A Learning a Day

M.K.Gandhi has had massive impact on the history of India – both positive and negative. While I was a student, I realize I looked at the negatives a shade too much and this book has been a nice reminder of how much there is to learn from the man. And I’m sure there are more learnings to come as I make progress in my reading.

This post is inspired by a line in the book I was very inspired by. This was during Gandhi’s years as a student in England. He says (paraphrased/roughly) ‘I always accounted for every penny that came in and went out. This is a habit I would encourage all youth to develop. It is this habit that enabled me to handle public funds with relative ease and has stood me in good stead all through my life.’ 


Members of this blog’s community have seen me struggle through the journey over the years. I was living on borrowed cash after being bankrupt in university when I started blogging. And then, there was progress over the next year to a tight life style until I was sure I had sufficient control over my finances (and had paid off my debts). And then, after a year or so of living well below my means, the next objective was to track all my expenses. Precise tracking was a real struggle and I’ve finally solved that problem thanks to the Envelopes app on my phone. And, since May, I’ve been able to start living with budgets. (I’m admittedly lax about getting on the wrong side of my budget now though as I have sufficient confidence in my ability to live well below my means but that’s only after 2 years of having done so)

I maintain all of this on a Google Spreadsheet. I’m aware of many great apps that help automate this but I’ve resisted them simply because I like to keep control of the process.

This journey has taken me a good 4 years. Call me a slow learner if you will but it’s felt like a great accomplishment even if it’s taken that along. The juice feels worth the squeeze.

Gandhi’s advice though, pushed me a step further. As I was working on my end-of-month finances today, I wanted to have a clear understanding of my cash flow in addition to my balances, savings and the like. And I worked on my Google Doc to fully understand just that. The end result was an additional sheet which helped me understand my cash flow, averages of how much I spent – essentially every thing I need to understand and account for every penny I spend.

I believe in the tremendous power of the habit. I daresay the whole world needs this. One needs to look no further than the financial crisis to realize the potential impact of every one of us living below our means. Simply put, we need to get into the habit of making every penny count.

So, as a bonus, I thought I’d share with you a template that might help you on your ‘Account for every Penny’ journey. Please find it on the Google Spreadsheet http://bit.ly/aladaccountstemplate.

2 things to note  here –

– This is exactly the sheet I use myself, with dummy numbers. So, they may not make sense across sheets (they will, when you put original numbers in).

– This sheet is just version 1. There is a lot of functionality that can be added, of course (linking numbers between sheets, charts graphs etc). I thought I’d try and keep it as simple as I can. I’ll let the Excel Geeks go crazy with adding additional stuff. :)

 I’d appreciate hearing from you on anything you feel is missing. And, of course, I look forward to any questions you might have.

I hope you find it useful. 

This has proved to be VERY energizing first thing in the morning as I have relaxed my email checking rule to check out the song of the day. And it was very effective in getting me up for exercise on Monday and Tuesday. (Maybe I should add it to my Elephant-Rider applications)

Today’s song turned out to be a special one. It was ‘We like to Party’ by Venga Boys. And this is a very very special childhood song.

After an initial bout of anarchy and fighting, the hierarchy among the hens is established. Every hen knew where it stood in the chain and the hens then ate the food only when the one above them in the hierarchy had finished. And if there is ever a dispute the higher hen would peck the other hen – giving rise to pecking order.

I just reviewed a truly fascinating book by Will Durant called the ‘The Lessons of History’. Ever since reading the book and understanding Durant’s point of view, I’ve begun to respect hierarchy a  lot. It seems to be the natural order of things. And it manifests itself in everything.

For example, corporate ‘culture’ is a term that is used a lot these days. And, in my humble opinion, corporate ‘culture’ is really a manifestation of hierarchy.

The boring places are those that are extremely hierarchical and bureaucratic while the fun places to work are those places which don’t reinforce the existing hierarchy. But, let’s not forget – in every place, the hierarchy exists. It must exist. There is always the fall guy i.e. the big boss. ;) And there is no point pretending it doesn’t exist either. That just ends up frustrating everyone.

Aside from hierarchy, which is how we establish the natural pecking order, there are also other factors that influence it. In some culture, it’s extrinsic stuff like having expensive cars, in others by having intense Blackberry conversations on Sunday and demonstrating that you don’t have a life and in some others, by the quality of your family life and how your kids are doing.

In any case, pecking order does exist everywhere. And being young and, as a result, bottom of the food chain, I’ve learnt it is best to respect it and work with it than work against it. Experience is an incredible thing and only time can teach us that. And if we are surrounded by great people, then we are given opportunities to ‘do our thing’ anyway. Of course, we’ll have to earn those stripes. But, it’s a fair expectation.

The key, I’ve realized, is to remind ourselves to fit in first, and then stand out. Not always easy when you are young. But vital. 

Managing time appeals to the ‘manager’ within.
Managing myself appeals to the ‘leader’ within.

Managing time, hence, focuses on optimization (eg: Scheduling back to back meetings!).
Managing myself focuses on productivity (eg: ensuring I have food amidst back to back meetings).

Managing time focuses on schedule.
Managing myself focuses on productivity.

Managing time is great for short term i.e. fighting battles (crazy deadline).
Managing myself is great for long term i.e. fighting wars (life!).

Managing time appeals to the elephant (quick wins)
Managing myself appeals to the rider (long term)

Managing time looks to say yes and schedules items into my calendar.
Managing myself looks to say no and strikes things off.

Managing time doesn’t care about bigger priorities.
Managing myself cares about whether I care.

I realized this as I realized that in my earlier short trips, I managed time – pretty well. But failed to manage myself and even ended up falling sick once and that is NOT fun on a vacation.

There is no doubt we need both to function well but I realize it’s vital we make sure we are driven by the leader and not the manager i.e. the leader to schedule and the manager to optimize to get things done instead of the manager scheduling.

I find that to be the difference between being busy and being productive. Also, when we understand elephants and riders, we realize why ‘Managing Time’ triumphs by default.

And given how we are constantly educated about the importance of a good manager (thanks to calendars, meeting invites, conventional time management and the stress on time), I daresay we need a bit of leadership.

Not to lead others. Just to lead ourselves.

A group of hungry student volunteers were led to a room that smelt of chocolate chip cookies.
There were 2 bowls – one with cookies and the other with radishes.

Half the group were asked to eat from the cookie bowl and not touch the radishes. The other half had to do the opposite. Researchers left the room for 10 minutes to bring about temptation and studied the situation with hidden cameras. They found that, despite looking longingly at the cookies bowl, the radish eaters stuck to their word – that was will power at work!

A couple of hours later, they were called for a second ‘unrelated’ study about problem solving and given complicated unsolvable puzzles. And the results were telling.

The cookie group i.e. the untempted students spent, on average, 19 mins on the task making 34 attempts. The Radish group, on the other hand, gave up in 8 mins, after 19 attempts on average.

Self control, as this experiment dictates, is exhaustible . Exercising it is like doing bench presses at the gym – the first one is easy and then it gets progressively difficult.

This story is a wonderful example of how fighting the elephant is a very tiring process for the rider. I think the big question here is – Are we wise in our use of our exhaustible self control every day?

Happy week, all!

Watching the ‘Star Wars’ trilogy has been on my list forever now. There was a whole Star Wars discussion on AVC that caught my interest. That and a close friend of mine who is a massive Star Wars fan. In fact, on his insistence, I had begun with Star Wars I and gotten bored. Of course, he later explained that I should start with 4th episode – A new hope.

I did last weekend and as of now, I’ve finished with the trilogy. And as expected, I am a fan. I can’t wait to watch the prequels now!

And fittingly, I thought I’d blog about my favorite character – Yoda. It is hard to come away from the movies without loving Yoda – his incredibly sweet and profound character and lest we forget, his unique style of speech.

There were a couple of Yoda moments that had me clapping. (No, seriously..)

The first moment is when Yoda catches Luke looking at him differently as he is now old and weak.

He quips – “When 900 years you reach, look as good you will not“


A few other quips were just as inspirational.

“Do or do not. There is no try.“


“Size matters not.. look at me, judge by size, do you?“


Luke: “What’s in there?“
Yoda: “Only what you take with you”

“Named must your fear be before banish it you can.”

“Ohhh. Great warrior.Wars not make one great.”

“Soon will I rest, yes, forever sleep. Earned it I have. Twilight is upon me, soon night must fall.”

The great Yoda moment (for me..) was when Luke gives up trying to get his ship out of the water as a part of his Jedi training. Dejected and frustrated, he moves to the side.

Yoda does it for him.

On seeing his ship out of the water, he goes to Yoda and says “I cannot believe it.”

“Yes. That is why you fail.”

Life lesson right there. What are we without belief..

I thought I’d flip it around.

This is truly an incredible time to be alive, isn’t it?

The world is flat, connected and extremely personal.

It is flat because distance doesn’t matter anymore. We live in a large global village.

It is connected because we are all connected to each other in more ways than ever before. I realized this when I looked at the little community building around this blog – The Google Analytics data says this blog has had visits from 103 countries. 103 countries! Isn’t that simply mindblowing?

It is personal because, thanks to tools like Twitter, you know what your favorite pop star is up to. You know them as people, what they believe, what their lives are like and you can have conversations with them from time to time. They’re no longer people you just see on TV.
It is personal because you have your entire class from high school on your facebook and even if it has been ages since you last met, you’re still connected.

This is an incredible period because the world is in transition of sorts. Social media has changed the way the world works – fundamentally. It has empowered millions of us in and impacted us in very profound ways. Suddenly, we all have ‘voice’. Corporations are trying to get their heads around it, politicians don’t know what to do about it, countries try to block it – but you sure as hell can’t ignore it.

Sure, we may be in a tough time. But now, more than ever, we have the power to make the most of failure. We have opportunities to learn all around us, to get inspired, to do more and really make a difference. We’re not in the 1980s. Sure, we’ll have difficult times but now, more than ever, we have the power to make life work without employing ‘traditional’ methods. Times have changed.

And what a wonderful change it is. JLM put it nicely –

‘One of the great things about life just now is the realization how far our voices can be heard.

Seeing your rich background and knowing we can hear each others’ voices through the ether is really inspiring.

Not to go all Freud on you, but it gives me great hope for the world when you and I can communicate from far away and yet it seems like we are just sharing a coffee.

Is this a great time to be alive or what?’

We tend to see this happen a lot when we call for taxis as well. We might wait for ages and then decide to call for one (= additional cost). And just as our ‘on call’ taxi comes to pick us up, a stream of available taxis will probably just pass by.

I’m using taxi’s here as the example. But, I’m sure it’s happened to you in one way or another – either with public transport or with movie tickets or with something else.

Like it or not, it just seems to happen.

The other day, I was in conversation with a taxi driver in Singapore who was talking about his general habits during a day of work. One of his rules was to go back home if he didn’t find customers for 2 straight hours post midnight. And this meanttaking the car to the car wash and then heading home as washing the car was part of his end-of-day routine.

And that’s when he spoke about how he always seemed to pass by 10 customers who wanted his services right after he washed his car!

I couldn’t help but smile. The grass is always greener..