There are no prizes for drudgery! Ft. Morgan Housel

Disclaimer: I am gonna touch some sensitive topics, feel free to disagree on certain points.

The books I read and started reading during this period –

From Caitlyn Moran, I bring to you my insights from How to be a Woman. It’s an amazing “hear”. It acts as a torchbearer to my tumultuous dilemmas I had about what entails being a feminist. I was afraid of expressing as coming out as one. I think after reading this, I am ready to take that choice. I am glad to know what I stand for. She clears it up. My key takeaways are:

• We are a bunch of “guys” living in this world, so let’s be polite and kind, and call out uncouthness as rude. That’s easier than trying to classify things as “sexist”. We can always use Hanlon’s razor here “Never attribute anything to malice, if it can be adequately explained by stupidity”.
• Why to have or not have kids? How women are asked consistently more after committing about kids. Kinda mini-list for me:
  • It’s a 18 year long commitment at minimum.
  • How people have kids, just in case they miss, like buying Baking Soda in Prime Day sale, in case you might bake a cake, because women have have a biological clock. Don’t. Look at point 1.
  • The question of “When are you planning to have kids?” should be changed “Do you even want to have kids?” this leads to more introspective thinking rather than the usual mind-numbing of falling in the trap.
  • How women who have not given birth are looked at as immature until they themselves have given birth, as if that’s the only rite of passage.
  • If you think God is counting how many sleepless nights you slept, or how many nappies you changed to be eventually rewarded, remember: there’s no prize of drudgery.
  • And how world’s problems becomes less discerning, when you would do anything to make the baby cry 10 seconds less.
• Abortion. Instead of arguing when the foetus has come to life, that’s a tough question to answer. How about to approach it from a different angle, if women have the dominion over to give life and nurturing, they should also have over death and destruction. Because the society won’t benefit from undesired and unwanted child.
• To not think of what if my kid could have been the next Einstein, Mozart, Marie Curie, Lady Ada Lovelace but rather what you yourself can be right now. To live for yourself.

I started with 33 Strategies of Power by Robert Greene, my insights are still brewing. The essence of his points are good, but as my friends mildly puts it and the author himself as well, this book as well as 48 Laws of Power, it’s more of a survival guide. I might try to pick a few things and try to apply in my way “living” life and not just “surviving”. There were some clear things, I disagreed with the author, this is more in context to 48 Laws of Power. He says try to remain as quiet as possible during conversations and let others talk -> which is all good and sensible. He says the more you speak, the more you are gonna mess it up and the more stupid you are gonna look, which can situationally dependent and can be true. I personally think communication is key in building good relationships. The author also says to apply it to your close relationship with your partner, to talk less and act all mysterious because otherwise they will lose interest. This is where I disagree the most. The more one communicates, the better they know and it’s not a good feeling to be on the receiving end of all the aloofness and anxious uncertainty. So to say the least, you should read it carefully, it’s not an optimistic one, rather from the point of view that everyone is out there to get you. I felt some gut just not agreeing with it. But it’s also one of the reasons I want to read it. To be on the other side and see how the sky looks.

To adopt the Socratic view of life, that the only thing I know is that I don’t know anything.

Last one, I wanna discuss is Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel. It’s wonderful to hear. It’s all the good and sensible stuff you wanna hear early on in your years to get it right. But the irony is you only understand and get it right after you have hit your 20’s. So yes the sooner, the better. I have listened to 10 Chapters yet. I am gonna do a Chapterwise insight:

1. No one’s crazy: The way people react to certain market conditions (invest, save, spend in this context) depends on how their childhood was, how the markets and their families were affected when they were growing up.
2. Luck & Risk: They are doppelgangers, can’t believe in one without giving equal respect to the other. Luck and Risk are both the reality that every outcome in life is guided by forces other than individual effort.
3. Never Enough: To not have the goalpost moving with every achievement in result, to know when it’s enough. To be able to say “I have enough” :).
4. Confounding Compounding: Less %age returns over a longer period of time generate more wealth than higher %age of returns over less time. The best investing book title should be “Shut up and Wait”.
5. Getting Wealthy vs Staying Wealthy: To not increase your living expenses in proportion to the rise in your income. I am reminded of “If” by Rudyard Kipling. “If you can keep your head high, when all about you are losing their heads”. It’s not about taking good decisions, more about consistently not screwing up. Frugality and Paranoia. Optimism in the long-term, paranoia in the short term. Personally, still processing this one. It’s like playing the game of Poker to stay in the game, until the odds are in your favour.
6. Tails, You Win: Since I heard the audio book, I was annotating it as “tales” in my head. I believe the author is talking about the tails of the Gaussian curve, and the fact that those super small decisions can change the financial history. It’s a bit hard one. So I will leave it till here. The gist is to do keep doing the average thing during crazy times. No one makes good decision all the time. If you think this was a bad idea, you should look at the next thing we have coming – Bezos on Firephone.
7. Freedom: One of the main perks of having money: controlling your time, that’s a happiness indicator. The reactance approach, having control over our choices or even the idea of it is pleasant. I have observed it myself, when someone takes decision on my behalf or tries to make me do it, even I myself were planning to make the same choice, I still feel unhappy and unsatisfied.

I am gonna keep it till here, and might continue in another post.

I got myself a hard copy of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius : )  Sometimes I feel I myself have scribbled down some of the notes. I was planning to call my book as “Dilemmas”.

I got hooked on the song Je ne parle pas français and Liebe ist… by Namika.

Note for me:

My Python skills are becoming rustic, while mutating the global variable inside a function, don’t forget the global keyword next time.

I went through a life changing procedure, as it is supposed to be, haven’t realised its full potential. Will describe that in the next post.

Thanks for reading this far!