Author Archives: Abhinav Bhatt

New Year Resolution starts now

Every year, I tend to start working on my resolutions from Feb 1. By this time, gyms are back to the normal footfalls, people have forgotten their promises, and I am left with no choice but to start working out again.

The year 2020 has been a year that took me off guard. By me, I mean everyone. However, some people took it upon themselves to not lose out on their physical activities. Some started running, some played sports, and some started on some routine. I sat longer on my computer, wreaked havoc on my eye sight, and basically gained weight.

But all can be forgiven if I start back doing things from Feb 1. Because once the world becomes Corona-free (whenever that is), I don’t want to be left behind as the dullest of them all.

Declaring on the blog in public and never doing it has been a forte of mine. But here’s a chance to change that.

Onwards Feb 1, let’s see how it plays out.

Sweet Spot

You know when the ball hits the Cricket bat at the sweet spot, it makes that crackling of sound and the ball just rushes towards the boundary. That knocking sound and the power generated from that Sweet Spot is one of the most majestic things in Cricket to a player as well as the viewer (except the bowler). But not every batsman is that elegant. For example, it is rare to see something equivalent to the sweet spot of Sachin Tendulkar Straight Drive.

In work and in life, the flow is a somewhat similar concept. We expect to hit the sweet spot daily but it doesn’t hit often. It is either an edge, or a bouncer, or an unexpected beamer. Sometimes life is a lofted ball so slow that even if it hits the sweet spot, goes straight to a fielder.

Working from home, studying, delivering speeches in Toastmasters, and handling the nitty-gritty of life have been some major struggles in the past year. The sweet spot has been hit but only a handful of times. The rest of the time, it has just been hits and misses.

Today I completed my Level 5 of Toastmasters Pathways. But I didn’t do any justice, to at least the second half of the Path. I got the same comments which I got in my first speech 4 years ago. The form was there but off late, the sweet spot has not been met.

There are numerous excuses but they don’t matter. What matters is sharpening the axe, and working even harder for the tasks ahead.

I am hopeful that next time, the sound would be sweeter, and the impact would be stronger.

My profession is Better than Yours?

In any office cafeteria in today’s day and age, there would be flocks of people coming in and going out during lunchtime. They would come in groups or alone, sit at some tables, have their lunch, and go back. There’s nothing unusual in this. But there would be a bunch of folks who would clean up the table after a set of people are done with their lunch before the next set comes in. Normally, it should be the people themselves who should clean up after they have done eating but that might be too hoity-toity for many of us privileged junta.

Continue reading “My profession is Better than Yours?”

So I recently read: The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel

I didn’t read but I listened to the audio book actually.

I am following blogposts of Morgan Housel for some time now and I find them really insightful. Moreover, this book got enough good praise so it was due.

Some key lessons which I learned from this book are as follows:

Compounding Works

Money might grow in short term but wealth doesn’t. Short-term thinking is good only for the short term. The longer one stays in the game, the more the wealth (not just money but it applies to everything else too) gets enhanced. There are some great stories shared in the book which tells about people who took their time in getting the returns out of their savings. while also some examples of people who spend too much away, too quickly.

Money means different thing to different people

I find this one particularly true. I belonged to a family in which taking risks with money has been a strict no-no as generations have been service class. Do your job, do it better, and let it speak for you has been the mantra. While some of my friends had money, stocks, Demat accounts, and businesses being discussed daily at the dinner table since they were kids. That conditioning plus an individual’s own mindset makes money appear differently. For example, a discount offer not availed is just a missed opportunity for me. While for one of my friends it was considered a loss.

Luck vs Skill

This isn’t given as much importance as much skill is given. But luck is highly important. An example of Bill Gates is shared in the book. Bill Gates is indeed a genius but we shouldn’t overlook that how lucky he was when he got access to a Computer in high school. This was the time when having a computer in a school was not even a notion anywhere in the world. People didn’t even think that Computers had a place in academia. The same lesson about how the skill in the market is just a pseudo-barrier created by some lucky people was told in this Podcast by Deepak Shenoy on Amit Varma’s The Seen and the Unseen.

Never Enough

This lesson is timeless and not obvious till you don’t have it yourself.

I found ‘The Psychology of Money’ by Morgan Housel a good and easy read but impactful in every sense. It is one of the first books I have ever read about money in general and I am glad that I started with this. It is not about investing or saving but just the thought that our perceptions about money are different than our perception about time. Increasing our wealth requires time, effort, and the ability to take risks. And of course, luck.

Photo by Mathieu Stern on Unsplash

Irregular Weekend Programming Halted

As this is not a competition, I am going to not write a daily blog on Weekends from now on. Not that I can’t, but I want to let the brain take a back seat on weekends and indulge in other skills I might want to improve on.

Not that someone is complaining, but I just wanted to make it concrete by jotting it down.