No problem so bad that we can’t make it worse

Think what the scariest thing you've ever done in your life?

That's how retired Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield opened his TED 2014 talk in Vancouver on Monday evening before describing what's it's like to blast into space.

"There is no problem so bad you can't make it worse" Hadfield said

During liftoff, Hadfield said, "you are in the grip of something vastly more powerful than yourself." He added: "It feels like being in the jaws of an enormous dog and foot in your back pushing you into space."

How do you deal with the very real risk and danger? "Having the goal in mind directed me to thinking about all of the small details." 

Its a lesson for us, and guide us how we can deal with the real risk and danger in our life. Always have a goal in mind and act accordingly and in the direction of your goal. I think a //TODO checklist will help us to work in the direction of our goals. We must prepare our weekly, monthly, yearly and long time goals and prepare the everyday //TODO checklist in the direction of our goals.

When dealing with such complicated machinery, the only thing you can do is prepare. 

In his TED talk, the astronaut advised us on with many life lessons, like always prepare yourself for the dangers, risks, so at the time of adversity you can fight against it.

Chris Hadfield is the author of "An Astronaut's Guide To Life on Earth" the star astronaut reveals more about astronaut training, spacewalks, and preparing for disasters.

You can watch the TED talk via the below video:

I do investment in stock market, and what i can relate here is the everyday volatility of the market. If you are a long term investor then stop looking at your stock price and performance daily. It will make the problem worse.

The daily market already too much volatile and on top of it, if you look the fluctuation in your holdings, it will force you to make more decisions of buying or selling. And at the end, you will end up with the loss only. So stop looking the holdings and the performance on daily basis.

The same is true to the major decisions of your life. Things will take time to reflect. So, just do right things at the right time and patiently wait the right outcome to come but remember, change your process of decision making and decisions when the facts change. You can read more about it here.

You can find the similar things in your family life, there are some quarrels in family and via reacting to that in wrong way, you are just increasing the problem not solving it. What you just need is, let the moment pass, be calm, be patient, you get the reward,let the bad moments go.

Remaining cool-headed in times of crisis and adversity is one of the most critical skills. The worst that can happen is not the event itself but the event and you losing your cool.

Chris Hadfield, the astronaut, reminds us that there is “no problem so bad that we can’t make it worse” and panicking is the best way to do that. Resolve, like John Adams did in a 1776 letter to his wife, that “the Panic may seize whom it will, it shall not seize me.” You can buy the collection of all letters here.

Keep reading, keep learning

-Mahesh

There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what you want, the other is getting it

There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what you want, the other is getting it.-Oscar Wilde

In life, everyday we need to make many decisions and the outcome of those decisions decide our future. Sometimes the outcome is in our favor and sometimes it's not. When the outcome is not in our favor, we feel measurable and it becomes a tragedy.

Every action of ours have a defined wants to achieve something and outcome of the action had only two possibilities, either we get what we want or we don't get the want.

We always desire something that we even do not know what it really is, but the problem, here, we will not be satisfied by our desires even we get it. There will be always some missing elements, and even our desires will change its forms. However, the interesting part is that when we lose it, our desires for that object will boil up again, which is the other tragedy that we all experience in our lives.

For a moment, let's imagine, that I make you the offer of a lifetime:

I am going to give you rs 100 million, but…you have to accept this money publicly during a widely televised event.Would you take my offer?

Before I even finish this sentence, your mind is already racing about what you could do with rs 100 million. You could own your home, you would never have to work again, and you could say goodbye to your boring job forever. Wouldn’t life be big? Accepting the money is a no-brainer, right?

But think about what else this offer entails. You are worth rs 100 million and everyone knows it. Long lost lovers and friends that you fell out of touch with are coming out of nowhere. They apologize for being too busy to keep up with you, but were “just thinking of you” the other day.

In fact, You now have hundreds of newly found “relatives” who can’t wait to meet you. Unscrupulous financial advisors are blowing up your phone and every charity in the world is trying to convince you why their cause is the most worthy. Forevermore you won’t know who actually cares about you and who just wants to get closer to the money. Who is legitimate and who is a charlatan? Who can you really trust?

It’s easy to see how rs 100 million would arguably improve your life without even trying. However, it’s much harder to imagine the 2nd order (and higher) effects of having this much money.

Remember, money and fame can destroy lives too. It can happen to anyone. While the upsides are clear, the downsides are obscured. You can imagine the benefits, but not the hidden costs.

Felix Dennis writer of How to Get Rich: One of The World’s Greatest Entrepreneurs Shares His Secrets:

Still, let me repeat it one more time. Becoming rich does not guarantee happiness. In fact, it is almost certain to impose the opposite condition—if not from the stresses and strains of protecting wealth, then from the guilt that inevitably accompanies its arrival.

Or, how about what one of the greatest modern financial writers George Goodman wrote in The Money Game:

I have known a lot of investors who came to the markets to make money, and they told themselves that what they wanted was the money: security, a trip around the world, a new sloop, a country estate, an art collection, a Caribbean house for cold winters. And they succeeded. So they sat on the dock of the Caribbean home, chatting with their art dealers and gazing fondly at the new sloop, and after a while it was a bit flat. Something was missing.

Yet, this goes beyond just getting rich. Time and time again I have seen how our society idealizes things that are littered with hidden costs. We want the great body, but without the exercise. We want the returns, but without the risks. We want the lake house, but without the frozen pipes bursting because we forgot to put in antifreeze.

We can idolize wealth, status, fame, and beauty all we want, but we don’t think about what happens if we ever actually get them…

Be Careful What You Wish For

“There are only two tragedies in life:one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it ”

I believe it’s a perfect example of human thinking, we humans really don’t know what we actually want in life.We keep on discovering what we desires from life.

If somehow we discover what one wants then by “not getting it” you end up by chasing your desire with accomplished DEPRESSION for not getting it.

If somehow “someone gets what one wants ” then you will LOOSE it’s worth soon and it all will seems as a basic thing of life.

When we finally get the things we are chasing after, will they truly make us happy or fulfilled?

-Keep reading, keep learning

-Mahesh

Eisenhower matrix - How to prioritize, what matters

“The most urgent decisions are rarely the most important ones.”—Dwight Eisenhower

We are the result of the decisions, that we made in our past life. It may be the education stream selection like I selected the post-graduation stream as computer and become a software developer, it may be the physical health, mental health, it may be your social life, it may be the habits you choose. Your decision of choosing, decides your future.

We always complain that we don't have time, we are always busy, we are fatty etc. This all are the outcome of our bad choices. We need to manage our time and life properly.

So, it is very important that we should choose right decisions today, so we never regret in future. Now the question is, how we take right decisions? 

We take hundreds of small decisions in our daily life, and some of them are very quick. It's fine to take some less important decisions quickly without much thought but there are many important decisions, we need to make in our life, that may define our future. For those important decisions and slightly less important decisions, we need to give proper thought and then take decisions and do the actions.

To make the right decisions, Dwight D. Eisenhower has developed a decision metrix. It is very simple and help a lot to make the right decisions in our life.

Eisenhower’s productivity is legendary not only because of his accomplishments but also because his methods stood the test of time and worked in various situations. Through various roles and environments, Eisenhower delivered with remarkable consistency for decades.

The Eisenhower Matrix is his best-known technique. It’s a simple decision-making tool that you can  start using today.

The Eisenhower Method

The Eisenhower Matrix has four parts, which you use to categorize the work in front of you:

     1: Important, but not urgent

     2: Urgent and important

     3: Urgent but not important

     4: Not important and not urgent

If you think about it for a second, you realize that the Eisenhower Matrix can help you not only with prioritizing what you work on today, but also with deciding which big projects to work on. The matrix helps you distinguish between what is important and what is urgent.

Whenever something comes on your desk, begin by breaking it down and deciding how to proceed.

The key to making the Eisenhower Matrix work is distinguishing between the urgent and the important.

Urgent tasks are time sensitive, sometimes because we have put them off until we can’t anymore. These tasks can be anything from responding to emails and returning phone calls, to realizing that you’re almost out of gas and have a report due in 20 minutes.

If we’ve put off doing an urgent task that’s also important, then when we finally tackle it, we’re probably not going to think about it as much as we had intended to or as much as we should. We’re setting ourselves up to make poor decisions.

Important tasks are more strategic. They are things we want to get done, such as launching a new product. These tasks are deliberate. We want to pay attention to them and they mean something to us. Rather than being reactive and irrational, we can, with the right planning, be thoughtful and engaged. Because we’re not reactive, we can avoid mistakes. This will free up future time.

For those, who always excuses that they are busy. Tim Ferriss said the below quotes:

“Being busy is a form of laziness — lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.”—Tim Ferriss

Ask yourself when you’re going to deal with things that are important but not urgent. Ask yourself why you’re avoiding what’s important but not urgent. Are you scared of something? Are you procrastinating? Are you too distracted?

How to use Eisenhower Matrix in Practice

I use this matrix routinely as part of my productivity system. It’s helped me stay focused on where I want to go and not get too bogged down in things that don’t add much value.

The conventional wisdom is that you should do the next thing on your to-do list.

Important and non-urgent tasks are scheduled and generally worked on in the early afternoons.

Important and urgent tasks are worked on right away or scheduled and are always evaluated.

The urgent and not-important tasks are usually, though not always, delegated. Take help from someone to help you on this kind of tasks.

The not important and not urgent tasks in the list, no need to attend, just remove from the list. It will save you lot of extra time. example of such tasks: Watching television, doing time pass on mobile, you tube etc.

Time management should be your key decision of the day. Do it properly.

-Keep reading, Keep learning

-Mahesh

Predicting rain doesn't count; building arks does

The idea to write this post Predicting rain doesn't count; building arks does comes from the book (My favorite) Seeking wisdom fromDarwin to Munger by Peter Bevelin.

The title of the post comes from the well-known investor and one of the richest person in the world: Mr. Warren Buffet. This is Buffett's Noah principle: 

"Predicting rain doesn't count; building arks does."

What does it mean? 

It means that telling us about market problems isn't as important as how you act on them.

In stock market, the fluctuations are the part of the market, it works on crowd mentality and all the participant in the market don't think in the same way. The same information is viewed by different people in diverse ways and the meaning also withdrawn in diverse ways. So, the reactions also different. That’s why the market go up and down. And what buffet says here is don't worry about this fluctuation. What Buffett suggests is "Building arcs", meaning use this fluctuations in your favor for the long term wealth creation. If all fundamental is right than invest more in your portfolio on reasonable price levels and this fluctuations (Rain) will help you to get the reasonable price to invest (Help you to create your arc for the long term wealth).

The Noah principle is applied to all unpredictable scenarios (Black Swans in terms of Nassim Nicholas Taleb) whether in market or in life or in business.

What peter Bevelin says in his book is: 

"Why invest resources in something today since we don't get any credit for preventing something we don't even know will happen. "

The world is a complex adaptive system and we cannot predict for sure anything in short term. So how can we predict the market direction in short term. So, the advice is always bet on long term investments.

The book 365 Days With Self-Discipline: 365 Life-Altering Thoughts on Self-Control, Mental Resilience, and Success by Meadows provides the below lessons for us-

We often ignore distant problems and we are reluctant to prevent future threats. Your decision should have a margin of safety, always have some buffer for to go wrong in your decision. You are just a human being and mistakes are part of the decision-making process and can go wrong as well. So, for taking decisions, always keep achecklist of all possible errors or threats, that may impact your long-term decision and direct you in the wrong or right directions. So, the advice is, always keep a margin of safety and always keep a checklist while taking major decisions. One more thing, always keep learning and keep reading, there is nothing called failure or success, it is just learning.

Peter Bevelin shares the words of Warren Buffett in his book as:  

"It took Noah 20 years to build an ark. And people said he was being silly because the skies were beautiful. And of course, the whole time, he looked stupid - until it started raining. You can spend a long time building an ark while everybody else is out there enjoying the sun."

What is the lesson learned here?

Your efforts to improve will draw criticism or ridicule from people who don't care about self-improvement. It's possible you will spend a long time doing things without a reward and starts wondering whether your goal makes sense. Like I am writing this blog and I know it may take a very long time to make sense for me as well as for my readers. But I think it’s a journey for a lifelong learning and as Lord Krishna suggests in Bhagvad-Gita, focus on your Karma, don’t think about the outcome. So, just keep reading, writing and learning, one day you may acquire the worldly wisdom.

"Karmanye Vadhikaraste, Ma phaleshou kada chana, Ma Karma Phala Hetur Bhurmatey Sangostva Akarmani"

 Meaning:  

"You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are not entitled to the fruits of action. Never consider yourself to be the cause of the results of your activities, and never be attached to not doing your duty."

Let’s experience in our day to day life, what is the meaning of the teachings from Krishna and teachings from Mr. Buffet –

Is it worth it to spend several years working so hard to get a degree, build the business or move up the ladder in your company or invest for long time, reading books and writing this blog while others are partying and enjoying their lives on credit?

I think for me, it is a big YES. I am not writing this blog for anyone else, I am not reading the books for anyone else, I don't invest for others. I do this all for myself, I enjoy doing this activity. this is one reason for me to worth this all. The second is, I believe in Karma. Just keep doing the work.....

I know this is a very long process, and during the process you might face doubts and even feel tempted to give up. However, five or ten years from now, the once who were wasting time will get the short end of the stick when they realize that they wasted their time on ultimately meaningless pleasures (Tools of mass destruction), borrowed money on credit cards to enjoy the temporary pleasures, they don't know the benefit of delaying the gratification. Now, they are in debt, worrying about how to pay their bills, and doubting that they will never have a successful career, while you are enjoying the fruits of your labor.

check the analogy: 

Predicting rain doesn't count is enjoying (wasting) the precious time on meaningless things and building arks does meaning investing the same time in meaningful things.

Whenever you are in doubt, remind yourself that you are building an ark and that rain will come. May be now you aren't enjoying yourself as much as others are, but in the grand scheme of things or life, it's better to be prepared and suffer a little now to prosper in the future that live in sweet denial and one day when you realize it, then it's too late.

Most of my friends ask me, why I read books, why I spend less, why I invest the remaining, whatever left or reverse, why I invest first and manage my expenses in the remaining? 

My answer to them is, I am building an ARC for myself, it may, the rain (Any tragedy) come in future.

Now, we all understand, what the ARC building and what is the rain. Let’s explore some more, how we can build our own arc in life, so we get very less damage while it will rain.

Deciding to do nothing is also a decision. And the cost of doing nothing could be greater than the cost of taking an action.

We are the product of our past decisions, that we have taken at some point in past in our life. Whether decision you take consciously or not, but the decision is always taken, because deciding to do nothing is also a decision. And if all the time, we are doing some action as per the decision we make or not make, then it’s better that we should act on our conscious decisions instead of unconscious random life decisions that life through up on us, because the cost of doing nothing could be greater than the cost of taking an action. 

Remember what you want to achieve.

In the process of building your own arc, you should be having a pre-planned blue print or architecture structure of the arc in your mind. else you make something that is of no use. So always know what you want (Your Arc). then act accordingly.

Once we know what to do, we should do it. 

If we identified our arc and we have our blueprint ready clearly in our mind, then why we are not building the arc. Once you know what to do, just do it.

The 19th Century British biologist Thomas Henry Huxley said: 

"Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do when it ought to be done whether you like it or not. It is the first lesson that ought to be learned and however early a person's training begins, it is probably the last lesson a person learns thoroughly."

In simple words, if you want to travel from the city A to the city B in a car in night, then just start driving, you have car and you have light, the road will be visible to you in the night as well with the help of the car lights, and you will reach to the city B. The thing that is required is the courage to drive in the night.

The first step in solving a problem is to recognize that it does exist.

Start building your arc today, small steps make significant difference in long time. Who know when the rain will start.

Keep reading, keep learning.

-Mahesh

A more beautiful question - the art of asking good questions

The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge. Thomas Berger

To grow in life and in career, we need to keep learning new things and how we can learn new things is by knowing what we don’t know. The answer of what we don’t will come from asking good questions. And once we start asking questions, our ignorance will be gone and our knowledge will increase.

Socrates, the Greek philosopher and one of the founders of Western philosophy, devised a method called Socratic Questioning on asking good questions.

Socratic questioning is disciplined questioning that can be used to pursue thought in many directions and for many purposes, including: to explore complex ideas, to get to the truth of things, to open up issues and problems, to uncover assumptions, to analyze concepts, to distinguish what we know from what we don’t know, to follow out logical implications of thought, or to control the discussion. The key to distinguishing Socratic questioning from questioning per se is that Socratic questioning is systematic, disciplined, and deep, and usually focuses on fundamental concepts, principles, theories, issues, or problems. (Source: Wikipedia)

Professor Bakshi, in his immensely educating post Playing Socratic Solitaire on A Gal Called NIMBY, writes –

Charlie Munger started using these Socratic devices in a variation he called Socratic Solitaire, because, instead of a dialogue with someone else, his method involves solitary play. Munger used to display Socratic Solitaire at shareholder meetings of Wesco Corporation. He would start by asking a series of questions. Then he would answer them himself. Back and forth. Question and Answer. He would do this for a while. And he would enthrall the audience by displaying the breadth and the depth of his multidisciplinary mind.

What warren buffet wrote on asking good questions in 2017 Birkshire hathaway annual letter:

our hope is that the analysts and journalists will ask questions that add to our owners’ understanding and knowledge of their investment. Neither Charlie nor I will get so much as a clue about the questions headed our way. Some will be tough, for sure, and that’s the way we like it.

We ask question, to know something that we don't know and via asking question, we learn the worldly wisdom. What Socrates said on wisdom:

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing. -Socrates

An average four-year-old kid in Britain asks around 400 questions a day. But as we grow in age, we stop asking questions. Our reading and writing skills went up but our questioning skills went down a lot. In the book A More Beautiful Question – Warren Berger explains why questions are more important than answers and how to improve our questioning skills.

Let’s figure out why as we grow, we stop asking questions?

To ask a right question, we need to put pressure on our mind and we need to think and articulate a right question, so that we don’t look like a fool to others.

We are made in such a way that we try to avoid this mental pressure, so most of the time we avoid asking questions and accept whatever comes to our way or whatever presented to us.

To question, we need to first understand our ignorance that we know nothing. We need to be curious to ask questions, we should be having the fire within yourself to know the things out there.

To get the wisdom, we need to remove the garbage from out mind and fill it with right questions and wisdom. We can get the wisdom from books, great leaders, teachers, good blogs, good friends and by our own experience.

We must understand that the questions are more valuable than the answers.

Someone asked Albert Einstein for his phone number. Einstein looked up for his own number in the phone book. When asked why a genius like him cannot remember his own number, he replied – there’s no reason to fill his mind with information that can easily be looked up. This is very true In the current era of internet.

If I want to know something or about someone, why to remember, if I can get that from the internet easily.

Albert Einstein once said –

If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.

The same is said by Abraham Lincoln as well-

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe. 

He(Albert Einstein) spends a lot of time to come up with the right question to ask. Finding out the right question to ask is very difficult. It is a skill one must develop by practicing. Warren Berger calls this right question as a most beautiful question.

A beautiful question is an ambitious yet actionable question that can begin to shift the way we perceive or think about something – and that might serve as a catalyst to bring about change.

To ask good questions that produces change he(Warren Berger) proposes a framework called as Why-What If-How:

Why – Person encounters a situation that is less than ideal and asks why.
What If – Person begins to come up with ideas for possible improvements and solutions – with such ideas usually surfacing in the form of what If possibilities.
How – Person takes one of those possibilities and tries to implement it or make it real; this mostly involves figuring out how.

To ask a good question, just adopt the following suggestions:

1. You should know the end purpose: Before asking the question, you should be aware about what you want to achieve by asking the question. You should be clear on your requirement.

2: Your question should be in a planned way: Once you know the end goal, and then plan all your questions in a systematic manner, so the answer should guide you towards your goal or requirement.

3: Your question should be in the form of an open conversation: Ask question in a way that will open the doors for an interesting conversation. Participate in the discus and understand the scenario to the depth.

4: Use simple language: Don't try to be over smart and don't use the tough words to ask the questions, use as simple as possible words to ask the question.

5: Ask one thing at a time:  Don't try to mingle all your questions in a single big sentence. Just break it in small and simple questions and ask one by one. Don't confuse yourself and the person, to whom you are asking the questions.

6: Ask only important questions: Don't waste your time as well as the person who is giving the answers. Ask only the questions that are important.

7: Don't interrupt, Listen first carefully: While the person is giving the answer of your question, don't interrupt in the middle, let him first complete the answer, then ask the next question.

8: Read good stuff, to understand the big picture: To enhance your persona, read good books and good stuff like this blog. Via reading, you learn new things and your quality of question asking will improve so the wisdom will improve. Everything is linked; it’s a butter-fly effect in play.

Let's see, how asking good questions help you:

1.     Asking good questions provide clarity to your knowledge and allow your mind to understand everything in a better and broad sense

2.     Asking good questions at work place benefits you to make better working relations. As an example of question - Instead of “Did you make your sales goal?” asks, “How have sales been going?”

3.     Asking good questions help you to thing in analytical and logical way. You think about the consequences of every action or inaction.

4.     They inspire people to reflect and see things in fresh, unpredictable ways: “Why did this work?” and "Why did this does not work?”

5.     They encourage out of the box thinking: for any situation you thing different ways for the solution - “Can that be done in any other way?”

6.     They challenge assumptions, they force you to think: “What do you think you will lose if you start sharing responsibility for the implementation process?”

7.     They create ownership of solutions, you started feeling that the work in hand is your responsibility and this will improve your work attitude: “Based on your experience, what do you suggest we do here?”

8.     You started feeling more responsible.

I will end the post with the beautiful suggestion by Mr. Charlie Munger : 

Disclosure: To write this post, i have taken the help from Safal Niveshak, Fundoo Professor and janav's writings. This are really wonderful people, please do read this blogs as well. Thanks Sanjay sir, Vishal and Jana for the wonderful blogs.

- Keep reading, Keep Learning

- Mahesh

Learn From Your Failures Just as You Do from Your Successes

"One child, one teacher, one book, and one pen, can change the world." ― Malala Yousafzai

We never stop learning, we always learn in one way or in another, but we continue to learn. The education that we receive in our schooling is not only the learning we have. Our actual learning will start once we come out of the school or college and start working in the real world.

We learn at our work place, we learn from our collogues or from our friends. We learn from our enemies as well. We learn from our failures and from our experiences.

Most of the time, we learn from our experiences and from the people around us. But if someone want to improve his learning, then he have to learn from other's experiences as well.

How you can learn from other’s experience?

The answer lies in the reading of good books  and it is also important to learn how to read abook?

Read good books from great authors and learn from there experiences. By developing this small habit, will help you to take right decisions and help you to grow in your life.

By reading and writing, we learn from our experiences as well as from other’s experiences.

Maria konnikova, in the book Mastermind how to think like sherlock holmes writes that we never stop learning, we always learn. Let’s read what she write-

"In observing Watson’s fallacies in this particular instance, Holmes learns ever more about the pitfalls of the thought process, those moments when it is easy to go astray—and precisely in which direction the false path usually lies. From this encounter, he will take away the power of stereotype activation and the overwhelming influence an improper initial frame can have on the inferences that follow, as well as the error that is introduced when one fails to consider every observation and focuses instead on the most salient, recent, or otherwise accessible ones. Not that he doesn’t know both of these things already, but each time serves as a reminder, a reinforcement, a new manifestation in a different context that ensures that his knowledge never goes stale.”

Holmes always keep a keen eye on all the events, on how the other person behave and act, on the things around him and he observe very closely and learn from his observation. Maria Continues-

“Education is all well and good, but it needs to be taken from the level of theory to that of practice, over and over and over—lest it begin to gather dust and let out that stale, rank smell of the attic whose door has remained unopened for years."

Maria suggests that whatever we read or learn, we should bring the learning to the practice. Then only we can learn. While practicing we do mistakes and by mistakes, we open the new door for more learning and this is how the knowledge will expand.

“Practice is the hardest part of learning, and training is the essence of transformation.” ― Ann Voskamp

Mahatma Ghandi suggests, how to live and learn:

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” ― Mahatma Gandhi

Read the autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi, My experiments with truth, and you come to know that Mahatma Gandhi is a great learner from his experience as well as from other’s experience. He never stops learning.

There is another way to learn more and that is teaching to other person, whatever you learned. 

Charlie Munger sugegsts:

“The best thing a human being can do is to help another human being know more.”  Charlie Munger

By teaching, you come to know, what you don’t know and knowing what you don’t know is the real wisdom and factual knowledge.

If you don’t believe, just start teaching a simple thing to a toddler that you just learn. You come to know that there are many questions that are still unanswered.

In Mr. Feynman words, you just know the name of the thing, not the thing. You must know difference between knowing the name of something and understanding the thing.

"See that bird? It's a brown-throated thrush, but in Germany it's called a halzenfugel, and in Chinese they call it a chung ling and even if you know all those names for it, you still know nothing about the bird. You only know something about people; what they call the bird. Now that thrush sings, and teaches its young to fly, and flies so many miles away during the summer across the country, and nobody knows how it finds its way."

Once you start thinking in the direction of understanding something, your knowledge will expand exponentially and your learning will not have any limits.

Learn From Your Failures Just as You Do from Your Successes. Its true that we learn from our failures but we must learn from our successes as well. Once you get failed or get succeed, just analyse the events and try to figure out the causes of the failure or success and learn from the events. 

Think if the events not go in the way, the way it happens. What are the consequences? Think like a devil advocate. 

For any work, just do a pre mortem.

I will end the discussion with the quote by Einstein:

 Keep reading, keep learning

-Mahesh

Lessons from a tree

Today I see the above quote on Twitter from Mr vishal khandelwal. The quote teach everything how we should live our life.

The tree teaches us-

Stand tall and proud-
stay with your morals, values ethics and be proud with them. Stay away from wrong things, habits and people.

Sink your roots into the earth-
May Almighty bless you everything , wealth, health, prosperity, fame but always keep your foot on earth, be humble.

Be content with your natural beauty-
Like the beauty of a tree, be pure, be yourself, don't change yourself for others.

Go out on a limb-
Enjoy your life with full length but don't forget your loved one's family, your country. Like a tree go out to the world as a limb but always attached to your roots.

Drink plenty of water-
Water means anything which you admire in your life, I will refer here the knowledge. Read lot of books from different different fields and get wiser daily.

Remember your roots-
Most important don't forget your roots because without they you are nothing.

Enjoy the views-
Enjoy this journey of your life as a tree.

Nature is the best teacher, it teaches everything that a person want to learn. Keep observing, keep learning and try to plant at least one tree in your life.

Disclosure: I have used the concept and image from safal niveshak by Vishal Khandelwal.

Thanks,
Mahesh

Education is Freedom

“What is the fruit of these teachings? Only the most beautiful and proper harvest of the truly educated—tranquility, fearlessness, and freedom. We should not trust the masses who say only the free can be educated, but rather the lovers of wisdom who say that only the educated are free.”
—EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES

From the book "The Daily Stoic":

Why did you pick up this book? Why pick up any book? Not to seem smarter, not to pass time on the
plane, not to hear what you want to hear—there are plenty of easier choices than reading.
No, you picked up this book because you are learning how to live. Because you want to be freer, fear
less, and achieve a state of peace. Education—reading and meditating on the wisdom of great minds—is not to be done for its own sake. It has a purpose.
Remember that imperative on the days you start to feel distracted, when watching television or having a snack seems like a better use of your time than reading or studying philosophy. Knowledge—selfknowledge in particular—is freedom.

To become wiser day by day, read great books daily and acquire the worldly wisdom.

I wish everyone, a happy new year(2018) and hope that you will take resolution of reading in the new year.

Thanks,
Mahesh