Wit. Wisdom. Value Investing.
I recently read a story to my son, which was about a martial arts student who went to an accomplished teacher to seek training under his guidance.
He asked the teacher, “I am devoted to studying your martial system. How long will it take me to master it?”
The teacher casually replied, “Ten years.”
[Read more…] about A Reminder to Focus on the Journey, Not the Destination19 years have passed since I entered the stock market through my first and last job as an equity research analyst. 11 years have passed since I left that job to start on my own.
I recently tweeted about my experiences during both these phases, which I thought I would share with you here too.
There have been numerous lessons I have learned along the way, but what follows below contains some of the most important ones. Mostly, it’s about the memories I have made on this journey.
This is how an important part of my life has flowed over the past 19 years, and the best thing I have enjoyed about the whole journey is, well, the flow, with not much idea about where I would go.
If you are still reading, let’s start right here.
[Read more…] about Reflections on My LifeI did not know who Dr. Sarah Hallberg was till yesterday morning. By the end of the day, however, I had known her well. At least that is what I felt after seeing her multiple videos and reading about her outstanding work in the field of reversing type 2 diabetes without medications or surgery.
And the reason I got to know about Sarah and her work just yesterday was because I read news of her passing away a day before yesterday, after suffering from advanced lung cancer, at the age of fifty.
Sarah was revered in the medical community, especially those working in the field of diabetes, for the path-breaking work she did over the past few years. As much as I got to read and know about her, all I could gather was the amount of good karma she had accumulated over the years for helping diabetics sort out their lives through just food and lifestyle. The best part about Sarah’s story is that her work did not stop even after she got to know she was down with a terminal disease. She was selfless to the core.
[Read more…] about Reflections on the Purpose of LifeLife’s passing by too fast, or so it seems. I complete 43 years in my present state of existence today. That’s more than three-fifths of the average life expectancy of an Indian male.
As I look back at my life, the third year of a decade has been particularly lucky or good for me, and the 43rd year was no different. On the work front, I wrote and published The Sketchbook of Wisdom and started The One Percent Show, both initiatives being very fulfilling for me.
Now, while spiritualists would want me to believe that I have existed from anadi (before the beginning of cosmos) and will exist till ananta (infinity), I see forty-three years as a good enough time to find some meaning in one’s life. At least, my rapidly greying hair and receding hairline help me realize that.
[Read more…] about The 43rd LessonWhen we study successful people, we always talk about their work ethic, creativity, leadership. Those things are essential, and we can learn a lot from them. But one thing that gets less attention is whether they were kind to others in their journey.
Consider Warren Buffett, one of the most successful people in the world. Once while giving a lecture to college students, he was asked his definition of success, and this is what he replied, “When you get to my age, you will really measure your success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you actually do love you…That is the ultimate test of how you have lived your life.”
[Read more…] about A Story on KindnessMy son Chaitanya was born today, ten years ago. He was two months premature. His birth weight just 1.4 kg – 60% lesser than the average birth weight of 3.5 kg – and he spent the first three weeks of his life in an ICU.
We were not allowed inside the ICU for the risk of infection to the newborns, and so the nurse used to “display” our son from behind two glass doors for the first one week. Even my wife was not allowed entry to the ICU for the first week. Every time we asked how the baby was doing, the nurse would pull out her clipboard and dictate to us his ‘quantitative status’ – his heart rate, temperature, oxygen level, infection level, etc.
A week after Chaitanya’s birth, when my wife was first allowed to meet him, she realized he was lying still in his incubator which the nurse said was fine as he was too weak for any movement. Even his eyes were still. “He will be like that for a few more days, ma’am,” the nurse told my wife, “till he gains some strength.”
[Read more…] about The Limits of Numbers in Life and Investing
Two Buddhist monks, a senior and a junior, were walking through the forest. They came across a river flowing through their path. To continue their journey, they had to swim through the river and cross to the other side.
There was a woman who was sitting at the bank of the river. She did not know how to swim and requested the monks to carry her to the other side.
Buddhist monks take a vow of celibacy. They are not supposed to even look at women, let alone carry them. The junior monk politely refused. But the senior monk put the woman on his back, swam across the river, and dropped her safely to the other side – without saying a word.
[Read more…] about Two Monks and One Big Lesson in Life and Investing
Some moments just shake you up and lead you to reflect on the fickleness of life. It was one such moment for me two months back when I received news of the passing away of a dear friend, all of 42 years, of heart attack. He was an ex-colleague, my local train partner, and a close confidant. We had not met since the lockdown started in March 2020, but had planned to do so as things were opening up after the first wave of Covid. But that was not to happen. God had other plans.
If that was not all, I heard the news of another ex-colleague – the one whose place I had filled in my previous job – also in his mid-forties, passing away due to Covid-related complications.
“People are falling like nine-pins,” I said to my wife as we were talking about these two quick tragedies. “Each day seems like a toss of a coin. You’re here this moment and gone the next. And who knows when it’s our turn to go?”
“Doesn’t it all seem worthless?” I asked her expecting that she agrees. She nodded, though I was not sure if that was in agreement or disagreement.
“Life,” John Lennon said, “is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans.” We have seen ample proof of this in the last year.
However, here is a tool, a mental model, a practice that can help us minimize the shocks that the unknowns and unknowables of life render us from time to time.
It is called ‘margin of safety’ – a widely known but rarely applied idea – which is an engineering concept that is used to describe the ability of a system to withstand loads that are greater than expected. In simple words, it is a buffer between what you expect to happen and what could (and often would) happen.
Life may offer you a raw deal, sometimes when you least expect it. A wide margin of safety ensures that the effects of good decisions are not wiped out by errors, uncertainties, or simply bad luck.
Of course, applying margin of safety in your decisions will not keep situations from going wrong, it will act as a cushion for you to fall back on and survive if and when things go wrong, which they will.
Stay safe. Get vaccinated. Wear a mask.
Trust you and everyone in your family is safe and fine.
Here is my latest podcast episode, the first in a series on my book – The Sketchbook of Wisdom – wherein I talk about how we can be okay when things around us are not. This applies not only to life but also to investing. So, I hope you find this useful anyway.