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

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated

Confucius had said 2,500 years earlier, 

“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”

Jon Jandai gave a TED talk on simplicity of the life, have a look here. 

the crux of what he says is that we don’t have to do what society tells us, we can have the life we want, and our choices determine if we get such a life.

Consider saving money and investing it well over a long period of time. This is all you need to create wealth. Simple, right? But the question again is, like Jon asked, why do we make it so hard?

Of course, money isn’t everything in life. But it sure does help to consistently spend less than you earn and invest the difference well. Over time, compounding will do the rest for you.

Living a minimalist, no frills, life is a powerful idea

The quicker you grasp this simple idea about saving versus spending, the quicker you will be able to start living like a free bird…even if you don’t have many millions in your bank.

Charlie Munger once described the secret of success as 

“take a simple idea and take it seriously.”

Spending way less than you earn and investing that difference well over a long period of time is that simple idea.

This is a very simple blog post and very small in size but it will help us to live a very fulfilled life.Think about it.

-Keep reading, keep learning
-Mahesh