate. Just open your notebook (or open a new file) and jot down things that come to your mind about what you enjoyed in 2010. If you keep adding to your list, you'll be surprised at how many things you can think of in just 2-3 days.

The Rules are quite simple:
1. Just create a list of whatever it was that you most enjoyed this year. Some sample categories could be Movies, Events, Books, Concerts, Places, Travel, Sports, Hobbies, People, TV shows, Blog articles, Websites, Courses… pretty much anything you enjoyed in 2010.
2. Feel free to create your own categories.
3. These have to be things you enjoyed, so for this exercise leave out any negative experiences.

Simply type up your list in a Word document or as an email and send them to me at retirement.experiment@gmail.com. Include your name (or make up a pseudonym) which I can use when posting your response. (If you don't want your name publicized, then indicate that in your email and I'll post the list without your name.)

Yes, it takes a bit of social courage to share our personal list, but I feel that it is important to share them anyway. Even if you don't wish to share your lists, please consider creating one for yourself, and sharing it with your close friends and family.

I look forward to getting at least a few "Personal Best of 2010" lists this year. If I receive any, I will post them here. I will also post my own list here as well.

Related Post: Creating A Year in Review Document

The "Currency" of my Life

2010-11-29T11:33:00.004-06:00

"I live to climb rocks," I overheard a guy in Moab, UT say not too long ago. He said that he scheduled everything else in his life around his climbing time. I had been thinking about trade-offs, and that rock climber gave me a good way to frame my own question: "What do I live for?"

I think of it as a "currency" of life. My current thinking about work, retirement and sabbaticals seems to boil down to this one question: "What do I value as currency in my life?"

In contrast to when I had a corporate job with a fixed daily schedule and a steady salary, I seem to be making a lot more trade-offs nowadays. Should I opt to hold on to my free time over earning some extra income (freelance)? Should I choose to do something by myself (spending effort) versus spending money?

I made one rule to the currency question. It can't be a specific goal. It is not something that we achieve. So things like getting a particular promotion or title, passing an exam, or reaching a certain net-worth number don't count as life currency. (All of these are enablers.) It should be things that we want to do over and over again, taking joy in it each time.

That rock climber clearly knows his currency – it is rock climbing. Similarly there are a number of hobbyists who are essentially biding time until they can get back to their hobbies.

Unlike him, I don't seem to have one overarching activity, but the answer is some combination of things I never tire of. (I am leaving out universal things like spending quality time with friends and family.)

In my case, it is having the freedom (time autonomy) to choose pleasurable activities. I live to read books, to watch movies, to watch non-fiction DVDs, to listen to slide presentations and to attend lectures by smart thinkers. Also, I live to watch Ted talks.

I used to live to visit new places but that ardor has dimmed for some reason. So I guess the currency of our lives can evolve over time.

So, what's your currency? I was curious if readers have their own way of thinking about these all-important trade-offs decisions.

My Volunteering Do's and Don'ts

2010-11-25T12:36:00.003-06:00

[Thanksgiving Day]

Certain volunteering experiences leave me feeling high and totally buzzed, while others end up being frustrating at many levels. As a reminder to myself for the future, here are my do's and don'ts as they relate to volunteering efforts.

1. For any volunteering effort, the potential scope of impact is important. The bigger the scope, the more engaged I become. And if things are in the inception stage or just starting-up, then I feel more involved, as opposed to being "a cog in professionally run charity events." (This is a personal preference)

2. Make a distinction between a one evening or one day effort, and a bigger commitment. If it a one-time deal with small time commitments, I should definitely take it up. These usually lead to more doors getting opened (and the people typically present me with opportunities that are a better fit).

3. If it is a longer term commitment, I should think it through. Longer term volunteering only worked for me if it was something that really wanted to do anyway.
a. If it feels really easy, then that's a good sign that I will like it
b. If it is a cause that I feel is worth spending my time on, I have almost never regretted my time and efforts. (A good portion of voluntary activities involve mundane and non-skilled administrative tasks.)

4. I should remember to do a Time-Benefit analysis - preferably on paper, but at least in my mind. I have been a part of several 'charitable fund-raising' causes where the total number of corporate and personal hours spent were hugely disproportional to the money raised. I do understand the argument around awareness, team-building and "social engagement" but still these huge efforts leave me feeling somewhat deflated about the whole task. I end up feeling that as a group we are deluding ourselves in the name of doing good.

5. If the volunteering task demands a skill that I am reasonably qualified for it (and strangely, if it is very similar to the profession "work" that I am trained for) I have almost always come off with a positive experience.

The above are just a few notes for me to keep in mind before I sign up for anything.

But here's the most important lesson. When I find the right volunteering opportunity I will know it. It feels like being hit on the head with a 2 by 4. It is okay to wait until then.

A Fistful of Rice - Vikram Akula and microfinance

2010-11-22T11:04:00.006-06:00

"Doing well by Doing Good"

Why do some people succeed wildly while others, who seem equally capable, flounder?

When I first read about Vikram Akula in WSJ's front page back in 2006, I remember thinking about this question. I was only generally interested in the idea of microfinance.

Back in 2006, to satisfy myself, I reached for the easy answers – attributing others' success to some combination of luck and talent.

But this book, "A Fistful of Rice" by Vikram Akula shows me a lot more of why he succeeded. And why my simple answers are wrong. I have previously read a couple of books on micro-finance (including A Billion Bootstraps which I liked very much) but Akula's book is different.

Akula is a surprisingly good writer and story-teller, and I found his book very easy to read. (My wife was the one who spotted the book and brought it home, but I commandeered it and read it right away.) Ultimately, this is not at all a 'micro-finance' book, but it is a book about one idealistic guy who uses micro-finance as a backdrop to pursue his idea relentlessly, and ends up making a big difference in the world.

It is fascinating to look at India through the eyes of someone like Akula, whose parents are India-born, but who himself grew up in the US, in Schenectady, NY.

Most of the world heard about Vikram Akula (and his company SKS) when he became an "overnight sensation" in 2006. But the real story is what came before that, and all the hardships that he had to put himself through, starting in the 90's.

As an idealistic young man, right after graduating from Tufts, Vikram chose to go to India, to spend a couple years in rural Andhra Pradesh. He volunteered to hand out small loans and learned about the world of the poor. He maxed out his personal credit cards to pay for his expenses. With the best education in the world (Tufts, Yale and the Univ of Chicago) he could have had any job he wanted to, but he forsake all that to pursue what he believed in.

Entrepreneurs take risks that the rest of us shy away from. One particular example struck me as an example of why he has succeeded at such a grand scale. Even though he only devotes a page to this, I found it very telling.

After having watched the horrendously difficult account-keeping efforts of Grameen (in Bangladesh) where they struggle with notebooks and paper, Akula gets convinced about the need for automation and software to grow his operations. Even though his company, SKS has existed only for 2 years, and his total loan portfolio is only $25,000, he sets aside $250,000 for software development. Now, that is true power of conviction.

The other thing that struck me was how he had to ask his friends and family for small loans, so convinced was he about his model. He spends hours pitching to people and then they hand over $50 or $100. (An echo of exactly what Greg Mortensen went through, which he writes about his Three Cups of Tea.) Asking our friends and family for money is not something most of us want to do.

And when all the planets are aligned, good things happen. Along the way, Akula gets grant-writing advice from Michelle Obama back when she was a community volunteer in Chicago, his work is observed by Rahul Gandhi (a young leader of India's Congress party) and he gets written up in the media, which the WSJ picks up. Soon, he gets invitations from Bill and Melinda Gates, and a procession of Silicon Valley VC's come knocking.

Vikram Akula makes a very strong argument for "doing well by doing good" i.e. that it is perfectly okay to profit from lending to the poor. (The poor are not dumb, he says, nor do they want handouts. Mostly, they just need a little capital.) I happen to subscribe to this line of argument.

The book's last chapter, titled "Google Territory" is especially gratifying to read. Having built up such a vast consumer base, he is now able to do so much in terms of bringing amenities, medication, cell phone technology and education opportunities to India's rural poor.

Readers who are curious about micro-finance, about realistic attempts to make a dent in ending poverty, and most importantly about how one dedicated person can indeed make a difference should read this book. (176 pages, but you can read it easily in 2-3 sittings)

There seems to be no quick short cut to success. People succeed because they are fearless about the size of their vision, their belief in it, and are willing to put in 10-15 years of their life effort into what they believe in. They succeed because of sheer tenacity, where the rest of us easily give up.

Related post: All or Nothing Players

CNN Heroes of 2010

2010-11-18T11:21:00.006-06:00

Every year on Thanksgiving Day, CNN broadcasts its "Heroes of the year" special program. This started in 2007, with Anderson Cooper hosting it. Ten Blue Ribbon "Heroes" (people who are helping various causes in their communities) are featured.

In order to make it more participatory leading up to the broadcast, CNN runs a web-poll, where we get to vote for our favorite heroes. There is an awards-night-style reception where all 10 candidates are brought in and their work featured. The winner is announced, and they get funds for their causes. More importantly, all of us get to learn how we might get involved in causes that interest us.

This year's contest seems to be in earnest. Starting from about a month back, I have been getting emails from friends of friends asking me to vote for this or that candidate. People have created Facebook pages and launched e-campaigns to garner votes for their favorite hero.

To me, they all seem like deserving candidates, and your vote is, of course, your private decision. But be sure to check out the pages of all 10 people. And on Thanksgiving night (Nov 25th), consider switching on CNN for 2 hours – 8E/7Central.

Links I liked

2010-11-17T13:47:00.003-06:00

1. Real Men - as selected by successful women
2. Words - a 3-min video-poem by Will Hoffman and Daniel Mercadante
3. A Cut-up artist - A lady with an exacto knife and a lot of time

A Proxy for Growth

2010-11-15T15:13:00.005-06:00

[Written in April 2010, just prior to leaving India]

Looking back at this last year spent in India, it often seems like I haven’t grown at all. I had the time to do anything I wanted.

As a small consolation, I did attempt to answer one question:
Who am I if all the usual parameters that define me were taken away– things like my job, my home and my home town?

In my reading, I came across a phrase that I liked – "loosed of all moorings" and I jotted it down. So who are we when we are loosed of all moorings?

In my case, I chose to visit India and spend time in different cities to learn the answers. In ways that I couldn’t have anticipated, this past year has been a time of renewal, of stock-taking.

Most of the changes that occurred have happened inside my head, in my thinking. At one point or another, everything seems to have changed, at least a little. My idea of what work should be like, the reasons for working at all, of who is family and of who my friends are, of where my home is when I don't have a "base" anywhere to return to, of where my roots are (is it geography or the ideas that I align with?), and of my constantly evolving ideas on volunteering and service to community.

One thing has been common in all of this -- I have had to re-evaluate all of these beliefs. First, I had to admit to myself that my thinking was full of stereotypes, and then to try to work my way past these stereotypes and "borrowed values" that I have been carrying around for years.

Perhaps that is growth.

Different Types of Fun

2010-11-11T10:47:00.004-06:00

Continuing on the Happiness theme. I came across this categorization of different types of fun in Gretchen Rubin's book The Happiness Project, which was illuminating to me. (Aside: Her year-long happiness experiment is going to be a short NBC show, starring Kristin Davis of Sex and the City fame.)

From The Happiness Project:
Challenging Fun is the most rewarding but also the most demanding. It can create frustration, anxiety, and hard work. It often requires errands. It takes time and energy. In the end, however, it pays off with the most satisfying fun.

Usually less challenging, but still requiring a fair bit of effort, is accommodating fun. A family trip to the playground is accommodating fun. Yes, it's fun, but I'm really there because my children want to go. Was it Jerry Seinfeld who said, "There's no such thing as 'Fun for the whole family'"? Going to a family holiday dinner, even going to dinner and a movie with friends, requires accommodation. It strengthens relationships, it builds memories, it's fun – but it takes a lot of effort, organization, coordination with other people, and, well, accommodation.

Relaxing fun is easy. I don’t have to hone skills or take action. There's very little coordination with other people or preparation involved. Watching TV—the largest consumer of the world's time after sleeping and work – is relaxing fun.

I now realize that my fun allocation in my 'fun portfolio' is very heavily weighed towards relaxing fun. I will aim for the other two as well.

Here are a few more excerpts that I had jotted down from The Happiness Project book.

[On the 4 stages of happiness]
I realized happiness has four stages. To eke out the most happiness from an experience, we must anticipate it, savor it as it unfolds, express happiness, and recall a happy memory. Any single happy experience may be amplified or minimized, depending on how much attention you give to it.

[On characteristics she admires in the seemingly happy-go-lucky people] It is easier to complain than to laugh, easier to yell than to joke around, easier to be demanding than to be satisfied.

[On realizing that soon her young daughters will be much older and most of daily the activities with them will change. I like the phrase "preemptive nostalgia" which I myself experience a lot of.] This moment of preemptive nostalgia was intense and bittersweet; from that moment of illumination, I've had a heightened awareness of the inevitability of loss and death that has never left me.

Related Posts:
Embracing the Paradoxes

Happiness is the Goal - Hsieh

2010-11-08T10:08:00.006-06:00

The other day, my wife looked at my bedside stack of books and said, "You are reading a lot of books on happiness."

Indeed, I find it difficult to resist books, videos and articles on happiness. This graphic, by Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com points to the reason. As Tony reminds us, if you ask someone why they want to do something, and whatever their answer, if you follow it up again by asking 'why' and keep doing that recursively, the answer always leads to "happiness." Ultimately, we want to be happy because we want to be happy.

He has this graphic in his book "Delivering Happiness" which is a very good book on customer service and on having the right set of values, and is a fun read. If you haven't read or heard much about Zappos.com's culture, you should read this book.

Growing Up in the Universe - Must See videos

2010-11-04T12:15:00.003-05:00

"Not explaining science seems to me perverse. When you're in love, you want to tell the world."

Carl Sagan

[This is not directly related to retirement, but I feel that it is one of the most constructive ways in which I have spent my available time.]

While browsing in my local library one afternoon, I chanced upon this gem. The DVD is called "Growing Up in The Universe" and it is a series of lectures delivered by the eminent Oxford biologist Prof. Richard Dawkins.

First, some background on the lectures and about the presenter.

This lecture series is part of a long British tradition of "Royal Institution Christmas Lectures." It was started in 1825 by Sir Michael Faraday, and continues to this day. This particular set was given in 1991, though the DVD only came out in 2008. The topics are all extremely relevant, so don't let the fact that this was delivered in the early 90's deter you.

I first learned of Richard Dawkins when I came across his book "The Selfish Gene." (After watching these lectures, I now realize that I misunderstood the topic of his book.)
He is an Oxford professor for the Public Understanding of Science. Dr. Dawkins is now known for his 2006 book "The God Delusion" which caused uproar in the creationists' community. But all that came later. In these series of lectures he explains evolution, presenting his arguments brilliantly, engaging the live audience of students with lots of interactions. He is a superb teacher.

Now comes the kicker: there are 5 lectures, each an hour long. I know that not everyone has so much time to devote to video lectures on understanding evolution. But take my word and watch just the first lecture. If you are not captivated, then you can choose not to watch the others.

While I was searching the web for the DVD, I found that YouTube has these lectures. (If you can watch them on your TV it is probably better, but here are the links.)

The five lectures are: (links to Youtube)
Ep 1: Waking Up in the Universe
Ep2: Designed and Designoid Objects
Ep3: Climbing Mount Improbable
Ep4: The Ultraviolet Garden
Ep5: The Genesis of Purpose

Suggestion: If you are ever looking for what to buy for any young teens (your friends' kids, nephews or nieces) consider gifting them this 2-DVD set to them.

Be sure to add "Growing up in the Universe" to your list of must-see videos.

Early Retirement Litmus Test – Willing to report to your colleagues?

2010-11-01T11:00:00.002-05:00

From time to time, I come across or correspond with people who are wondering if maybe they are ready for early retirement.

Here's one test in case you are wondering too.
Think back to some of your work peers, colleagues that you were forced to compete with during performance appraisals. Now ask yourself this: If you had to, would you be willing to report to (work under) them? And, would you be willing to work for and report to someone who used to report to you?

If you don't feel comfortable with the idea, then, before you quit your corporate job, you should be really sure that your accumulated savings are more than adequate, or that you know clearly why you are leaving.

However, if you answered yes to the test question, then you may be one step closer to early retirement. Your response implies that you don't have any organizational ambition left. And your ego won't come in the way, should your finances go south in a bad way while you are in early retirement, and you need to find another job.

That said, over time, I have come to believe that the traditional way of thinking about retirement as two distinct 0-1 binary states – that one is either retired or not retired – isn’t really valid anymore. There are many states in between.

Now more than ever, there are many opportunities to progressively scale down from full time employment. One can find ways to earn sporadically, depending on individual needs, while also buying oneself autonomy and time, which is what early retirement means to most people.

Related Posts:
Are you ready for early retirement?
EE Day - Your earliest exit day

Not profits, but Autonomy, Mastery & Purpose - Dan Pink

2010-10-28T11:12:00.002-05:00

Here's a great video that Dan Pink has put up. The animation is engaging, but the core message is even better, the one he has espoused in his book "Drive."

We are not all mere "profit-maximizers," but we all want three other things:
Autonomy. Mastery. Purpose.

Take a look at the video below.

RSA Animate -- Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us from Daniel Pink on Vimeo.

Memory Decline Accompanies Early Retirement - NYTimes

2010-10-25T11:26:00.003-05:00

I worry that my cognitive abilities will rapidly decline since I no longer engage in the technical problem-solving that I used to, while working. Hoping to counter this, I've been diligent about attempting at least a few puzzles, chess problems, Sudoku, Gears, and a number of similar "mental ability" games, practically on a daily basis.

And then I come across this in an article:

Data from the United States, England and 11 other European countries suggest that the earlier people retire, the more quickly their memories decline.

And almost as if to counter my exact thinking, this sentence:

And research has failed to support the premise that mastering things like memory exercises, crossword puzzles and games like Sudoku carry over into real life, improving overall functioning.

The article by Gina Kolata titled "Taking Early Retirement May Retire Memory, Too," goes on to say that going to work regularly does contribute to cognitive functioning. It also states that this is all very preliminary and that lots more research is still needed.

Thanks to Rupal for the link. The NY Times article is here.

Quotable sentence from Tim Jackson's Ted talk

2010-10-21T12:10:00.006-05:00

I will post about a few of my favorite Ted talks soon. Meanwhile, here's a tidbit. I was viewing Tim Jackson's "Economic Reality Check" talk, and found this sentence so good that I had to stop and jot it down.

Prof. Tim Jackson talking about people's savings ratio and ballooning debt:

This is a strange, rather perverse story, just to put it in very simple terms. It's a story about us, people being persuaded to spend money we don't have, on things we don’t need, to create impressions that won't last, on people we don't care about.

Click the play button below, for the full talk:

Higher Taxes for the rich - Simplistic

2010-10-18T10:54:00.001-05:00

It is possible to experience a certain Robin Hood-like righteousness in contemplating about taxing the rich and sparing the poor. But in this article, Harvard professor Greg Mankiw shows me why my thinking is overly simplistic.

His point is that if the taxes were raised further, the proportion that he (and his family) can put away from each incremental dollar earned becomes so small that he might choose not to earn that extra dollar at all.

The following paragraph touches on a slightly different point and it resonated with me. I did notice a certain similarity in our thinking. My possessions, such as they are, are quite modest. Prof Mankiw writes:

Indeed, I could go so far as to say I am almost completely sated. One reason is that I don’t aspire for much more than a typical upper-middle-class lifestyle. I don’t fly around on a private jet. I have little desire to own a yacht or a Ferrari. I own only one home, in which I have lived since 1987. Paying an extra few percent in taxes wouldn’t create a lot of hardship.

Read the full article here.

Purely a Consumer, and Nothing More

2010-10-14T11:23:00.004-05:00

Here's my question: Is it okay to live life purely as a consumer of things, and not give anything back to society in return?

We instinctively look down upon the very idea of someone leading "a life of leisure." Why is this? I have been grappling with this question for months, and it just doesn’t go away.

Let's first back up and ask why are people working so hard at their jobs? So that they can provide themselves (and their family) a comfortable life, one that they can all enjoy.

But if someone had the choice to quit working, and didn't need to earn anymore, and was reasonably sure that they could lead their life enjoying the things that they cared about, should they take that opportunity?

Applying this choice to myself, it seems that I can argue for both sides.

I can readily see how selfish this life of leisure seems. Consuming without ever giving back to society. All those years of education, all of society's "investment" in me, wasted.

I have mentioned in this blog in the past my guilt over "not doing good to society." Interestingly, I never had any of this guilt when I was working a full time job. Since I was in middle management, I was decently compensated and sure, I paid a lot more in taxes. The extent of my 'contribution' was that I was managing (or mentoring) a few technically capable people, pushing them to do their best. But that was it. I wasn't really helping society in any big way, and yet nobody called me selfish.

But look at the other side, the argument for being a consumer of things that give me joy. People have spent their lives creating things that I enjoy. Books and movies (especially documentaries and foreign films) that I can never get enough of. Add to that innumerable thought-provoking web articles, video clips, and TED talks. Then there are the free online courses in iTunesU – lectures by the very best teachers in the world. Any decent-sized public library in the Chicago area has enough non-fiction DVD's to keep me watching for months. Lots of places to travel to, and new and interesting food to be sampled. In short, to consume in every sense of the word the things that I really like. It would be my way of respecting all the people who created these things.

Let's say (just for argument's sake) that someone had enough saved up to consume these things for the rest of their life. Should we question their choice of becoming purely a consumer of the things that give them joy?

A few missteps, even by Steve Jobs

2010-10-09T14:34:00.005-05:00

Steve Jobs' recent accomplishments have become so well-known that it is difficult to imagine that he too might have struggled at some point, or that he too might have taken a few missteps.

This NY Times article by Randall Stross is about aspects of Steve Jobs that many of us didn't know about, or might have forgotten.

Of lessons learned from his years at NeXT:

"The Steve Jobs who returned to Apple was a much more capable leader — precisely because he had been badly banged up. He had spent 12 tumultuous, painful years failing to find a way to make the new company profitable."

In a way, it is empowering to be reminded that all of us (even Steve Jobs) have to go off and try different things, experience a few fallow years and learn from our 'failures.'

"It took 12 dispiriting years, much bruising, and perspective gained from exile. If he had instead stayed at Apple, the transformation of Apple Computer into today’s far larger Apple Inc. might never have happened. "

The full article is here.

Rethinking my Reading

2010-10-07T17:23:00.002-05:00

I was busy for the last few weeks taking on short-term assignments, and hence the long gap between posts. I will try and pace myself better in the future.
----

One of the (many) reasons I gave up a full time job was that I wasn't satisfied with the amount of my reading. I loved the idea of having lots of free time to read. Looking at the New Arrivals section in libraries and bookstores, I felt that there was a huge river of knowledge to be consumed, but that I was doing so in thimblefuls. Also, I always read a book cover to cover, without skipping paragraphs, and this meant that I was reading far less than what I desired. I began to feel that if only I had more time, I could do justice to all the wonderful new books that keep getting published.

After I left my corporate job and had quite a bit of autonomy over my time, I was reading more, yes. But the river didn't seem any lesser just because I was consuming with cups instead of thimbles. In fact, with each book I discovered more books that I wanted to read, and all of this resulted inevitably in disappointment.

This post is about a couple of small shifts in my thinking that helped me rethink my approach to Reading.

I got the first idea from Tyler Cowen's Marginal Revolution blog. Tyler, a polymath I respect and admire, seems to endorse a 'snacking' approach to books and to food and to much else. In fact he seemed to be doing this even to movies, peeking into many of them in one visit to the multiplex.

It occurred to me that there was no rule saying that I had to read a book fully. So I eventually gave myself permission to browse books. When I know that I simply cannot afford the time to read a book, I will read just its table of contents, slowly. The way a book (of non-fiction) is structured can itself convey quite a bit. I then read small sections that sound interesting and satisfy myself.

And the second shift in my thinking was to focus instead, at the books that I do manage to read. This is still very much a work in progress for me. I am training myself not to view all new and interesting-sounding books as a huge to-be-done list, but to instead look at the books that I do manage to read. I am still working on this one, but it has definitely helped take off some of the disappointment I used to feel about my reading.

HBR: Measuring One's Life

2010-08-25T12:07:00.005-05:00

It is difficult to resist an article that is titled "How will you measure your Life?" Especially if the writer is a Harvard Business School professor. In addressing the class of 2010, Prof. Christensen lays down three important questions and proceeds to logically tackle them one by one.

[...] To find cogent answers to three questions: First, how can I be sure that I’ll be happy in my career? Second, how can I be sure that my relationships with my spouse and my family become an enduring source of happiness? Third, how can I be sure I’ll stay out of jail?

I especially liked his "allocation of resources" section, where he suggests that we think about using our limited resources (personal time and energy) to shape our life strategy. This is where I repeatedly slip up – by spending way too much time on things of little import.

Because of the author's faith, the article has undertones of religion. But for those of us who consider ourselves secular, the message is still the same. Overall, well worth reading and passing on to others.

Related Posts:

Movie: A Map for Saturday

2010-08-21T14:25:00.003-05:00

My wife was already standing in the checkout line at the public library and I still hadn't picked up any movies. I ran over to the Travel section, where the DVD cover of A Map for Saturday caught my eye. The blurb said something about a guy who takes off for a year around the world. I grabbed that and a couple of other travel movies. (It is almost tempting to believe that books and movie choose me, just as much as I seek them out.)

So the next morning, after my wife left (she's taken up a short-term contract assignment) and I was alone in the hotel, I popped the movie into the DVD player.

Even before the initial montage ended, I was completely hooked. And in five minutes, I was feeling really guilty. I knew my wife would really enjoy the movie too, so I stopped it. (I watched a movie about the Silk Road instead.)

That same evening, after dinner, we both watched A Map for Saturday. The title is based on the idea that 'on a trip around the world, every day feels like Saturday.'

Brook is a 25 year old who decides to give up his job in NYC and a successful future as a TV producer to hit the road. And he takes his camera along. He stays in hostels from Sydney to Bangkok to Europe to Rio. And he is really good at interviewing people, making them open up. The result makes for a compelling and at times mesmerizing documentary.

When I mention this movie about taking a year off to others, their first reaction is "Oh, I could never do anything like that." Which is precisely why they should watch this movie. To expand our horizons, and to learn how others think.

The movie reminds us of the dreams that we all squelched in order to fit in. It tells us that we owe it to ourselves to give at least one honest shot at pursuing our dreams.

The finished product is great and professionally edited. But since I have the time these days, I also watched all the deleted scenes. And the interviews and the DVD extras. Those are a little more raw, but people are less guarded and therefore extremely candid, which makes them very insightful for us viewers.

Brook captures the loneliness of the long-time traveler wonderfully well. If you love travel, have dreamed of taking time off, want to know what the joys and sorrows and longings of slow travel are, go and get this movie. (It should be mandatory viewing for all backpacker-wannabes.)

Get it from your local library, or through Netflix, but be sure to view it.

Delayed or Instant?

2010-08-20T13:50:00.003-05:00

"Instant gratification" might have been given a bad rap a little unfairly.

The question of when to take time out for enjoying life seems a very important one, and yet I don’t think that a whole lot has been written about it. (Or at least, I haven't come across that.)

My middle class roots dictate the collective script I must follow. Be a diligent employee, work hard, save scrupulously and retire at around 65. And you will be assured of a very comfortable life thereafter.

Which is exactly what my father did. He worked all his life to attain financial freedom. And just a few years after that, he has lost much of his physical freedom. I see how enfeebled he is these days.

And I have inherited his genes. I have a dozen good years, maybe two dozen if I am very lucky, until my physique too, gives out.

Which is why the question seems so important to me for each one of us to ponder seriously: Do you cash-in whatever chips you have, or do you sit at the table a little longer?

Checklists for productivity

2010-08-18T12:24:00.004-05:00

What can one learn about simple checklists? Especially someone like me who routinely uses checklists, various other lists and even lists of lists (to keep track of new lists).

I had plenty to learn, as it turned out. I read Atul Gawande's book "The Checklist Manifesto" recently and had a number of takeaways. As might befit a surgeon his writing is logical and lucid. He is a good story-teller who takes us into the world of operating theaters, skyscraper construction and aviation history to show us how modern checklists have evolved. Perhaps with the confidence that comes from being a world-class surgeon, he isn't afraid to share his own doubts and misgivings, and that makes the whole book a great read.

Takeaways: For me, the biggest revelation was the importance of the communication checklist. These are used in large construction projects about who will talk to whom. In addition to the familiar checklist for tasks, they have another checklist to ensure that communication steps haven't been missed. This could be invaluable in any setting where groups of people work together as team.

And on a personal level, every chapter in the book reminded me of the need for personal discipline in getting things done. Those who go to work daily have a structure imposed on them. The rest of us have to figure it out ourselves. There are days when I am very productive, and days that I feel I wasted. And the difference is discipline. And in that, I believe, checklists can be a big help.

All or Nothing players

2010-08-16T12:08:00.003-05:00

Perhaps I have grown cynical over time.

In our increasingly complex world, the prudent thing to do is to play it safe, to become part of big teams, and to not place too much faith in one-person attempts where the main ingredient they bring to the table is passion.

Which is also perhaps why stories like Santhosh Ostwal's resonate. They make us recalibrate our jaded world views.

It is heart-warming to read about someone like Santosh, who bet his whole life and everything else on solving one problem, and who does in fact end up solving the problem and deservedly getting the kudos.

Here is one guy, who managed to tweak and adapt cellphones to trigger irrigation pumps remotely. His home-brewed solution actually works and is making a difference to 1000s of people.

Read the full article here in the Economist magazine.

Lessons from conducting a free chess camp

2010-08-05T14:46:00.006-05:00

After years of dreaming about offering free chess or juggling camps for little kids, I finally acted on it a couple of days ago. I offered a free chess camp for kids aged 5 to 10, and quite a few showed up.

Like everything in life, it was a fortuitous confluence of factors that made it happen. We had come down to Richmond Va. to visit my brother-in-law. He has a vast circle of friends, my nephew (age 6) was interested in chess, it was summer and my brother-in-law took my offhand suggestion seriously and actually ran with it.

He composed and sent out an email to his friends (who forwarded it to their friends). On Tuesday, we had decided to hold a chess camp on Wednesday. By that evening a few kids had signed up. We eventually had 12 children attending our 4-hour afternoon "chess camp."

Here are my observations/lessons about camps, chess or otherwise.

Chess related lessons that I learned 1. For most little kids, four hours is way too much time to focus on chess. (I will shorten it the next time.)
2. Children have very little patience for chess theory or ideas. They just want to start playing as soon as they learn the moves.
3. They just love to attack the opponent's king and take enormous pride in shouting check. I wasn’t able to convince them to stop giving checks and doing something else to improve their game.
4. The age group was probably not right, but they had no interest in learning endgame or checkmating patterns. They only wanted to play full games, preferably with kids they could beat easily.

General Lessons regarding holding 'Camps"
1. There is a lot of joy in offering free camps/workshops. (I am pretty sure that if we had charged even a nominal fee, only a fraction of the kids would have showed up.)
2. I had underestimated the amount of work involved in keeping 12 kids occupied, productive and well-behaved. (A nod to kindergarten teachers and parents (esp. moms) here. If I didn't have 2 other adults helping me, it would have been chaos. It is so much easier managing grown children, I now feel. But what do I know?)
3. Kids love to shout out answers to really simple questions. (I will modify my material to throw in a lot more spot quizzes, to give them the joy of being right often.)
4. There is an unbelievably large amount of material and videos available on the web for any topic. With just a few hours of research on the web, lots and lots of material for "camps" can be created.
5. In order to teach kids under (say) age 10, you don’t have to be an expert at anything. In fact, I think knowing a lot of theory might actually hinder being a good teacher/coach.
6. Each and every person reading this can offer at least half a dozen free camps that little kids can benefit from. The trick is in finding the time and making the logistics work. I am so glad I started, because it feels easier once you have taken a small step. (I will be glad to offer camps in any city I visit, as long as there are takers and a couple of parents help out with the logistics.)

EE Day – Your Earliest Exit Date

2010-07-30T10:31:00.003-05:00

This is more relevant to those who are 2-3 years from taking early retirement or some time off.

For reasons that I don't fully comprehend, even as I started my first job, I was thinking of leaving it and only doing things that I loved full time. (I think the autonomy I enjoyed in my grad school life was part of the reason.)

And after starting work, once I noticed that my savings were starting to accumulate, I became wildly optimistic about how soon I could leave and "be done with the earning phase of life." This was in the mid-to-late 1990's. Y2K was around the corner, and it sounded like a neat thing to be around for, and I thought I could soon leave after that.

But, as I found out, there is a tendency for these kinds of vague plans to keep floating forward. New projects and interesting opportunities kept coming my way. With each passing year, I was planning to get out in 2-3 more years.

Finally, it dawned on me that I had to commit to a date. So that's what I did. I chose a date in the future, printed it on a miniature PowerPoint slide and stuck it to the side of my PC monitor where only I could see it.

As it eventually turned out, I was off by several years. But that tiny printout served an important purpose. It changed my thinking, it brought a finitude to how I viewed my corporate career.

Tip: So if someone asked me today, here's what I will tell them. Go ahead and come up with the earliest date that you can quit, your EE Date. Take a deep, objective look at your finances, consider the health options for you and your family members, and also give lots of thought to why you are leaving your job. And then you arrive at a date. You mark it on your calendar, and you share the date with your spouse and maybe tell a few trusted friends. (You are not yet ready to start mentioning this in your workplace, because it is still all very preliminary.)

Now it is very possible that your EE date will not be when you really get out. It might take a lot longer than your initial estimate. But that is okay.

Coming up with a date changes your thinking in small and big ways. You start seeing an end to your current state, instead of it stretching forever. And that new bit of thinking is worth something.

Puzzle: Blue Block (aka Rush Hour)

2010-07-23T11:04:00.003-05:00

Here's something lighter for this Friday.

I rediscovered a favorite game/puzzle in the iTunes store. It is called Blue Block (Free), created by Aragosoft, though I know this game as "Rush Hour."

I have shown this game to kids and adults alike and they've all liked it.

The goal is to 'free' the blue brick, which is blocked by white pieces. The white pieces can only slide in one direction, depending on their orientation. When you download, over 500 boards come free, in various levels of difficulty. The graphics is crisp, and it even tells you the 'par' which is the lowest number of moves to solve each board.

It's free. Give it a try.

The link, if you wish to download it to your iPhone/iPad:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/blue-block-free-unblock-sliding/id320111844?mt=8

I also found online versions of the game:
http://www.freegames.ws/games/freegames/cargames/rushhour.htm
or
http://www.freeonlinegames.com/puzzle-games/gridlock.html (with pop-ups, unfortunately)

Extra:
For those of you who want to think about the game more (after playing it for a few rounds):
If someone asked you to 'program' the solution to this game, how would you go about formulating it? I can think of a few possibilities: Dynamic programming, using arcs-and-nodes and state-diagrams, and as an Integer Program (IP). For the IP, it is tricky to come up with an elegant objective function.

Would love to hear your thoughts on programming or solving it. Leave comments or drop me an email.

Related Posts:
Flood-It
Loop The Loop aka Fences

Tim O'Reilly on why Money is like Gasoline for a road trip

2010-07-20T10:37:00.002-05:00

By choice, I don't write often about money and retirement, though the topic can't really be avoided and is always peripherally present. Plus, there are already so many books and blogs that pretty much equate a 'retirement lifestyle' with 'financing a life of retirement.'

This post is an exception because I really liked how Tim O'Reilly sums it up in this profile, as only he can.

"Money is like gasoline during a road trip," he says. "You don't want to run out of gas on your trip, but you're not doing a tour of gas stations. You have to pay attention to money, but it shouldn't be about the money."

The whole interview in Inc. makes for great reading, including sound bites like "Learning has always been something of a drug for me." Don't miss it.

The Balance between accumulating and enjoying

2010-07-19T12:09:00.002-05:00

I met a friend and former colleague for coffee. We were meeting after more than a year, and talking about the direction of our lives and his work. Then he made one of those spontaneous astute observations that people make from time to time.

"We plan and spend so many years to accumulate wealth but we don't seem to set aside years to enjoy our wealth," he said.

Amen, Sid.

Greener grass

2010-07-17T13:23:00.003-05:00

I was reading an essay by Joseph "Jody" Bottum, and in the paragraph below I recognized an echo of my own (our collective?) dream, this unceasing desire for something different.

Perhaps my dreams are merely the standard-issue reveries in which settled people imagine they might somehow throw off their responsibilities and make a change. Perhaps they're merely daydreams of difference: the perpetual illusion that life might be lived down some entirely other path, the always-shimmering mirage that promises we can find what our spirits are missing simply by relocating our tired bodies.
Jospeh "Jody" Bottum, In Judgment of Memory

First, Become very good. Amass Career Capital

2010-07-12T11:25:00.004-05:00

Just one last post about Cal Newport's article.

Until I started thinking about Newport's post, I really believed that anyone could opt for early retirement. That everyone could do it if they chose to make a few sacrifices.

Sure, they would have to give up some luxuries and lower their standard of living, but they could do it. (I still feel that those who give up ancillary creature comforts, in order to buy themselves time get the better end of the bargain.)

But Cal Newport's post made me change my mind about everyone qualifying. He says that the prerequisite is that "you become so good at something that [the hiring market] can't ignore you." Newport calls it amassing 'career capital.'

"Mastering something rare and valuable remains the necessary first step."

So why did I not see this before? I think there are two reasons for my blind spot. One, I happen to have educational degrees and a technical background that I feel I can fall back on. Two, all the people I interact with have MBA's or graduate degrees in technical fields and are highly marketable. This safety net is so pervasive in my circles that I was simply taking it for granted.

Lesson: So here's the lesson for those who are planning on taking a break, a sabbatical, or wishing to try other things. Be sure that you are trained in something that will be valued 3 to 5 years from the time you quit. Get some hard skill or vocational certification. Typically, most employers will agree to pay for training classes if it will help your immediate work, make you more productive. Don't skip going to these training sessions, and don’t opt for soft and easy courses. Good planners think about the safety net even as they are preparing for the jump.

One thing is very clear. The marketplace doesn’t seem to value generalists much. Those who claim that they can do everything are viewed as those who excel at nothing.

Related posts:

Embracing the Paradoxes

2010-07-09T13:09:00.004-05:00

On some days, this whole experiment of buying time at the cost of many other things feels light and fun, but on other days it seems to be a serious undertaking. Gretchen Rubin, in her book 'The Happiness Project' verbalizes the paradoxes I feel really well.

"I kept running up against paradoxes. I wanted to change myself but accept myself. I wanted to take myself less seriously – and also more seriously. I wanted to use my time well, but I also wanted to wander, to play, to read at whim. I wanted to think about myself so I could forget myself. I was always on the edge of agitation; I wanted to let go of envy and anxiety about the future, yet keep my energy and ambition."

Gretchen in her blog has a post on the Paradoxes of her Happiness Project.

I am a sucker for 'Happiness' books. Gretchen Rubin, in her book, takes a simple concept (one full year of trying out different happiness-boosting techniques) but writes it in a memoir and slice-of-life style to produce a highly engrossing organic narrative. The book succeeds because she hasn’t let the structure come in the way of her story.

Even though I have only started the book, I highly recommend it to those interested in the subject.

Traits of a Rich Life

2010-07-07T12:04:00.003-05:00

Cal Newport, in his post, points to previous research as identifying three traits that must exist for a person to feel that they have a rich life.

Thirty years of research has identified the following three traits to be crucial if you want a rich life:
· Autonomy — control over how you fill your time.
· Competence – mastering unambiguously useful things.
· Relatedness — feeling of connection to others.

My mnemonic is ARC (Autonomy, Relatedness and Competence) for these three. Looking back now, I can see that a big reason I left my job was my perceived lack of autonomy. I did have the freedom to pretty much choose my own projects, but I still had to show up and be there for long hours, and that tied me down in many ways.

Just one small caveat that a list of this kind shouldn’t be taken as the final word – several other traits can also be included and it will still sound like a very logical ingredient for a rich life.

What I like about these three in particular (ARC) is that we can choose to work on supplementing whichever trait we feel is lacking in our lives.

Related Post: The Competence Trap

Stay Current

2010-07-02T10:36:00.004-05:00

I now think it was a mistake. For all the years when I worked a full-time job, I never updated my resume. As I have mentioned many times here before, I absolutely loved the job, and never looked for another. For me, not having an updated resume was a matter of pride, a kind of loyalty. I now feel that I was mistaken in my thinking.

And as I now know, it is very important for those who are thinking of taking a break or a sabbatical to maintain an updated resume. (Some people might imagine never ever having to deal with the annoyance of resumes once they are 'retired,' but it doesn’t work that way.)

For those who are on a long sabbatical, there are a number of reasons for doing short assignments in your line of work, and not all of them are financial. Taking on short-term consulting assignments serves many other purposes. You refresh your skills; there is continuity in your resume (in case you ever need to come back to regular employment); an opportunity to interact with people in your industry; and some intellectual stimulation.

I was talking to someone who used to work at GE, and he told me that as part of their annual performance review, everyone in his group was required to provide an updated resume. He said that thinking about the year's accomplishments in terms of 2-3 sentences suitable for the resume was a valuable exercise.

That, to me, sounds like a very good practice. (I know, because I have tried to summarize what I accomplished years ago, and that was not easy.)

So here's the lesson for those of you planning about leaving work and taking a break. Once every six months, be sure to update your resume. And we've just finished the first half of 2010, so now might be a good time to start.

Competence Trap – Addendum

2010-07-01T11:41:00.000-05:00

Here's a quick addendum to competence trap, with one more of its implications.

Let's say that a couple decides that one of them will go to work and earn, and the other will stay back and manage the home front. Additionally, they decide that once every two years, they will alternate roles, switching who stays at home and who goes to work. They feel that this would be very fair.

However, such seemingly equitable arrangements won't make economic sense for the couple. The reason for this is the power of the competence trap. Even if the couple is able to get their respective offices to go along with their proposed arrangement, they will end up with sub-par promotion opportunities being presented to either of them. In the long run, they will end up with below average salaries.

Instead, if one of them had continued to work, that person would have become more and more competent at what they do, and would likely have enjoyed better financial compensation.

Related post: Competence Trap

The Competence Trap

2010-06-28T11:38:00.003-05:00

There are very few posts in the blogosphere that I find worth bookmarking and revisiting. One such is a post by Cal Newport with the subtitle: "The Subtle Difference Between Finding You Life's Work and Loving Your Life." I read it several weeks ago, and am finally getting to mention it here.

There is so much good stuff in it that I plan to come back to Newport's post by a couple of more times.

For today, I'll just focus on one aspect – that he calls "The Competence Trap."

As Cal defines it, competence trap is when once "you amass enough career capital to exert meaningful control over your life and career, the only investment presented as reasonable will be to further maximize your competence at the expense of the other areas of your life."

In other words, as you get better and better at your job, the whole marketplace is geared towards making sure that you don't leave to focus on other things. To me, competence trap is at the very crux of the internal struggle that many of us go through – those of us who love what we do for work, are good at it, and yet feel that something is missing. (I am simplifying in order to summarize here. Cal does a much better job of laying it out, and also warns us to be wary of the competence trap.)

In his entire post, Cal makes several very important points. To me, it seems that a careful reading of the post will really benefit anyone who takes the time.

With a Little Help

2010-06-18T11:08:00.003-05:00

The idea was that I would go off and try something independent. But it is very humbling when I pause to think about the number of people who are helping me.

For starters, it seems to be impossible to lead a reasonable life in the US without a permanent address. Every form I fill asks for it, and they always state that it "cannot be a PO Box." My brother has agreed to let me use his address in Michigan, even though we don't reside there. Our mail goes there and he has to cull out the important ones and often take care of them.

We have been exceptionally fortunate with temporary accommodation. Usually at times when they were spending time abroad, a few friends and relatives have let us use their entire homes.

Without my asking, several friends offered me the use of their cars (and even a motorcycle in one instance in India) – offers that I took up.

Another friend took the time to create a tailor-made "retirement finance estimator" for me in Excel. It came with its own Monte-Carlo simulator, so that I could analyze different best-and-worst case scenarios to see if I would "make it financially." (That is, to check if my savings would outlast me.)

Help comes in less tangible ways too. I have had a number of well-wishers, who very delicately probed the question of my financial (as well as mental) health. Both of these subjects are not easily discussed in our society, and I am grateful for their concern.

There is no real way that I can ever repay all of this, which means that I must remain perpetually indebted – a state of being that I am instinctively uncomfortable with. I am only slowly coming to grips with this state. The best I can do is to follow the "pay it forward" adage – hopefully try and help others sometime in the future.

The Right Time for the Roses

2010-06-09T14:33:00.004-05:00

I am finally learning to slow down, sometimes. It's taken me a year and a half to get here. It seems that the achievement imperative is very deeply inscribed in our psyches. We are so well programmed to get things done, to be productive, that it is not at all easy to fritter away time and not feel guilty about it.

But because these days I have the time, occasionally, I will nurse a cup of coffee (15 minutes), will read an issue of Time from cover to cover (2 hours), or read a book slowly (several days).

One consequence of this slowing down is that it often seems to me that my friends and acquaintances are not taking the time to savor things. I know why this is, of course. They cannot afford to be indulgent because they are busy being good citizens, diligent workers and responsible parents.

And I am not sure that I should be asking others to slow down. Because it is not clear to me how things will eventually end up. It is very likely that while I stopped mid-career to smell the roses, my diligent but harried friends are the ones who come out smelling like roses.

And I would have to end up paying for being so indulgent. So I might have to end up paying for it one way or another – perhaps with a very low standard of living later on, or perhaps by having to work in my advanced years, or in other ways that I don't even know today.

Years from now, when my time to pay up comes, I hope I do so without self-pity. Not grudgingly but gracefully, accepting that I might have been too fast in my eagerness to slow things down.

So How Will this Experiment End?

2010-06-07T12:28:00.002-05:00

A good experimenter does not pre-suppose results. The job is to observe carefully, record the observations unaltered and only later retro-fit theories that explain the results obtained.

But what works in science doesn't always work cleanly in the human sphere. So how do I think this "experiment in retirement" will end?

I suspect that sooner or later, I might revert back to a corporate life, with earnest promises to myself "to never forget the many lessons learned." And to everyone who asks about my time off, I will tell them that "I won't give up that experience for anything."

Whether I will say that because I really believe it or because none of us likes to admit failure in any endeavor, I really don't know.

For now, I am enjoying the time immensely. The experiment goes on.

Ben Fountain decides to try something different

2010-05-09T12:42:00.006-05:00

The following resonated with me, because it reminded me of the time I left a corporate job I absolutely loved.

“I was tremendously apprehensive,” Fountain recalls. “I felt like I’d stepped off a cliff and I didn’t know if the parachute was going to open. Nobody wants to waste their life, and I was doing well at the practice of law. I could have had a good career. And my parents were very proud of me—my dad was so proud of me. . . . It was crazy.”

That is Malcolm Galdwell writing about author Ben Fountain, a successful lawyer deciding that he wanted to be a writer instead though he had no real writing experience. The above is from Gladwell's essay on late bloomers.

Aside 1: I read Fountain's book “Brief Encounters with Che Guevara,” when it came out in 2006 and loved the stories. He is such a talented writer, and until I read this essay I had no idea that he had to struggle for so long before he became an 'overnight success.' Read the book.

Aside 2: After reading Gladwell's the essay "John Rock's Error" I was wondering why women weren't emailing it to other women. And everyone who sees the world in black & white, and is angry about what Enron did should read "Open Secrets."

Overall, I am extremely impressed with Gladwell's book "What the Dog Saw." His other books get a lot more press, but this collection of his New Yorker pieces covers such a wide range of topics. He so thoughtfully takes the contrarian view and makes me rethink my many stereotypes. I have no hesitation in labeling the book a 'must-read.'

What are these posts about?

2010-05-06T08:36:00.004-05:00

The title of this blog is not accurate. It is difficult to be accurate while also being succinct.

When I was setting up this blog, I couldn’t possibly name it "An Attempt to Give Up A Regular 9-5 Corporate Job In Order to Obtain Lots Of Free Time, Pursue Leisure and To Get By with Occasional Paid Gigs." So, I went with something reasonably catchy.

But I hardly ever use the word "retirement" in conversations with respect to myself. I now feel that the words 'retirement' or even 'sabbatical' are too blunt for what I am attempting to do.

When I look at what ties the posts in this blog, I see two of my obsessions recurring.
They are 1) Financial independence and 2) Getting free time.

Actually, even those two are not very accurate. What I am really interested in is getting to choose how I spend my time (autonomy over time). And for most of us, that is only possible if we take care of the money question. In this blog, financial independence is narrowed down to 'freedom from dependence on a monthly paycheck.' So these are the two central underlying themes that I post about.

Staying Sharp: One of my big fears is that an unexercised brain will quickly go to mush. As our world gets increasingly complex, I especially worry about how I will stay sharp. Under the broad label of intellectual stimulation I post about puzzles and games.

Getting inspired by those who are trying very different lifestyles: I am fascinated by people who are trying out unconventional things, shunning traditional routes. Since we can't all try everything out, we have to learn from others who are trying to move off the conventional grid in small and big ways, and maybe find a few aspects to incorporate into our own lives. So I sometimes post about that.

The specifics of how each one of us can get away from a dependence on a monthly paycheck varies from person to person. So my posts are about a few basic financial guidelines and also about my situation.

I also wouldn’t presume to tell others what to do with the free time once they get it.

But why is getting autonomy over time so important?

Because deep down I believe that if all my friends and all the readers of this blog get autonomy over time (full control over how they choose to spend their time), each one will eventually get around to "doing good." Sure, the definition of doing good in society will vary for each of us. Doing good, as I repeatedly find, is actually not straightforward, and I sometimes post about that.

Staying sharp, and learning from others about how to get control over our time so that we can perhaps do a little good.

These are the things I post about.

The Data Driven Life - The emerging self-tracking movement

2010-05-05T10:42:00.005-05:00

"One of the reasons that self-tracking is spreading widely beyond the technical culture that gave birth to it is that we all have at least an inkling of what’s going on out there in the cloud. Our search history, friend networks and status updates allow us to be analyzed by machines in ways we can’t always anticipate or control. It’s natural that we would want to reclaim some of this power: to look outward to the cloud, as well as inward toward the psyche, in our quest to figure ourselves out."

This is from an article in The New York Times by Wired's Gary Wolf. I do a bit of self-tracking myself, but the people mentioned in this article take it to the limit. Ben Lipkowitz's life-logging project logs everything he's done in the last 5 years in categories. People are tracking time in 2-minute segments, tracking every idea one has had in the last decade, tracking their physical location using GPS. This is way beyond what we would normally see in Facebook entries and on Twitter. Looks like we have a whole new field of data analytics emerging.

I track things in the hope that I can analyze the data some day in the future and perhaps learn things about myself. I had no idea that there were so many other self-trackers, and these people are obsessed. Check out the fascinating article.

Inferior vs Normal Goods

2010-04-14T13:47:00.002-05:00

In my assorted reading, I come across several new (to me) concepts and ideas. Quite often, these concepts seem to apply to my situation at the time I encounter them.

Recently, in an economics book, I read about what economists refer to as inferior goods as contrasted against normal goods. This seemed to have implications for those interested in early retirement.

First the definitions: An inferior good is something that people want less of as they get richer.

Examples of inferior goods include eating street food (as opposed to eating in white-tablecloth restaurants); buying new items (versus settling for used ones or getting old items repaired); and taking bus rides (compared to driving one's own car).

A normal good is something that people buy more of as their incomes rise (better clothing, getting a bigger house, fancier entertainment etc.)

In my own case, the goal was to get time off. Now, I am very aware of how important luck is in our lives and I won't deny that my wife and I are extremely fortunate. But we also planned for and made numerous adjustments in working towards this goal of getting time off (which in our case means no steady income). In retrospect, I see that starting from years earlier, we consciously opted for the so-called inferior goods.

To me, this choice seems to be another necessary condition. It strikes me that those who are serious about taking time off (by giving up their regular salary) have to opt for at least some "inferior goods."

You make all the adjustments you can, and then you hope for luck.

Are you ready for Early Retirement?

2010-04-12T14:23:00.004-05:00

I picked up the term organizational ambition from Taleb in his book Fooled By Randomness. He uses it in a different context, but I think it has definite significance to those thinking of early retirement.

Let's assume that every now and then, you compute your net worth and idly contemplate taking early retirement and living a life of leisure. Here's one question you have to ask yourself: Do you have any organizational ambitions? In other words, are you excited by the idea of your next promotion, a new title, more responsibilities and the accompanying pay raise?

Answer this Yes/No question honestly. There are many valid reasons to want that success. You will be making your parents, your spouse, and your children proud by getting promoted. You may also want to prove yourself to your colleagues, or even to yourself with future professional successes in your field.

If the answer is Yes (i.e. you do have org. ambitions) then there is no point in getting frustrated about the lack of a life of leisure, because the time for you to quit is not imminent. Give yourself time, say 2 years or 5 years to re-evaluate things.

If the answer is No, and you indeed have no organizational ambition left, then that is one more thing out of the way. A lack of organization ambition is a necessary but by no means sufficient condition for early retirement.

Attachments

2010-04-07T14:14:00.002-05:00

We just vacated our rented apartment after spending 45 days in Indore, MP, and I am heading out. I am keen to spend a few days with my parents in Chennai next, and to meet friends in Chicago following that. And yet, I experienced a surprising sense of sadness at leaving Indore.

I am going to miss the daily interaction with people here – the two ladies who run a tiffin service from their home kitchen (I bought one meal from them daily), the used-bookstore guy who waves at me in recognition from across the road, and Manak Seth, the grocer who always gives us an extra 5% off MRP. The friendly young man who fetches and packs the groceries at Manak Seth's shop asked me if I would ever come back to Indore again.

It is a little scary how quickly one gets attached to people, things and places.

The Need for an Affiliation

2010-03-29T11:28:00.002-05:00

Here's a practical tip for those who are seriously considering quitting their jobs and trying other things for a while.

Not long ago, I was telling my friend SR about the difficulty I was having in responding when people asked me what I did. "So what do you do?" they'd ask and I would stumble and dance around in trying to give a clear answer. I also began to notice that my "Profession" gets asked in practically every form I filled out.

Often, saying "I don't have a job" or "I'm on a sabbatical" or "I'm just taking it easy for a while" is not appropriate. It also invariably leads to more questions that I might not be in a mood to entertain.

When my friend heard this, he said, "Man, what you really need is an affiliation. I fully get what you are trying to do, but an affiliation is very important in this society."

With each passing week, I saw that he was absolutely right. When responding to the what-I-do question I began to notice that I was always associating myself with some group or profession. I would tell some people that I was a freelancer or a part-time consultant or a volunteer. All of these were true but I was implying a greater affiliation than there actually was. Not because I wanted to lie or mislead, but mostly to stave off questions.

So here's my tip: Before you quit, and if at all possible, make sure that you still keep some professional affiliation going. Offering to volunteer (where you see ways you can add value) is the best way I know of to gain affiliations. It doesn’t have to pay, or be full time, but it will certainly make your transition a little smoother.

Skills for the survival of the civilization

2010-03-25T13:58:00.002-05:00

Back when I was in grad school and a teaching assistant, my students would demand why they had to study "useless things which they'd never use anyway." I used to wonder about this myself sometimes and so I never had a good response.

Recently, in an welcome address by a professor, I heard something that I wish I had heard years back. It would have certainly given me a perspective I didn't have when in college. Let me explain.

As a student in engineering college, I had several courses where I had to learn esoteric things that I knew I would never ever even remotely use in my professional life. So why were they insisting that these things be included in the syllabus?

The best explanation that I could come up with was that in an attempt to make better engineers out of us, our engineering college was teaching us "problem solving." I told myself that even though we wouldn’t use the exact thing being taught, we were becoming better problem solvers. But that explanation always rang false and was never quite satisfactory.

Prof. M S Ananth of IIT Madras was giving a welcome address to a group of professors who were attending a workshop on NPTEL, the program I volunteer at.

He said that people should realize that there are two types of skills. One set is the skills needed for the survival of the individual. Vocational training institutions do a very good job of teaching these, and we can all readily see the value in these skills, because they help us earn a living.

The other set, he said, are skills for the survival of the civilization. These are equally important and shouldn’t be neglected. He felt that institutions of higher learning shouldn’t waver from teaching these skills. And those of us who are learners or researchers, no matter what our field is, should have faith that we are adding to this skill set in incremental amounts and continue our work.

Skills that are needed for the survival of the civilization – I had never heard it phrased quite that way. Wish I had heard this 20 years earlier.

Movable Feasts – A Behind the Scenes look

2010-03-02T10:16:00.002-06:00

Managing the kitchen has been an interesting experience when moving from city to city every couple of months. A few people have asked me how we manage the cooking part. We do eat out frequently, but we mostly cook our meals. We can't eat out 3 meals a day, every day.

Back in our apartment in Chicago, we had lots of utensils and kitchen appliances. Since we are now restricted by luggage that we can carry by ourselves, we move around with a very limited amount of utensils. Our kitchen stuff fills about half of one suitcase.

We are forced to be very strict with what we can cart around: 2 dinner plates, 4 bowls, 2 cups and a few spoons. (It is sort of like what they hand you at the start of a week-long Zen retreat, or like going camping, but for a really extended period of time.) We have one small pressure cooker, 1 frying pan, a few stainless vessels, a knife and one flat griddle for dosas, and a few more microwavable plastic takeaway containers for heating and storing.

There's pretty much a checklist for the items in our first grocery shopping in each new place – rice, sugar, salt, cooking oil, instant coffee and a few ready mixes to start things off. We carry a small bag of spices which we refill as needed. Fresh vegetables are plentiful in India. We started out managing with long-life UHT milk cartons, but there's enough competition among milk vendors so now we get milk packets delivered to our door each morning.

What we now have is surely much less than 20% of what we once had in our kitchen. And what has been a revelation to me is that we are managing quite fine. I don’t feel the lack of those other things except on rare occasions. If we desire something fancy, we have to eat out. We have even hosted dinners for others (with some borrowed vessels and cutlery).

We are very Spartan about adding to our kitchen acquisitions now, which implies that we must have been inefficient before, buying lots of redundant stuff.

And the big lesson (to me) is that cutting back and adjusting to a having a simplified kitchen has not been as difficult as it once seemed from the outside. You just have to be mentally prepared.

Short Stay Rentals

2010-02-22T14:32:00.002-06:00

We're now in Indore, having completed our stint in Chennai. The plan is to stay here for around 1.5 to 2 months.

In Indore, we wanted a furnished place to stay in. We tried to find something in Indore from Chennai, but nothing was working out. However, on our first day here, we learned of a furnished apartment. A couple, who are distant relatives of a distant relative were visiting their son in Singapore and we could rent their 2 bedroom apartment. And it worked out. So this is the fourth city where we were fortunate enough to be able to find short-term accommodation.

As someone who cares about optimized resource utilization, it occurs to me that there must be 1000s of such homes and apartments that are kept locked up and being under-utilized. At the same time, there is a decent sized demand for these apartments. Someone should be able to figure out a way to tap into this and create a marketplace.

GatesNotes - A site worth visiting

2010-02-08T10:40:00.001-06:00

I recently found out about this site – TheGatesNotes. In it, Bill Gates shares the things he’s reading, viewing, working on and thinking about. It is sort of like a blog, but it has a lot more material.

The whole site is very aesthetically laid out – with his travels, his reading and even several of his conversations shared with the readers.

Under the title “What I’m learning” I found out about The Teaching Company. Bill Gates endorses them with very high words of praise. I plan to check out the “Big History” course and the two economics courses he mentions when I get to the US later this year.

We live in good times, where a good majority of the readers of this blog can have access to the same materials (books, CDs, DVD’s) that the richest of the rich also consume.

On the 5th of Feb, he has posted another article about The Teaching company.

Do take a look at the GatesNotes site and see if anything appeals to you.

Thanks to Nandita P. for the pointer.

Link: Planning Out Your Year in Detail

2010-01-07T12:25:00.005-06:00

This is related to the previous post about creating a year-in-review document.

Charles Kirk of "The Kirk Report" has written about the importance of taking the time to plan out the coming year. He is a trader and writes from that point of view, but I could relate to everything in the post. (Most of us only have vague hopes for what we'd like to happen this year.) His is a much more rigorous approach, in a post titled: Create A Vision For Your Life.

Thanks to Kalyan for the pointer.

Creating a “Year In Review” document

2010-01-05T08:19:00.006-06:00

For over 10 years now, in early January of each year I create a “Year in Review” document about the year that just got over. I have shared bits and pieces of it with a few others, but I primarily write it for myself.

For 2009, you should definitely try and create a similar document for yourself.

Back in 1998, when I started to feel that the days were just running together and that all the years were getting “stapled together” as one, I started creating these personal Year In Review documents.

Whenever I have read my review documents a few years after they were typed up, I have always come away learning something and invariably being surprised about how faulty my memory is. I can’t be sure, but I do believe that these documents have subconsciously helped me to change course.

My review document is 1 to 3 pages long. Here are some of the “easier” categories to include in a Year in Review. A few sentences each about:
Your family: Additions/losses/get-togethers in 2009
Professional: Your job, your bosses, close colleagues, key projects, conferences, skills learned in 2009, kudos received that you are proud of.
Travel: Where all did you manage to go, what’s still at the top of your “must visit” list.
Personal Finance: How you feel about your earning, savings and expenditure. Any investments you tried, their results and what you hope to do in the coming year.
People: Who did you meet and spend time with this year? People who influenced your thinking and who had an impact on you.
Entertainment/Arts: Books read, movies that had an impact, music concerts attended, songs and albums that you got.

And then there are categories that I make up. Personal projects (and hobbies), new things I get temporarily addicted to, volunteering attempts etc. Often I include new internet sites that I discovered and spent time on that year. (For example, this year I am including a section on TED Talks because they were such an important part of my life in 2009.) Since mine is a Word document, I sometimes include a few photos. I have also started adding things that I was disappointed with about myself in the year gone by.

This document is not at all like the “Annual Performance Report” that we create at work for our annual review with our supervisor, where we play up everything. Your Year in Review is just for your eyes.

Give it a try. You might enjoy writing it more than you initially think.

Ten years from now, around 2020 or so, when you look back at your 2009 list you will be thanking yourself. Creating a “Year in review” is a gift that you give to your future self.

The Khan Academy – One guy making a difference

2009-12-28T13:58:00.001-06:00

If someone pinned me into naming a personal hero for 2009, I’d probably pick Salman Khan, though I only heard of him in December. He is the creator of The Khan Academy.

I came to know of Salman’s work, while volunteering at NPTEL. This guy has single-handedly created more 1000 short educational videos, and made them all available for free on the net.

He first started out with a few videos intended for his nephews. They were so well received and satisfying to him that he just kept going and has never looked back.

What is particularly impressive to me is how he has taken the simplest of tools (MS Paint and free web-casting software) to do all of this. And, he’s managed all of this while holding a full time job! (In September of 2009 he quit his job to devote his full time to The Khan Academy.)

He has a great FAQ which is well worth reading. His reply about why he didn't try to make money from this venture really resonated with me:

I've been approached several times, but it just didn't feel right. When I'm 80, I want to feel that I helped give access to a world-class education to billions of students around the world. [...] I already have a beautiful wife, a hilarious son, two hondas and a decent house. What else does a man need?

Because of his background in banking and finance, he even has a few short videos on the government bailout and the Geithner Plan.

Do check out a video or two. Salman is an example of one person making a difference. Do pass on the link (www.khanacademy.org) to any students and learners who you think might benefit.

Volunteering assignment at NPTEL

2009-12-19T11:54:00.006-06:00

When I got this non-paying assignment I was just as excited as I was when I landed my job years ago.

Around 3 months ago I heard about a program called NPTEL, being run in my alma mater. Very briefly, NPTEL is an effort by the Indian Government to develop web- and video-based courses for all engineering disciplines and make them available to the public for free. In Chennai, I am volunteering my time and abilities to the effort.

For the past three months we are working on creating awareness (mainly among engineering faculty in the numerous Engineering colleges that have come up in South India) and in trying to reach out to students. I am helping coordinate workshops with these faculty members – they tell us what’s working and what needs to be tweaked in these web courses.

Volunteering for NPTEL provides me with two things I was hoping for: Scalability and no requirement about me having to spend long durations at any particular office.

For the past 6 months, my wife and I have been talking to a number of people in the public service domain, looking at different volunteering opportunities. Most of the suggestions we received were very generic or they were targeted at very small groups of individuals. As a matter of personal preference, I wanted something that had a larger scope.

For me, NPTEL fits the bill nicely. I fully realize that huge hurdles exist to learning difficult engineering concepts from the Web. This project falls under the HRD Ministry’s very ambitious National Mission for Education (NME) effort. The vision in NME is to expand the NPTEL effort to have courses developed for students of all ages, right from kindergarten to post-graduate courses in all disciplines, not just for engineering.

I will definitely post more about NPTEL later. Meanwhile, if you have acquaintances who are currently enrolled in an engineering degree, direct them to NPTEL’s Official Website.

Over 250 full courses (~40 lectures of 1 hour duration each per course) can be viewed via Youtube’s iit channel. If you have heard of MIT’s OpenCourseWare, this is very similar in the Indian context, and is based strongly on a commonly agreed-upon curriculum.

I don’t have an official designation in the NPTEL office. My initial goal is to just help build awareness. Effectiveness will take time, but will eventually follow after a number of iterations.

Puzzle: Loop the Loop aka Fences

2009-12-06T12:08:00.002-06:00

Several weeks ago, I started to doodle on the newspaper (The Times of India) whenever I saw the “Loop The Loop” puzzle. I liked it enough to research it a bit more.

It is really a logic puzzle, and can vary in difficulty from very easy to very difficult. The rules are simple: You are given a grid of squares, with several cells having a number in them. You have to draw lines such that they form one loop. The number in each cell indicates the number of edges that the loop touches in that cell. There should only be one overall loop.

I found an online version here in http://www.puzzle-loop.com/. (You can choose the degree of difficulty from the left panel). Try it out.

For those of you who want the game to your PC (to play even when you are not connected to the Web) you can download) Loopy.

If you have tried it a few times, like the puzzles and are mathematically or logically inclined, then read on.

Preprocessing: Also, there is lots of preprocessing that is possible. It is pure pattern recognition. Two 3’s together mean something. A 0 next to a 3 is a fairly big hint. Also, by dividing the squares into corner squares, edge squares and interior squares, you can gain some additional insights to help you solve the problem.

Integer Program: This whole problem lends itself very nicely to be modeled as an integer program, with each edge being a 0/1 binary variable. It is a very good IP modeling exercise in itself. Since multiple loops are not allowed, the sub-tour elimination constraints make the model a little unwieldy.)

Composing: To compose one of these problems can be a fun challenge. (Think of it as the dual to solving the puzzle.) The fact that there is only one solution makes it a very challenging puzzle to compose: For a given loop, how to go about revealing only the least number of numbers in cells?

Related Post:
Flood-It

David Foster Wallace on True Freedom

2009-11-07T08:57:00.002-06:00

Back in 2005, writer David Foster Wallace gave a convocation address to Keyon High School. I have come across excerpts in a number of blogs, including in Justine Musk’s.

Excerpted below are bits that really resonated:

[…]
There is no such thing as not worshipping.
[…]
Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship...
[…]
If you worship money and things-- if they are where you tap real meaning in life-- then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It's the truth.
[…]
Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you...
[…]
Worship power-- you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay.
[…]
Worship your intellect, being seen as smart-- you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on...
[…]
The really important freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.

That is real freedom.

-- David Foster Wallace's convocation address to Kenyon College

The full address is well worth reading.

Essential for Early Retirement – A Networth File

2009-11-03T08:51:00.003-06:00

Yes, there are no short-cuts, no easy one-size-fits-all solutions. But for anyone even remotely considering early retirement, I don’t know how it would be possible without a Networth File.

Your networth is simply the sum total of all your assets minus any liabilities (debts) you have. When I am discussing with people, I find that most are well aware of the concept of Networth. But when I pointedly ask them if they have a networth.xls file and whether they track it regularly, the answer is almost always No.

I don’t understand this reluctance given how essential and easy it is to track.

It could be tracked in a notebook, I suppose. Though tracking it in a spreadsheet (Excel) would be a lot easier. If tracked once a month it definitely won’t take more than 15 minutes to update. (There are automated web tools available, but I am old school enough to think that typing each number by hand helps you think about them.)

If your total networth is not growing steadily at the rate you want it to, that will force the right set of actions – increased savings, rebalancing to the right asset allocation mix for your age/circumstance, and perhaps even a job change.

If early retirement is a real goal, I cannot think of a more worthwhile activity than tracking networth regularly.

Pecha Kucha Night – Mumbai

2009-10-14T10:04:00.001-05:00

A few nights ago, we attended a program in a very different format. It was called a Pecha Kucha Night (PKN). I hadn’t known of its existence until I saw a poster for it in Mumbai’s JnanaPravaha.

Pecha-Kucha originated in 2003 in Dytham-Klein, an architecture firm in Tokyo. It is now run in over 200 cities. The goal is to provide a forum for architects, artists, photographers and even academics to showcase their work and ideas in a rapid-fire mode. The format mentioned in the poster is what caught my eye – people had to present 20 slides with 20-seconds-per-slide.

We went not knowing what to expect. The auditorium was absolutely packed, with people standing at the back and also sitting on the floor. The Mumbai version had a big architecture focus -- 5 of the 8 presentation related to architecture. The other presentations that night were by an aspiring musician/singer, and one by an artist-videographer and one with ideas for more effective management & leadership.

The creativity of the presenters was very impressive. The first presentation was about lighting the entryway to the Paddington Station in London, on how many factors go into making sure that there is a smooth transition of lighting from outside to inside. The next presentation was a very rapid survey of “Mud architecture” – featuring a few very impressive constructions in Mali and Yemen.

One entire presentation was in the form of movie characters speaking through cartoon bubbles – illustrating the idiosyncrasies of people who build a house presented from an architect’s point of view.

One person used his 20 slides in a presentation titled “7 Colors” in which he proposed several principles to make Management in general more effective.

An architecture professor bemoaned the state of their discipline, using data, humor and sarcasm in his 20 slides titled “A2F.” An architecture student presented a call to action from his fellow students by presenting work that he had done in South Africa. His 20 slides hinged on the premise that one person can make a difference.

I particularly liked the fact that in this format all 20 (PowerPoint) slides were set to auto-transition after 20 seconds each. Once the SlideShow started, this ensured that in 400 seconds, the entire show would get over. There was no going back to elaborate on any slide. Some participants struggled to keep up, but the time limit forced them to keep going. (I now wish that more of my work/business presentations had this sort of a time control imposed on them. We have all attended too many conferences where the earlier presenters consume way more than their allotted time, belaboring points.)

Overall, I was very impressed Pecha Kucha –in terms of the scope and breadth of its content, and especially the format. I will make it a point to see if I can catch Pecha Kucha Nights in other cities.

To find one near you, check out Pecha-Kucha.org.

Nobel Economics committee can't go wrong

2009-10-10T12:24:00.005-05:00

Economist Alex Tabarrok has identified an interesting situation and points it out. Even as opinions are divided on the Nobel Peace Prize committee’s decision this year, Prof. Tabarrok says that the Nobel Economics Prize committee can't go wrong this year.

We need to know a couple of things before we can appreciate why he is saying that.

In the betting market for the Economics Nobel prize this year, Eugene Fama is the leading candidate. He has the best odds.

Fama is best known for his Efficient Market Theory (EMT) which might be Nobel-worthy. To oversimplify, EMT states that markets are always "informationally efficient" and all known facts are instantly factored into the price of an equity/entity.

So here’s why this year’s Nobel committee’s decision will be self-fulfilling. Let’s say that they do give it to Fama. Then he deserved it because even the betting markets demonstrate an instance of EMT at work. All is well.

Let’s say they give it to someone else. Then the betting markets were wrong, and the EMT didn’t hold true at least in this one instance. (The odds for the eventual winner should have been better in a very efficient market.) The prize shouldn’t be given to the theory since the EMT doesn't always hold. (Aside: Many are now arguing that EMT doesn’t always hold true.)

Therefore, either way the Nobel committee can’t go wrong this year.

Another Day in the Frontal Lobe

2009-10-08T10:48:00.004-05:00

Katrina Firlik, a brain surgeon has written a book about her profession, aimed at the lay person. It is a very easy read and I can’t recommend it enough. Books such as these are the closest that most of us will ever get to understanding a neurosurgeon’s life and thinking.

Dr. is smart, witty, has a very wry sense of humor and is disarmingly down to earth.

Dr. Firlik could have assumed one of several tones as the author: she could have come across as authoritative (“I am a brain surgeon, and you’re not”) or been didactic, or she could have taken a chummy tone. She doesn’t do any of this. With a well poised sense of balance, she comes across as a very capable and smart person, who is confident enough about sharing her vulnerabilities when warranted. She is able to convey the complexities involved in decision-making around different procedures regarding the brain, showing us that there are no black-and-white solutions

The book is structured to roughly parallel her life, taking us along as she chooses neurosurgery, goes through the seven years of residency and becomes a full-fledged practicing surgeon. There are numerous real-life anecdotes –funny ones as well as heart-rending ones.

I found Dr. Firlik’s way of giving advice, with a very light touch to be really effective. She has many examples of how huge personal catastrophes (and lives) could have been saved simply by the use of a helmet or a seat-belt. She is also not above adding “Nice” after a horrifying 2am drunk driving, no seat-belt disaster. I wish some of my college friends who still smoke would read this book. She casually mentions the havoc that the smoking habit unleashes on the brain in later years.

From time to time, she shares with us some of the black humor that the doctors, residents and nurses resort to about the patients. Dr. Firlik manages to pull these off, without ever giving the impression that any of the doctors are being callous. It is simply a coping mechanism for those who work long hours in grim circumstances.

There is a great line in the book which I know I will be quoting soon. When patients ask “Why me?” one of Dr. Firlik’s mentors says, “There are three possibilities. It could be bad genes, bad habits or just bad luck.”

I am very glad that I took the time to get hold of the book and read it. For those of you who just don’t have the time, I’d still recommend that you borrow the book from your local library and at least read the chapters titled ‘Scientist and Mechanic,’ ‘Traces of Thought,’ and the final chapter ‘Brainlifts,’ in which she speculates about what the future in her profession holds for enhancing brain and memory power.

Every profession should be fortunate enough to have someone write about it in an accessible and smart manner. For neurosurgery, it is Katrina Firlik. Don’t miss this book.

A Few Random Excerpts from the book that I jotted down: [On the fact that 15,000 people are affected every year] In short, a brain tumor is the fault of no person or thing. As with a deadly hurricane, nature is often both powerful and indifferent.

[Lesson learned as a junior resident] A lesson learned early on is that a sin of commission is better than a sin of omission. Better to do too much than too little. If you appear weak or indecisive, people will walk all over you.

[On why doctors are forced to be extremely cautious about possible litigation] At $106,000 per year, my malpractice premium is already high enough.

[One preventative idea] An idea I’ve had off and on during late-night treks to the ER. Everyone past a certain age – it’s hard to be exact here and I’m not being ageist, really – should consider sleeping on a traditional Japanese-style futon, the real kind, frameless, right on the floor. I can’t tell you how many ER visits for injuries to fragile parts – heads, necks, backs, limbs – could be prevented if simple falls out of bed were curtailed.

Taking Time Out

2009-10-06T12:36:00.003-05:00

In my dozen years of living in Chicago, I didn’t pay much attention to Time Out magazine. That, I think was a mistake. I would see copies lying around, but with full time work and staying in the suburbs it was difficult to carve out time for the myriad activities that Chicago had to offer.

Here in India, I am finding the magazine extremely useful. It comes out in 3 cities – Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai. Each issue contains a long list of cultural and entertainment events for 15 days - Short films, documentary screenings, art presentations, open-air concerts and book launches with author talks.

If you live in a metro anywhere in the world, and are interested in attending these types events, subscribing makes sense. Most can also be found in their website.

Reference Anxiety

2009-09-28T11:03:00.001-05:00

“Reference Anxiety” is basically the compulsion to keep up with the Joneses.

I came across this term a few years ago, in Lee Eisenberg’s book The Number. Lee mentions this as one big obstacle that keep people from attaining their “Number” – which is the estimated dollar amount in their nest egg so that they can retire comfortably.

Though I wasn’t aware of the term for it, I had experienced reference anxiety numerous times. I think most of us have.

I used to be a little proud of the fact that I drove a relatively old car to work. But that only lasted until my wife pointed out that Larry Summers, the director of Obama's National Economic Council still drives a 1995 Protege. Now there’s a man who is completely free of reference anxiety.

What struck me (and the reason I am posting this at all) is a side comment that Lee Eisenberg makes in his book. He mentions research that shows that it is not the Joneses who are raising the bar. Instead, he says, “we feel a great deal of pressure to keep up with ourselves.”

This, I find to be particularly insightful. There is no dearth of better things to acquire and enjoy. I know from first hand experience. I have many friends who are very successful in their chosen fields and not surprisingly, they live the good life. None of these friends would suggest that I go and buy or subscribe to the same things that they do. And yet it takes a lot of energy (if not courage) to consciously stay away from trying to keep up.

When it comes to reference anxiety perhaps I can fight it better if I realize that I am my own enemy.

Can be hazardous, together

2009-09-26T14:42:00.001-05:00

Being home all day means spending lots and lots of time with my wife. And sometimes, she makes statements that I couldn’t disagree with more, forcing me to speak up.

“One should never mix oily food with curd,” she said one day when we were having lunch.
“Which idiot said that?” I asked.
“My father.”

Being married can sometimes be positively hazardous.

Service Apartments – A possibility for short term rentals

2009-09-09T10:07:00.000-05:00

We are finding that “service apartments” are actually a very good option for people like us who aren’t looking to sign a long term rental lease.

Before we actually occupied one, I hadn’t paid much attention to Service Apartments. I knew that when consultants went out to different cities for long assignments, they sometimes stayed in corporate apartments as opposed to hotels.

When we looked around for apartment rentals we found that all of them wanted us to sign a twelve month lease right away. Eventually, we stumbled upon Serviced Apartments.

These are basically fully furnished apartments where you can pay a daily or a monthly rate. “Bring just your clothes” is an oft-repeated ad phrase. Typically, it will be a 2-3 bedroom apartment with: Bed, sofa, dining table, cooking range/gas stove, Microwave oven, fridge, and a TV. The upscale ones have a lot of other extras (maid service, breakfast).

Taken on a day to day basis these apartments are quite expensive. But we’ve found that some owners would let us rent for substantially lower rates, if their property was sitting idle, especially if we agreed to move on short notice. This worked out for our needs. Also, there are always weekly or monthly discounts.

There seems to be a market for those who want to rent for weeks or for a month or two. It takes some searching on the internet and calling around. Sometimes, you can find that a friend or an acquaintance of a friend has a furnished apartment that is vacant and you can offer to rent it from them. This was the case for us in Mumbai.

Whether you want to try different cities (or neighborhoods) before settling down in one, or simply want a “home” in a different place, Service Apartments are worth considering.

To head for the mountains

2009-08-25T10:37:00.000-05:00

It seems to be a very common fantasy among Indians working in the US – to chuck their corporate jobs and head off to the Himalayas. I have heard it from so many that it is practically a cliché.

And so when we planned our first trip within India, we chose the Himalayas. My wife wanted to spend much longer there, but I was the one who limited it to two weeks. I wanted to start small.

The part of the Himalayas we visited (Haridwar, Rishikesh, Mussoorie, Yamunotri, Gangotri) is mostly in the Garhwal region in Uttarakhand. Not snow-clad peaks this time of the year, but very scenic. The Ganges (Bhagirathi) gushes right along the roads wherever we went. The food was hearty, accommodations decent. Some of the bus and jeep journeys were scary due to the narrow roads and the sheer drop.

We took two weeks to make the trip that others routinely finish in 5 days. We overnighted in villages that weren’t even marked in the tourist maps. I consciously stayed away from the Internet for the entire 2 weeks.

The Himalayas, to many who dream of heading there, is an idealized version of a place where you can shed all your worldly worries and get away from it all. Garhwal came close.

Interspersing "retirement" into your working years

2009-08-02T10:06:00.002-05:00

Daniel Pink, after just returning from TED Global 2009 says:

One of the talks that really stuck with me came from the amazing designer Stefan Sagmeister. He described a typical life timeline: The first 25 or so years are devoted to learning, the next 40 or so to working, and the final 25 to retirement.
Then he asked: Why not cut off 5 years from retirement and intersperse them into your working years?
So every seven years, Sagmeister closes his design shop, tells his clients he won’t be back for a year, and then goes off on a 365-day sabbatical. It sounds costly, I know. But he says the ideas he comes up with during the year “off” are often what provide the income for next seven years.

Corporations Dangling Carrots

2009-07-31T01:16:00.001-05:00

In our company an internal client of mine, a lady whose work ethic I respected, was promoted to a VP. Ours being a Fortune 500 company, this was a pretty big deal. Since she always worked late, that evening just before leaving work, I walked over to her office to congratulate her. I asked her if she would be moving to the corner office, the one previously held by the person who had the job.
“No, I am not allowed to occupy that office, Ram” she said. “It has two windows. Only Senior VPs can have an office with two windows. I am only being made a VP, not a senior VP. That office is being converted into a conference room. And they will be building me a new office adjacent to it for me, with one window.”
I was surprised that she didn’t see what all corporations are trying to do. They are forever dangling new carrots (a pay raise, a better title, a better office), anything to get their employees to put in more time.
It was like one of Pavlov’s lab dogs figuring out that it was being programmed to salivate. I think I lost quite a bit of my appetite for corporate carrots after that evening.

Giving up income for personal freedom -- Tyler Cowen

2009-07-19T12:45:00.006-05:00

There is a wonderful jolt of recognition in reading something that echoes and validates our own thinking, and does so far more eloquently than we ever could.

How is it that someone like me, coming from a strictly middle-class background, with no inheritance, after working in middle management for just a dozen years can even consider myself as possibly financially independent? I have often wondered this in the last year.

Several clues to the answer come from Tyler Cowen, whose thinking and pointers I respect enormously. He's recently written a book called "Create Your Own Economy" (great reviews) and says the following in Newsweek Q&A about his book:

The wealthier we get, the more we are seeing people give up income for personal freedom or for a more interesting job.
...
Human welfare is becoming less attached to wealth than it used to be. It’s quite plausible, for instance, that an upper-middle-class person can be happier than Bill Gates or some other billionaire. You wouldn’t have said the same back in the days of Carnegie and Rockefeller.
...
The widespread presence of free fun on the Internet has made it very easy for a lot of consumers to limit or postpone their spending. Just stay at home and cruise the Web.

Cryptic Crosswords: Step by Step

2009-07-16T12:47:00.003-05:00

A lot of people end up not trying cryptic crosswords at all. You don’t need to be proficient in general knowledge to solve the clues, but you have to spend some time to learn the rules. Cryptic crosswords involve a lot of signaling and misdirection. Unlike the straight crosswords, which are really popular in the US, cryptic crosswords are more like English-language puzzles.

I have an uncle who is really, really good at cryptic crosswords. Not only does he solve several a day, he has also started taking the time (every Sunday) to hand-create the grid, include all the clues and provide progressively easier hints for others to give it a try.

Here are 3 that he's created:
21st June, 28th June 2009 and 5th July 2009 including a page with links of lessons about cryptic crosswords.

Cryptic crosswords take time and perseverance to get good at. I am not very good at solving them, but thanks to my uncle’s liberal hints, I am able to solve a good number of the clues in these Sunday crosswords.

Do give them a try. And if you would like to get future grids directly in your inbox, you can email him.

5 Myths about not having a job

2009-07-13T12:40:00.003-05:00

It’s been one year since I succumbed to the idea of not having a job at all. Like everyone, I had hopes and preconceived notions of what it would be like to not go to work at all. Here are 5 things I have learned in the ensuing year are not really true.

Myth #1: You will have vast stretches of unlimited free time
This is the primary reason to give up a regular job, but it is surprising how little extra time one really gets. Not having to set out for office daily is when you realize how many of our day to day activities have to get done anyway. If you manage your time well, you can get a few extra hours every day, but it not even close to whole days.

Myth #2: With no routine to adhere to, you can do whatever you want, whenever you feel like it
It has been a shock to me how quickly new routines get formed. Yes, it is possible to be rebellious and try to shun routines. But for me, not having a routine worked out to be really counter-productive. I have made peace with the fact that routines to a certain degree are inevitable, and that the structure is actually helpful for me to function better.

Myth #3: You can forget about Work and earning Money
Your ex-colleagues and friends will come up with suggestions for what else you could be doing with your time, even if you don’t want to work 9 to 5. From time to time, I myself come up with schemes which I feel are ways to earn extra money. That kind of thinking lasts until I realize that it simply doesn’t make any sense to venture out on dubious propositions that have a remote chance of succeeding. And that I would be earning one tenth of my annual salary even if they did pan out. But it takes conscious effort to stay clear of work and money-related thinking.

Myth #4: You can’t live without a regular paycheck
Actually, employees get a lot more than just their paycheck, if you also consider the perks and benefits that go with being employed. So there is a big fear in letting go of what feels like life support. In my case, after a few necessary adaptations, it didn’t at all feel that bad. I don’t want to make it seem easy. Just that with enough planning, careful saving and living within set budgets it is possible to attain freedom from our dependence on regular paychecks.

Myth #5: You will get terribly bored
This is perhaps the biggest myth of them all. Those who say this really don’t know what they are talking about. When was the last time you got bored of a 4-day weekend, or your 2-week vacation? With all the events, movies, books and so much of the Web to discover, if anyone gets bored it is really their own fault. I am just as pressed for time as I was when I was working, and haven’t yet gotten bored.

In all, I am happy with my decision to leave the workforce. (Otherwise I’d be out looking for a job right now.) Just that things don’t always turn out as you think they will. If you know of friends or colleagues who mention their urge to shove their job, you might consider forwarding these myths to them.

Wanting to belong, wanting no attachments

2009-06-23T13:21:00.004-05:00

Sometimes I want to belong, to be part of vibrant communities. At other times, I want to have no attachments whatsoever, to be free to keep moving. I am often conflicted about harboring these seemingly mutually incompatible desires simultaneously. Which is why I find the following passage by Anne Lindbergh reassuring:

"Perhaps a first step, is in simplification of life, in cutting out some of the distractions. But how? Total retirement is not possible, I cannot shed my responsibilities. I cannot permanently inhabit a desert island. I cannot be a nun in the midst of family life. I would not want to be. The solution for me, surely, is neither in total renunciation of the world, nor in total acceptance of it. I must find a balance somewhere, or an alternating rhythm between these two extremes; a swinging of the pendulum between solitude and communion, between retreat and return. In my periods of retreat, perhaps I can learn something to carry back into my worldly life."
Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

Taking time out for some personal indulgence

2009-06-16T14:27:00.005-05:00

If you asked people who have left their paying corporate jobs why they did so, the reasons will typically have two components: the universal and the individual. Both sets of reasons will be centered around having a lot more time and the autonomy to pursue things that holding down a regular job doesn’t easily allow.

The universal reasons involve spending more time with family, hoping to do good and give back to the world, and to be the boss of one’s own time. The individual reasons vary. Each of us has had hobbies and pursuits which we believe will nourish our soul, but we have subdued into dormancy for years because of other priorities. In my case I seem to never get enough of books and movies, and to a smaller extent travel.

But there is also a third set of reasons, which folks usually won’t talk about.

The third set of reasons is that they simply want to indulge in things that they enjoy, even if it doesn’t do the world any good whatsoever.

Again, in my case I’ve long missed having the time to watch lots of sports on TV, the way I used to before high school, before the pressure to perform academically was impressed upon me. And after a gap of around 25 years, I’ve had a chance to do just that. In the last month, I have had my fill of cricket (IPL and now T-20 World cup) and tennis (the French Open.)

This is one small item in my long list of things-to-do-when-I-have-the-time that I can check off for now.