Burning bridges or keeping options

asset allocation, Financial Independence, Human Brain

I always have this dilemma, whether having options is the right thing or deciding on one path and dedicating all your energy and finances

There’s one theory attributed to Tariq ibn Zaiyad, who is said to have invaded the Iberian peninsula and ordered all the boats be burned after his troops landed.

The idea being if people don’t have an option left then they will concentrate all their energy in trying to figure out how to succeed within the constraints. In case people have an option they don’t put all their energy in solving the problems because they know they can go back to the other option.

The other way of l looking at it is that if we have too many options then we also end up being undecided and take no action.

A lot of investment gurus suggest that you should only focus on 10-15 stocks in your portfolio after you have identified the best stocks as per your risk profile. The idea is that it’s not possible to monitor more than 10-15 stocks. And the percentage of holding within these should be based on your conviction of growth so that you can get maximum returns. After that you should only focus on these for the long term and monitor them.

On the other hand you have people who say you should always have a safety net so that in case of a problem you know you can fall back

In the finance industry this is the concept behind ETFs and most MFs. so the returns are always averaged out to the market and there is a lower chance off loosing money. As Warren Buffet says the first rule of investing is Never lose Money and the second rule is never forget rule number one.

In my own operations I always have this argument with my peers when we are making the budget if we should only focus on one new initiative in a year and make it successful or should we have 2-3 simultaneously and see which moves. My opinion is that it’s very tough trying to ride multiple boats in parallel

Somewhere I think it may also have to do with bandwidth.

What’s your view. Would you rather go beyond the point of no return, choose only one option and make yourself a success or would you rather place bets on multiple things. I would love to heard your comments.

Till next time.

Carpe Diem!!!

Good Karma

compounding, Habits, Human Brain

I had been to South Korea alone in the mid-90s. At that time I did not know Korean and when I landed at the airport in Seoul, there were hardly any signs in English. I had to go to a town about 40 miles away. There was only one person at the tourist information center who knew English.

When I showed her the address of the location, she walked me to the bus which would take me in that direction, informed the bus driver about me not knowing English and where he needed to drop me so that I could move forward to my destination. I had absolutely no clue what was transpiring between them but I just had the faith that I would be fine.

After about an hour’s journey, the driver after dropping all the passengers drove on the wrong side of the road to stop in front of a cab. Then he got down, spoke to the driver of the cab and transferred my luggage into the cab and the cab driver took me to the hotel. And none of these people knew English but I reached my hotel completely safe. I won’t meet those people again but I still remember this incident which happened more than 20 years back. I still hope and wish all of them well after so many years.

I have had many such experiences in my life, some which I have shared with you earlier also. The reason I share is that universe has a unique way of giving back when you do good for someone. My father used to say – give and the universe will give back to you multiple times over.

You can call it by many names – it could be called good karma or tithing or plain and simple charity also.

I have been talking about investing (not saving) a portion of your money even before the pay gets into your hands and then let the magic of compounding work for you.

A useful habit to get good karma, is to ensure you donate a certain portion of your income before you get the salary in your hand.

Donating money and seeing someone become happy because of your contribution has a major psychological impact. I get a very happy feeling for the next few days, it seems like the world is such a wonderful place to live in.

Especially with all the negativity around us, whether it is Covid or it is the political messes or the inability to get vaccination moving systematically in countries – by giving to charity you tend to feel the world is still a decent place.

One of the key things, if you follow my blog regularly – you would notice is that I lay a lot of stress on spreading positivity. The world has a lot of reason to feel negative. If with my personal experiences, where the world has been of so much help, I can make one person less depressed or one person get a reason to get a smile then it would have served the purpose of this post.

Till next time.

Carpe Diem!!!

Mind Control – Part II

Affirmative action, Breathing, Habits, Human Brain, Yoga

I was thinking on this topic since the time I posted yesterday on the comment “how can I stop my mind from wandering”

While I wish, I had a silver bullet answer, I don’t.

However there are some more things which help put my mind in better state to get into flow. In yesterday’s post I already suggested you watch a video on YouTube of Ilovemarketing episode on the 50 minute focus finder. Its one of the best methods of getting the mind cleared and then fully in flow. Earlier to that I have spoken about breathing and yoga.

Another thing which I have found very useful when I am doing any activity which requires intense focus is to play Mozart and Beethoven symphonies. Those have a massive impact on my ability to concentrate when I am trying to do a job which requires immense brain power. In addition I use a paper and pencil to put my thoughts down on paper as they come.

The brain is like the CPU of the computer, it typically is working at a speed which is more than a 1000 times faster than the input-output devices connected to it . If you leave the mind idle even for a milli second, it will like to wander and think of multiple thoughts.

In the life of an average person a typical waking day of 16 hours has about 57000 seconds. You brain has massive compute ability, which means it typically processes tasks very fast and then till it gets the next task, it wanders. Potentially your brain could be wandering 50000 times in a day hoping from one thought to another.

To keep the brain engaged you should use multiple sensory organs (the input-output devices of your body).

If I am reading a book – especially a non-fiction book – then my mind tends to wander. So what I do is I use my fingers to scan through the pages diagonally. Since my eyes follow my finger, two sensory organs are involved and the mind wanders less, in addition I play Mozart and Beethoven symphonies and my ears also get involved resulting in much higher concentration levels.

Why not try these two ideas in addition to what I had mentioned about watching the video by Dean Jackson and doing yoga.

Let me know your feedback and do let me know if there are other methods you have found useful and share it with us.

Till next time

Carpe Diem!!!

Mind Control

Affirmative action, Human Brain

In my post on Unfinished Tasks – source of stress – I got a comment saying something to the context of ” I do write down things but thoughts still keep coming – what should I do”

My simple answer is I don’t know.

Mind control is something that humans have been trying to achieve for ages. Someone who can control the mind achieves nirvana. So I am nowhere even close to nirvana.

However as I had mentioned in my earlier post also if you can keep writing down the thoughts which come to you and do a mind dump then after sometime you will reach a stage where you will be able to concentrate on your work and get into the flow state.

I would highly recommend watching this 50 minute focus finder talk by Dean Jackson on Ilovemarketing.com. Watch it till the end. Its an amazing thing and I generally do it every Monday.

On the other hand I must confess that I am not able to do it everyday.

One of the good things – since I belong to the age when compute was very expensive – I have an ability to write with pen and paper and put my thoughts on paper. Most people today don’t have the inclination of using pencil/pen and paper. One of the advantages of using the pen and paper is that the hand and the brain are hardwired so when the hand moves to write a word it also gets mimicked to the brain sending a signal to the brain that the transfer has taken place.

See this video and let me know if it was of help. I look forward to hearing your comments

Till next time.

Carpe Diem!!!