Scarcity drives Evolution

A lot of us have heard about the phrase Necessity is the Mother of Invention. The human brain works to finds creative ways to meet the necessities. That’s why the more brain power that exists in a country, the more creative the ideas that can be brought out to meet the necessities of the people. The US was among the first countries which built its immigration policies after the World Wars to ensure that they were able to attract the best brain power from other countries to create more innovation. That is one of the reasons that its still way ahead in creating more innovations.

Today I was reading a book by Steven Kotler – The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer. I have read multiple books that Steven has jointly written with Dr. Peter Diamandis like Abundance and Bold and I like his writing because he does a lot of research on the topics that he writes about. Some may find this kind of detailing boring.

Right in the first few pages of the book I read this statement. And its been going round in my brain. As per him its the scarcity of resources that has made human beings always innovate and evolve. He’s gone ahead talk about the biology of this and you can read the book to learn more.

However the reason that this statement has been moving around my head is that when we learnt the various theories of evolution they were primarily related to nature causing mutations, survival of the fittest etc.

What’s intriguing to me is why are scarcity of resources a reason for the evolution of human beings, while it’s not meant major evolution in the other pieces of nature as much. Lions and elephants I don’t think have changed too much in the last 5000 years or more.

In my blogs I keep writing about how human ingenuity will always find a solution to problems and surviving, what is giving the humans this capability. Is it just our brain power which has helped us survive much more larger animals in the jungles. Is it the fact the 5 figures in each of our hands can be moved and folded causing this. While no other animal stores resources for the future how did the human being get onto this journey of storing resources.

These are some very interesting queries about when the human race broke away from the animal kingdom. In the animal kingdom even now no animal accumulates resources. I will be on the hunt to find out a little more about this and will keep you all posted.

But this statement also has everyday uses in our lives. When a project has limited resources and a deadline is nearing the teams find ways to optimise. In marketing when we have a shortage of resources like most startups and small companies do, we find low cost methods to help. We identify leverage points.

As a matter of fact my last 2-3 posts on Riding the elephant were all about this.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

You cannot have financial freedom without financial discipline- Part 3

compounding, Financial Independence, Habits, Human Brain, mindset

In yesterday’s post I wrote about how the urgent tasks took over my schedule and missed out on buying the asset whose deadline was yesterday.

Actually the middle class / service class people mistake busyness for success. For us the incoming email or phone is more important than taking financial education.

We keep watching the mail as if the next PO or promotion or next big challenge, is just about to come and it does not come that day, then it does not come the next day and we end up wasting one more day and another and suddenly we realize life has just passed us by.

The rich on the other hand first and foremost understand the discipline they have to follow. And it has nothing to do with education. Even if you discount the likes of Bill Gates, there are lots of others who don’t have college education but have become millionaires.

One of the reasons I think is that a University Degree makes us specialized in some specific area and we like to solve challenges in those areas. The human brain is wired to get attracted to familiar faces, familiar environments. So when we see an email with a familiar topic, we get immediately attracted to it.

Compounding only works in the long term, so you have to ensure that you start very early in life. If like most of us you start late then you have to ensure you are systematically investing over long durations without a break. Financial freedom takes discipline.

To bring in that discipline you need to ensure you eliminate the usage of your brain. Things should happen without your brain taking a decision. That’s where an automatic system helps. Today technology allows it so you should take advantage of it.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

You cannot have financial freedom without financial discipline- Part 2

Financial Independence, Human Brain

I had written on this topic in May also. Financial discipline is absolutely critical if you have to be able to come even close to getting financial freedom.

Our biggest problem with the education that is imparted to kids in India is that they are not given any training on financial matters. I know because I am part of the same problem.

I think its a similar problem in North America as you will notice from the amount of student debt and the lack of savings that exist for retirement for the baby boomers.

Sine we did not learn it in our 16 years of education we tend to have inertia to try and learn it. Anything where there’s inertia, the brain tends to put it back in the line, because it has to do more work to get into action.

The more urgent and easier things take precedence like a phone call from a customer or an email or one more meeting and the day gets over. And I am not preaching this. It happens to me all the time and it happened to me today again.

I was supposed to deposit money into my account for buying a stock whose deadline was today. But being the quarter end , there were supplier pressures, there were our own pressures for closing order bookings and this just slipped out of my mind.

Which brings me back to the basic problem for humans. If you leave it to your mind, chances are that it won’t happen. And for us middle class folks , this costs us dearly in the long run. Therefore I keep writing about ensuring money goes out of your bank automatically into whatever investment you target on a regular basis like a SIP (Systematic Investment Plan).

That’s the only way I have been able to bring in some kind of discipline into my financial life.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Things happen for us – Not to us

Human Brain, life, Worry

Tony Robbins has a saying to the above effect, signifying that instead of feeling like a victim, learn and take something out of it. I have another belief on similar lines, which is God does everything for our own good. Whether you believe in God or not is a separate issue, but things do work out eventually.

Today’s is a prime example. Since I got up today , early morning I was informed of an unscheduled visit for a meeting with some government officials. The original meeting as per my understanding was for the next day.

What was agitating was the fact that I had two meetings scheduled in the afternoon with some other customers. My team had got these meetings after a lot of effort and as a matter of principle, I don’t like the idea of cancelling a meeting with a customer. I was worried and irritated.

Since the meeting with the government officials was critical for our customer, I had to relent. I then started dialling out my colleagues to stand-in on my behalf for the first meeting. Luckily for me the first meeting, which was at 3 PM, the customer himself sent out a request for change of date, since he had to take an unscheduled leave today. I was confident that I will be able to attend the second meeting which was scheduled at 5:15PM

So I told the officials whim I was visiting that I would be out of the meeting by max 4PM since it takes about an hour’s drive. But the discussions continued and I was finally able to leave by 4:25. Now I was again in a quandary. I again dialled out my colleagues to engage the customer till I reached.

Now comes the interesting part. I was able to luckily reach home and join the meeting at exactly 5:15PM and the customer’s team had not arrived. So instead of me apologising for the mess up, I was on the high ground waiting for them.

Moral of the story – sometimes you should let things happen as they are happening without getting to anxious about it. There must be something good for you with you cannot see at the moment. In today’s situation I was able to satisfy one of my largest customer’s inspite of the fact that it was an unscheduled meeting, I could keep my principle of not cancelling meetings unless unavoidable and now tomorrow I have the full day which I can use to finish some other work.

Till next time ….keep the faith – life is happening for us not to us.

Carpe Diem!!!