Category: Everything else

Roulette skill

I spent a couple of hours at a casino recently and was intrigued by the behavior* of a few folks at a Roulette table.

They first placed their bets with pursed lips and frowns, muttered phrases of encouragement to themselves (and got encouragement from a watching friend in one case), and reacted with shock and disbelief when the outcome wasn’t in their favor.

If I didn’t know the roulette game was all about luck, I might have mistaken this show to be about a game that required a high level of skill.

It made me wonder how often we end up mistaking luck with skill in games (both real and metaphorical) we play.

*I didn’t have anything to compare their behavior to – so, this may be normal.

A growth mindset equation

Growth mindset = Fixed Mindset (default) + a deep commitment to the process of learning + a disregard for failure / a love for challenges + a faith in the outcome working out in the end.

We start with a fixed mindset. We then need to cultivate a deep commitment to and appreciation for the process of learning.

That, then, helps us disregard failure/embrace challenges thanks to that deep commitment.

And, underlying all of this is a faith that the juice will be worth the squeeze.

Teaching and rigor

Great teachers understand a simple truth – a great teacher’s most important role is to inspire her student to learn the subject.

To facilitate this, great teachers often enforce a lot of rigor. For example, one of the best teachers I know used to assign a lot of thought provoking pre-work and expected us to come to class fully prepared (and we did). Another refused to let anyone in after the class started. And, yet another – this time at work – put extraordinary emphasis on never using a pie chart.

The purpose of this rigor is to remove all the noise that can get in the way of understanding and appreciating the subject/skill at hand. Appreciation speeds up understanding and understanding inspires more appreciation.

And, once a student makes it past the rigor to understand and appreciate what she is learning, there’s no turning back.

Rigor is a powerful tool to inspire focus.

Alexa background music

We still listen to music the “old school” way in our home – i.e. we buy our music on iTunes vs. stream on Spotify. As a result, we have an eclectic playlist with tunes in various languages that we’ve accumulated over the decade.

One of the issues with such a collection is it doesn’t lend itself well to being background music when we have friends over (and we love having music play in the background). You are just as likely to listen to Coldplay or Taylor Swift as you are to Mozart as you are to a Hindi or Tamil artists.

Over the past year, however, our go to has changed to the wonderful stations/playlists on Amazon Music. Even when we’re away from home, we just fire up the Alexa app and ask for “good music” (Top 50 most played) or “nice music” (Mellow Folk) and turn our attention to enjoying games or a good conversation.

Till date, these stations have always delivered. I’m grateful for that.

Sexual abuse

I recently learnt about a few cases of sexual abuse that affected people I know – that either happened to their kids or happened to them when they were kids.

The worrying pattern was that, regardless of whether it was a boy or girl child, most of them involved an adolescent boy they knew well.

On the one hand, it really sucks to learn of these stories.

On the other, as a parent of toddler who needs to (sadly) acknowledge reality, it is a reminder to exercise care and caution.

Soul food

Whenever we travel, I’m reminded of the concept of soul food.

Every once a while, we taste some incredibly special food in places we visit – food that just touches our heart and mind. Sometimes, this happens at expensive places. More often than not for us, it happens in some hole-in-the-wall spot with that awesome intersection of $ (or $$) and 4.5+ stars on Yelp.

But, then, after a few meals of this delicious food, I find myself craving for “soul food.”

My soul food is simple fare – rice mixed with plain yoghurt – a staple where I’m from*. Throw in a spicy side and a scrambled egg and I’m in heaven. This costs next to nothing and, yet, I’d choose this over meals that cost hundreds of dollars.

That’s the beauty of soul food. It is generally simple stuff that we grew up with that somehow touches our heart, mind, and soul.

It serves as a wonderful reminder that we don’t need a lot of money or stuff to be happy. All we need is to surround ourselves with the simple things that feed our soul.

*In case you are wondering, this can’t be described as Indian food or even South Indian food. The analog would be European food or South European food. We have to get a lot more specific to get to the right label. :)

The J P Morgan reminder

It has become an yearly tradition of sorts to dust off this quote from the late J P Morgan during this time of year – “I can do a year’s work in nine months but not in twelve.” 

In saying this, the late J P Morgan referred to the fact that he kept a workaholic schedule for 9 months a year in New York but made sure he had at least 3 months away from work every year to ensure he kept his spirits up and got enough perspective.

It is a fascinating way to think about the relationship between intense work and breaks. While few can take a quarter off from their chosen path every year, there’s something to be said for prioritizing breaks that are long enough for us to get some distance and perspective.

The snorkeling in choppy waters analog

We were out snorkeling on a beach with choppy waters recently. Given the strong waves, it was a fascinating process trying to get further into the water.

As attempting to swim hard when the tide is against you is futile, you have to wait out the wave – either staying in the same place or moving slightly backward when it happens.

This is followed by a period when the water recedes. That’s the golden opportunity – any swimming done at this time capitalizes on the existing momentum.

Next, we have that brief period between waves – again, good opportunity to make progress.

In summary, start by deciding where you want to go.

Pay attention to the natural momentum of the waves.

Stay in the game when things are going against you.

Make good progress in the quiet periods.

And, capitalize when you see momentum in your direction to make meaningful progress in spurts.

Sounds a lot like life.

2/10 effort for 8/10 outcomes | Personal Finance

The list of areas I seek to optimize has become fewer and fewer over time. As I reflect on the year that’s gone by, I’ve come to realize that this list is down to just two areas – work and family. As much as I’d like to include self-care/fitness on the list, I can’t do that with a straight face.

For everything else, I’ve operated with what I consider the satisficer credo – expend 2/10 effort for 8/10 outcomes and make peace with the fact that these outcomes will never be a 10/10.

In practice, this means accepting that, in areas like personal finance or travel, I’ll likely not have the best credit card or flight deal. Instead, I work with a collection of simple solutions that I don’t need to change very much.

So, I thought I’d document these solutions in a series of posts – my hypothesis is that there’s a series in here that culminates in a post with an updated set of life principles/mission statement (this might not work :-)).

And, I thought I’d get started with Personal Finance. The tactics in this one will be most applicable to folks in the US – that said, I’m hopeful the principles will hold. Also, I choose I and we interchangeably to mix it up – in our case, all “I” decisions have been”we” decisions since we got married.

1. One primary credit card – Chase Sapphire Reserve. I use one primary credit card – as of this year, it is the Chase Sapphire Reserve. Some optimizers I trust said it is among the best credit cards out there and I can see why – I have been impressed by the rewards. I was loyal to AmEx for nearly a decade – especially as they were generous with credit limits when I first came to the US. But, their rewards weren’t working out for us and I only have place for one primary credit card. I took a 20 credit score hit when I shut that card down. But, that’s the price I pay for simplicity. I’m sure it’ll work out fine in time.

2. Secondary credit card – Amazon Prime Rewards Card. This was a 2019 experiment as it seemed like a no brainer to get 5% back on Amazon purchases. It is here to stay.

3. 2 bank accounts – a physical and online high yield savings: We set up a Bank of America account when we first moved – this remains our primary physical bank. We added an online bank account for high yield savings – Marcus by Goldman Sachs. This is another in the no-brainer category. 

4. Treat equity like a Cash Bonus: Many companies offer equity compensation. I choose to treat equity compensation as I would a cash bonus – rationale as explained here on the Wealthfront blog.

5. Simplify long term investing – 401(k), backdoor Roth conversions, and automated transfers for investments with Vanguard Advisory Services: We max out our 401(k), use backdoor Roth conversions, and automatically transfer the rest into Vanguard Advisory. Vanguard helps us  to help us with investments at a low cost ($3 for every $1000 under management). I’m not expecting them to help us beat the market and generate jaw dropping returns. But, I’m expecting them to help us save us from ourselves and do an 8/10 job in the long run.

6. 1 Google spreadsheet for all the math: As I’ve shared before, we maintain a simple Google spreadsheet to keep track of all our expenses and investments.

Now, here’s the interesting part – there are ways to optimize every one of these steps. You can have many credit cards which accumulate points in fascinating ways. You can do the same with a myriad of bank accounts. If you receive equity compensation, you can aim to buy and sell in ways that maximize your gains. And, of course, the biggest optimizations come in the area of investing – there are literally millions of possibilities.

But, there’s also limited time in the day and infinite ways we can spend this time. So, we are left with no perfect decisions. All we can do is understand the trade-offs and thoughtfully choose our path.

Implicit to the decisions we’ve made above is an acknowledgment that we’re not going to measure our lives by the amount in our bank accounts. We’re not going to be the folks with impressive year-over-year growth rates on our savings and investments. We’re also not going to be the folks who made millions of dollars with simple investments in crypto/insert-cool-new-thing.

Instead, the goal is to do the essentials, avoid stupid mistakes, and use the money we earn from our work to create the sort of life experiences that maximize quality time spent with loved ones, learning, and a positive contribution to problems that we consider meaningful.

This gets to the power of pursuing simplification in all but a couple areas in our lives. It helps us avoid time spent optimizing the things that don’t matter so we can create space for the things that actually do.